WWE Monday Night Raw went down last night (April 30, 2012) from the EJ Nutter Center in Dayton, Ohio, and featured all the fallout from the Extreme Rules pay-per-view (PPV) that took place this past Sunday night in Chicago, Illinois.
The ratings are in and they're about what you would expect. Overall, the show averaged 4.88 million viewers, good second most of the entire year behind only the Raw after WrestleMania 28. The first hour of Raw hit 4.99 million viewers thanks to extra folks tuning in to see what happened at the PPV the night before and how WWE would proceed going forward.
What they did was have Brock Lesnar (kayfabe) break Triple H's arm in a wild opening segment that saw "The Game" refuse to give in to Lesnar's contract demands. John Laurinaitis sided with Brock in the entire ordeal.
The rest of Raw centered on the Beat the Clock Challenge designed to find a cheap and easy way to crown a number one contender to the WWE championship and give CM Punk, the titleholder, a match at the next PPV, Over the Limit. In this case, Daniel Bryan came away the winner.
The show culminated in an angle with John Cena putting himself over and doing his best to dump on Laurinaitis before a match between the two was set for Over the Limit on May 20 in North Carolina. Raw went off the air with "Ace" and his new henchman, Lord Tensai, brutally beating Cena down.
There was a drop in viewership in the second hour and it ultimately averaged 4.77 million viewers. Surely, Cena won't take any blame for that.
For complete results and the running live blog from Raw click here. To listen to Sergio and I gab about grappling on the Cageside Live podcast click here. And to get complete reactions to the show click here.