NXT doesn’t seem to have held onto the viewers who tuned in for Taker & Cena

The ratings and viewership data are in for the Oct. 17 edition of WWE NXT.

One week after the “Tuesday Night War”, fans & observers were interested in this week’s NXT numbers as a gauge of how much last week’s big win over AEW Dynamite could be attributed to the main roster talent and even Hall of Fame talent WWE brought to their third brand for the fight.

According to Wrestlenomics, the episode was watched by a total audience of 798,000 and scored a .23 rating among 18-49 year olds. Both are well off the numbers Undertaker, John Cena, Asuka & Cody Rhodes brought on Oct. 10. The demo number is slightly above what NXT did on Oct. 3, but the total viewership is down from that episode — and most others that were promoted with Raw stars Becky Lynch & Dominik Mysterio like last night’s was.

The knee jerk reaction would be to say these numbers mean NXT wouldn’t have beaten Dynamite without Taker, et al. That might be right, but one counterargument would be that the baseball playoff game which aired last night had a bigger audience than the one that competed with wrestling last Tuesday (SportsTVRatings reports the Philadelphia Phillies blowout win over the Arizona Diamondbacks was watched by approximately 5.2 million people on TBS and truTV). However, a lot less people were watching ESPN’s hockey coverage in week two of the season (552K viewers for the 7:30pm Tampa/Buffalo game), so...

Let us know what you think this week’s numbers tell us about last Tuesday in the comments below. And on your way down there, check out NXT’s audience and ratings share of the 18-49 demographic over the past year:

• Oct. 18, 2022 - 676,000 / .18
• Oct. 25 - 716,000 / .15
• Nov. 1 - 670,000 / .13
• Nov. 8 - 664,000 / .15
• Nov. 15 - 663,000 / .17
• Nov. 22 - 624,000 / .12
• Nov. 29 - 644,000 / .13
• Dec. 6 - 534,000 / .13
• Dec. 13 - 666,000 / .17
• Dec. 20 - 705,000 / .15
• Dec. 27 - 588,000 / .12
• Jan. 3, 2023 - 653,000 / .16
• Jan. 10 - 700,000 / .15
• Jan. 17 - 600,000 / .14
• Jan. 24 - 607,000 / .12
• Jan. 31 - 587,000 / .13
• Feb. 7 - 562,000 / .11
• Feb. 14 - 640,000 / .15
• Feb. 21 - 589,000 / .14
• Feb. 28 - 555,000 / .13
• Mar. 7 - 624,000 / .17
• Mar. 14 - 590,000 / .15
• Mar. 21 - 550,000 / .12
• Mar. 28 - 620,000 / .16
• April 4 - 555,000 / .13
• April 11 - 528,000 / .13
• April 18 - 565,000 / .14
• April 25 - 647,000 / .18
• May 2 - 568,000 / .14
• May 9 - 601,000 / .17
• May 16 - 564,000 / .14
• May 23 - 578,000 / .16
• May 30 - 607,000 / .17
• June 6 - 615,000 / .17
• June 13 - 581,000 / .16
• June 20 - 773,000 / .23
• June 27 - 622,000 / .17
• July 4 - 508,000 / .13
• July 11 - 671,000 / .20
• July 18 - 746,000 / .21
• July 25 - 703,000 / .23
• Aug. 1 - 717,000 / .23
• Aug. 8 - 776,000 / .23
• Aug. 15 - 680,000 / .19
• Aug. 22 - 720,000 / .19
• Aug. 29 - 614,000 / .16
• Sept. 5 - 673,000 / .18
• Sept. 12 - 850,000 / .26
• Sept. 19 - 824,000 / .24
• Sept. 26 - 636,000 / .18
• Oct. 3 - 857,000 / .22
• Oct. 10 - 921,000 / .30
• Oct. 17 - 798,000 / .23

* Aired on SyFy

If you missed any of this week’s NXT, we’ve got you covered with a live blog, our review, and video highlights.