The final WWE Monday Night Raw before No Mercy was a show filled with promos, video packages and there was some wrestling too although not a lot of great action. Give the WWE Raw crew a break because they just flew into California after being in New Zealand and Australia over the last week. At least most of them were. Raw’s Universal Champion Brock Lesnar wasn’t at Raw this week, but they did tape an interview with him where he got to say “Suplex City, bitch” so at least that was worthwhile.
The numbers for this week’s Raw are in courtesy of Showbuzz Daily and they aren’t great, but they are consistent with what WWE tends to do when facing competition from the NFL’s Monday Night Football on ESPN. Raw did 2.833 million viewers, which is down from last week when Raw did 2.903 million viewers, so fans weren’t as interested this week. This week’s number is the lowest since June 12 when Raw competed with a NBA Finals game.
The NFL game featuring the Detroit Lions and the awful offensive performance of the New York Giants did 12.287 million viewers and they easily won the night on cable.
Raw’s first hour was strong with 3.123 million viewers, there was a slight dip in the second hour with 2.844 million viewers and a bigger drop in the third hour, which fell down to 2.532 million viewers. That means that nearly 600,000 viewers didn’t watch the third hour compared to the first hour. Part of the reason is because the first 30 minutes of Raw doesn’t have to deal with the NFL game (it starts at 8:30pmET), but it’s also because there wasn’t much of a main event this week with Jason Jordan winning a Six Pack Challenge. It felt like a midcard match placed in the main event slot. Roman Reigns delivered a promo talking trash against John Cena and that was placed at the end of the second hour, which was right around when the NFL game was at halftime.
There should be better numbers for Raw next week because it follows No Mercy and any time there is a Raw after a pay-per-view it tends to provide a boost. A lot of it depends on No Mercy too because if it’s considered a great show that will help.
