WWE is well on its way down the "Road to WrestleMania" and last night's (Feb. 25, 2013) episode of Monday Night Raw went a long way towards advancing the promotion to its biggest event of the year. Triple H returned to protect Vince McMahon from the unwanted advances of Brock Lesnar and John Cena defeated CM Punk to retain his number one contender status to The Rock's WWE championship.
The ratings for all of this are in and the numbers are solid.
Raw pulled a 3.46 rating, up from the 3.30 the show did last week, for an average of 4.71 million viewers, up only slightly from last week's show. Here's the hourly breakdown with that old familiar pattern staying true.
Hour one: 4.86 million
Hour two: 4.70 million
Hour three: 4.56 million
It's so odd that even on the best shows the numbers fall throughout all three hours. Still, the open was strong for the heavily promoted "fight" between Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman that saw Triple H return to brawl with Brock Lesnar and the final hour didn't drop too terribly far for the amazing John Cena vs. CM Punk match for the right to face The Rock for the WWE championship in the main event of WrestleMania 29.
All told, everything's swell.
For complete results and the live blog click here. For reactions to the show click here. And for a playlist of the entire night click here.