As Sergio and I spoke of at length on the latest episode of Cageside Live, this past Monday night's (March 26, 2012) episode of WWE Raw wasn't exactly anything to write home about. In fact, it was one of the worst go-home shows to a major pay-per-view -- in this case a show being marketed as the biggest of all time -- in the history of pro wrestling.
As it turns out, the ratings reflect that sentiment and paint a sobering picture headed into this Sunday night's WrestleMania 28 extravaganza. PWTorch.com has the numbers:
WWE Raw on Monday, March 26 scored a 3.04 rating, down slightly from a 3.09 rating last week, and down from 3.25 and 3.27 ratings at the beginning of the month. It's the lowest rating since February 13. Raw averaged 4.44 million viewers, up only one percent from last week's show, which was the least-watched show over the past six weeks. The first hour averaged 4.44 million viewers and increased slightly to an average of 4.45 million viewers in the second hour.
There's buzz heading into this weekend but it's not nearly as ringing as WWE was surely hoping it would be. The novelty of the Rock wrestling has worn off, thanks in part to his making more than a few appearances and the fact that he actually wrestled last November in the main event of Survivor Series, a gamble that didn't exactly pay off.
That and WWE has done so very little to make its feuds as aesthetically interesting as they could be. Which is to say, if you simply waited for the YouTube video releases of the promos the next day, you won't have missed much of anything on Raw. Which has led us to stagnant ratings and a growing fear that WrestleMania won't actually end up being the biggest pay-per-view in the history of the company.
Unless, of course, there are enough fans who made their decision already and one more video montage wasn't going to sway them to make a purchase or not. Either way, we've got less than one week to find out. It doesn't look good but the match card is strong enough to expect at least one million buys. And that ain't not bad, folks.
For complete results and the running live blog from Raw click here. For reactions to the show click here. And to listen to the Cageside Live post-Raw podcast click here.