All eyes were on CM Punk’s WWE return. With WWE running this week’s WWE Monday Night Raw in Chicago, the sports-entertainment giant called on Chi-Town’s favorite son to appear before his hometown crowd. While his torn triceps will keep him out of action for the next several months, Punk remains a fixture of one of WWE’s top storylines, constantly being referenced by upcoming WWE World Heavyweight Title challenger Drew McIntyre. McIntyre’s Future Shock DDT was the maneuver responsible for taking out Punk in January, and the Scottish Warrior has boasted about that fact ever since.
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When Punk took to the microphone on Monday, McIntyre interrupted, gloating to Punk’s face about the fact that he is living out Punk’s WWE WrestleMania 40 dreams. The two exchanged vicious verbal barbs before WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins’s music hit, leading to the self-proclaimed visionary to run down his two rivals as well.
Running for nearly 20 minutes total, this segment was praised by fans and critics alike for echoing some of that Attitude Era magic, as all three men spoke with a level of vigor that only comes around in storylines that are both rooted in reality and bestow creative freedom to the talent involved.
WWE Raw Sees Massive Viewership Spike
That amount of genuine animosity made the world want to tune in.
As reported by Wrestlenomics, this past Monday’s edition of WWE Monday Night Raw peaked at 2.2 million viewers during CM Punk, Drew McIntyre, and WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins’s promo segment. WWE Raw as a whole brought in an average of 1.729 million viewers throughout the broadcast. This particular segment alone was responsible for a viewership spike of roughly 500,000.
Viewership spikes like this have not been seen since the Attitude Era, WWE’s hottest period on cable television. Back on January 4th, 1999, WWE aired a taped episode of WWF Raw is War that talent from rival show WCW Monday Nitro caught wind of. WCW announcer Tony Schiavone spoiled the result of Monday Night Raw‘s main event during the live WCW Monday Nitro, telling WCW’s audience that Mick Foley was going to win the WWF Championship, sarcastically remarking that that would “put butts in seats.” Immediately after that now-infamous call, over 600,000 viewers changed the channel from WCW Nitro to Monday Night Raw.
