WWE was hit with back-to-back days of bad news when it came to the ratings for Monday Night Raw and NXT. Raw, which was up against both the NBA and NHL playoffs with very little announced ahead of time, drew 1.621 million viewers for the May 24 episode, a 10% drop from last week and the smallest audience of the year. The show drew a 0.45 rating in the target demographic, also the worst of 2021. That news was followed by NXT drawing a 0.13 rating with 698,000 viewers on Tuesday night. On the surface that’s not too bad — only a slight dip from last week — but the show was headlined by the heavily hyped NXT Championship match between Karrion Kross and Finn Balor in the show’s main event.
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Raw wound up being a wrestling-heavy show, highlighted by an impromptu Kofi Kingston vs. Drew McIntyre No. 1 contender’s match (which was thrown out when Bobby Lashley and MVP interfered) and Riddle vs. Xavier Woods. The show’s main event wound up being a WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship match between Natalya & Tamina vs. Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax, which was once again interrupted by Alexa Bliss’ shenanigans with the stage’s pyro.
To WWE’s credit, both shows have already announced noteworthy matches for next week. McIntyre and Kingston will have their rematch (Lashley and MVP can’t interfere this time under penalty of suspension) while Baszler will have a rare intergender match against Reginald.
NXT will feature NXT Tag Team Champions MSK defended their gold against Legado del Fantasma and a No. 1 contender’s match for the NXT Championship between Kyle O’Reilly, Johnny Gargano and Pete Dunne. The winner will face Kross at the NXT TakeOver: In Your House pay-per-view next month.
The Black & Gold Brand also has the benefit of no longer running up against AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights. Triple H reflected on that rivalry last month while on the Cheap Heat Podcast, calling it an “Imaginary War.”
“The promotional opportunity for us is much better on a Tuesday and also then not having to have a narrative where it’s just constantly about an imaginary war or this imaginary battle,” Triple H said. “People can say what they want, but the truth of the matter is you compete against everything. If you are creating a television product or content and that is the world we live in is content not television, not internet. It’s everything. You’re constantly competing for eyeballs and time against everything under the sun, including sleep and time to do other things, and video games, and Tik Tok and everything else that’s out there.
“So having your own space where you don’t have to then have an added imaginary battle stacked up against it, it’s kind of nice. The bigger fact is having a lead in from a Tuesday into a Wednesday. When we first started, NXT was on Wednesday’s for viewers of The Network. The transition to USA and wanting to keep that consistency for those that were watching on The Network so they would know where to find it and not have confusion of SmackDown leaving Tuesday’s and people joining in and finding something else. Time has gone by now, and this is a great opportunity for us to have that lead in for Monday Night Raw, get that promotional window for Monday Night RAW, get to Tuesday’s and continue to deliver the product.”
He continued — “Again, I’m thrilled with it, and I think the opportunity is the same as it was before, which is for talent to get out there live and show everything that they can do, and I’m a big believer that talent will shine through, and they’ll get that opportunity and you’ll make bigger and bigger stars as time goes by. It’s about making stars and them having that opportunity not just the number every single week.”
