The big news from Sunday’s WWE Hell in a Cell pay-per-view happened during the main event when Sami Zayn surprisingly showed up to save Kevin Owens from Shane McMahon’s 20 foot elbow drop that saw Shane crash through an announce table at ringside. Zayn put Owens on top of Shane for the pinfall win while Shane was taken away in an ambulance.
Due to such an interesting finish that left people wondering “why Sami why?” there was a belief going into Smackdown that the ratings would go up this week. The good news for WWE is that they did go up although it wasn’t that much.
Smackdown did 2.467 million viewers this week according to Showbuzz Daily, which is up from 2.32 million last week. That number was pretty bad because it was competing against Major League Baseball playoffs (Yankees vs. Twins) while this week’s show didn’t have MLB competition because there was a rain out.
This week’s number is down from the 2.542 million viewers from two weeks ago, so that’s why WWE likely won’t be celebrating this number too much.
The Zayn promo with Kevin Owens took place at the bottom of the first hour, which is typical for one of the biggest segments of the night. Zayn did a good job of explaining why he did what he did because he felt disrespected by Shane McMahon. Owens admitted he had no idea Zayn was going to do what he did, but Owens was happy about it. Zayn called Owens his “brother” while Smackdown has something interesting after a long period of boredom. What will be key is how WWE books Zayn and Owens going forward. They need to be a heel duo that dominates rather than a couple of guys that lose a tag match in a few weeks. Wins get people over.
The main event of Smackdown saw Baron Corbin retain the US Title over AJ Styles in what was a pretty good match thanks to Styles bumping his ass off like usual.
JUST ANNOUNCED: @REALBobbyRoode will get a rematch against @HEELZiggler NEXT WEEK on #SDLive! pic.twitter.com/eKG0A7tBxM
— WWE (@WWE) October 11, 2017
Next week’s Smackdown has already advertised a Hell in a Cell rematch between Bobby Roode and Dolph Ziggler. That match isn’t likely going to cause more viewers to tune in, but hopefully they have a better match than what they did on Sunday.
