The Road to WrestleMania draws the casual fans back to WWE each year, but it doesn’t draw them in half as much as WrestleMania itself. And now it’s become a second annual tradition that the Raw After WrestleMania is where All The Stuff happens. Fans know that, and they tune in in far greater numbers than your run-of-the-mill Raw. Raw of the mill.
That isn’t to say that ratings have been ENTIRELY stagnant for Raw since last year’s Raw After WrestleMania. Ratings spiked when Bill Goldberg made his big return in October, they jumped up again when Monday Night Football ended for the season, and the post-Royal Rumble episode (the one where Samoa Joe debuted and ripped Seth Rollins’ heart out of his knee) garnered the biggest numbers since last year’s post-WrestleMania Raw.
Until now, anyway! Monday’s absolutely damn jam-packed show was seen by 3.767 million viewers, according to Showbuzz Daily. For comparison’s sake, last week’s go-home episode only pulled in 3.292 million, so that’s nearly a half-million more people with their peepers on the product this week. It was the No. 1 show on cable for Monday, as well as No. 1 in the all-important 18-49 demographic. That cumulative rating came on hours of 3.826 million viewers, 3.893 million, and 3.583 million for the final hour.
WWE flirted with that 4 million viewer mark, but couldn’t quite get there. The last time they touched the 4 million mark was — you guessed it — last year’s Raw After WrestleMania, which drew in 4.09 million viewers. So close! Hopefully next week’s Superstar Shake-Up will be able to retain some of those viewers.
