Smackdown Rating Soars, AEW Rampage Rating Normalized

The ratings are out for wrestling on Friday night and low and behold wrestling is dominating the television. Who would have thought that in 2021. Now they are not at the levels they were during the Monday Night Wars, but WWE Smackdown was number one on network TV, while AEW Rampage was number one on cable in the key 18-49 demo.

Friday Night Wrestling Rating

Let us start with WWE Smackdown. Smackdown was viewed by 2.25 million people on Friday. That was up from a week ago. In addition, Smackdown did .59 in the 18-49 demo which is about 764,000 people viewing in the key demo. These numbers are courtesy of Showbuzzdaily.com

WWE Smackdown last week Friday on Fox was watched by 2,250,000 viewers, the most since the July 16 return to touring episode. 764,000 viewers were aged 18 to 49 (0.59 rating).

AEW Rampage on TNT was watched by 722,000. 434,000 in 18-49 (0.34).https://t.co/nm0CgHuE7N pic.twitter.com/RLa8CgwkMh

— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) August 30, 2021

While Becky Lynch may think she was the reason fans tuned in to see her, the big reason was Brock Lesnar. Don’t get me wrong Becky’s “heel turn” is something people will want to see. Especially with the fallout from Summerslam and Bianca Belair. But people tuned in to see if Lesnar was going to confront Roman Reigns the Universal Champion once again. Though he did not appear it was a decent show as the seeds are being set with Reigns and Paul Heyman. As the Usos have some doubt into where Paul Heyman stands in this situation. We did get the return of Finn Balor and we will have a Championship next week.

AEW Rampage Normalizes

After setting a record in the previous week with the debut of CM Punk, the AEW Rampage normalized a bit. This week the show was viewed by 722,000 people. This was also down from the first week of the show. But if this is the number Rampage will do then it is a solid number for a one-hour show at 10 pm on Fridays.  In addition, Rampage did a .34 in the 18-49 demo which was number one on cable in that demo. It beat NFL Preseason Football. This allowed AEW Dynamite and Rampage to be the number one show on cable for the week.

Thank you to everyone who made #AEWDynamite the #1 show on cable on Wednesday + #AEWRampage the #1 show on cable on Friday! Both Dynamite + Rampage ranking #1; it’s such a cool milestone to hit going into this week with Dynamite episode 100 + first ever Rampage go-home +ALL OUT!

— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) August 30, 2021

That is big for a show that saw the Lucha Bros defeat Jurassic Express in a heck of tag team opener to win the AEW World Tag Team Title Eliminator Tournament. They will face the Young Bucks for the gold inside a steel cage at ALL OUT. Also, we got Tay Conti vs the Bunny and Kenny Omega/Brandon Cutler vs Christian Cage/Frankie Kazarian. Solid show.

Another great night of wrestling with high ratings.