Confirmed: As a one time return with a heavily promoted three hour special, Vince McMahon is good for ratings.

Last night's (June 11, 2012) episode of Monday Night Raw, which featured McMahon returning to evaluate John Laurinaitis performance as General Manager of the show (but was really just a way to tease firing him), average 4.62 million viewers for the entire three hour show.

The numbers are even more impressive when you look at the two hour period Raw normally runs. The first hour (second for three hour shows) averaged 4.88 million viewers and the second (third for three hour shows) averaged 5.08 million viewers.

Maybe fans really just wanted to hear McMahon scream "YOU'RE FIRED" at Laurinaitis. Then again, Raw didn't have to go up against any competition from the NBA Playoffs. Obviously, that helped.

This is also good news considering this was the go home show to the No Way Out pay-per-view (PPV) scheduled for this Sunday night at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Having the show leading into it garner ratings in the top three of all shows this year can only help and after looking at the line up currently in place, this show will probably need all the help it can get.

For complete results and the running live blog from last night's episode of Raw click here. To listen to Sergio and myself gab about the show on the Cageside Live podcast click here. And for complete reactions to all the night's events click here.