WWE Raw viewership comes crashing back down

Using a return match for retired star Christian and a “Championship Monday” gimmick worked to keep viewership up for Monday Night Raw the past couple weeks, but the numbers came crashing back to Earth for this week’s episode.

Indeed, this week’s show drew 1.74 million viewers, down from the 1.92 million the week before. Viewership is right back to the level it was before the past couple weeks.

The hourly breakdown went back to that level too, losing viewers throughout the night at a steady clip.

Hour one: 1.86 million
Hour two: 1.75 million
Hour three: 1.59 million

WWE is currently relying on Drew McIntyre as champion (who was crowned in front of no fans) feuding with Dolph Ziggler, Randy Orton as a top star in a program with Big Show (these two worked a match against each other at Extreme Rules all the way back in 2013, by the way), with Ric Flair making appearances in support of it, and Bayley & Sasha Banks bouncing around shows.

Some of that is good — Bayley and Banks have been fantastic fun — but Ziggler challenging for a top title and Big Show in the main event in 2020 just isn’t going to hit the mark.

Get complete results and the live blog from Raw this week here, a recap of all the night’s events here, and highlights from the show here.