Last week, WWE saw had its biggest audience for Raw in over three months. This week’s Raw was headlined by a Last Man Standing match between Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns. It wasn’t advertised during last week’s show, but WWE did mention it on social media and their website in the days leading up to it.
There were 3.23 million viewers for this week’s Raw, according to Showbuzz Daily, which is a slight increase from the 3.16 million viewers from last week. The first hour did 3.26 million viewers, hour two was the highest of the show like usual with 3.31 million viewers and the third hour headlined by Strowman vs. Reigns did 3.14 million viewers. Raw was the highest rated show on cable on Monday night as well, which is great because sometimes some Fox News shows beat them.
In what can only be considered good news, Raw’s numbers have continued to go up in the last month. The July 17 edition of Raw did the highest number of viewers in the last three months, then it was topped last week and this week went even higher. The April 17 episode did 3.34 million viewers, so perhaps next week’s Raw could top that.
I was at Raw in Toronto this week and I had a lot of fun while there, but when watching the broadcast back it felt like an average show. The matches between Ambrose/Cesaro and Strowman/Reigns were the clear highlights because both matches were given around 20 minutes. Lesnar’s opening segment appearance where he beat up The Miz and his buddies was a great way to start the show too. The crowd did get restless at some points too because it’s such a long night. For the most part, I think Toronto liked the show and a hot crowd certainly adds to the quality of the show.
Next week’s Raw will be the last one before SummerSlam, so there should be a lot of talking to set up the big matches, and don’t count out a brawl between the foursome of Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman and Samoa Joe in order to really hype up the Universal Title match.
