WWE SummerSlam Bumps WWE Raw Viewership Above Two Million

The SummerSlam pay-per-view this past weekend set new records for attendance and viewership for WWE, and it managed to build up some fan anticipation for this week's Monday Night Raw as well. This week's Raw, taking place in San Diego, brought in an average viewership of 2.067 million with a 0.64 rating in the 18-49 target demographic. That's significantly higher in both categories compared to the go-home episode (1.857 million viewers and a 0.55 rating) and marks just the third time in 2021 that the Red Brand's viewership has been higher than two million. The only other instances were the Jan. 4 "Legends' Night" episode and the April 12 episode that saw the fallout from WrestleMania 37.

But for as exciting as SummerSlam was, most of the event's biggest moments had to do with the SmackDown brand. Roman Reigns beat John Cena in the main event to keep his Universal Championship reign rolling, Brock Lesnar came back and immediately challenged "The Tribal Chief," Becky Lynch returned and beat Bianca Belair for the SmackDown Women's Championship in somewhat controversial fashion and Edge & Seth Rollins put on what many considered to be the match of the night.

WWE Raw last night on USA Network was watched by 2,067,000 viewers on average, the most since the January 4 “Legends Night” episode.

826,000 viewers were aged 18-49 (0.64 rating), the highest since the April 12 post-Wrestlemania episode.

📈 Read more: https://t.co/IBDSmBzFDM pic.twitter.com/iDYeubrJbn

— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) August 24, 2021

As for the Raw side of the card, Bobby Lashley retained his WWE Championship against Goldberg via referee stoppage and wound up attacking his son Gage (MVP tried to justify his actions both immediately after the match and at the start of Raw), Damian Priest won the United States Championship, Charlotte Flair pick up her 12th reign as women's champion and RKBro defeated AJ Styles and Omos for the Raw tag titles. The main event of this week's Raw saw Riddle beat Styles in singles competition then stand tall to close out the show alongside Randy Orton.

OUTTA NOWHERE!

RKO to @AJStylesOrg courtesy of #WWERaw Tag Team Champion @RandyOrton. pic.twitter.com/P6UGYBhbpe

— WWE (@WWE) August 24, 2021

The episode also had the rare occurrence of WWE announcing more than one match ahead of time, confirming next week's card would feature Lashley vs. Sheamus in a non-title match, Doudrop vs. Eva Marie and The Miz vs. John Morrison.