Smackdown Sees Ratings Boost Thanks To Madison Square Garden

It is Monday and you know what that means. It’s time for the ratings for Friday Night wrestling and sports entertainment. And things heat up on network television and cable, the professional wrestling world continues to make noise. However, thanks to being in the World’s Most Famous Arena Smackdown continues to be the best brand for WWE as they continue to pull in a high number. AEW Rampage on the other hand has settled to the number where they are at as 10 pm is a tough ask. Time to dive into the ratings.

Brock Lesnar Helps Smackdown Soar

Let us begin with WWE Smackdown. It was a loaded card for Smackdown heading back to Madison Square Garden for the first time in a while. And the New York crowd was hot for this show. And it showed. The New York crowd will always announce their presence. Smackdown was viewed by 2.383 million people on Friday. This number was up from the previous week by seven percent. In the key demo, Smackdown did a .65 which was about 852,000 people. Both numbers are big for Smackdown. The viewership number was the best since January 22nd and the 18-49 demo was the best since July 16th. These numbers are courtesy of Showbuzzdaily.com

WWE Smackdown on Friday was watched by 2,383,000 viewers on average, the most since Jan 22. 852,000 viewers were aged 18 to 49 (0.65 rating).

AEW Rampage on TNT was watched by 670,000 viewers on average. 347,000 viewers were aged 18 to 49 (0.27 rating).https://t.co/ap6FzoXTBk pic.twitter.com/IqqaawUM2n

— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) September 13, 2021

This week’s Smackdown was highlighted by the return of Brock Lesnar. Following in the footsteps of AEW, Smackdown kicked off the show with Lesnar confronting Universal Champion Roman Reigns. Seeds were being planted on where Paul Heyman’s allegiance will be. This was a really good segment to start the show as the crowd was into it.

In addition, we saw Finn Balor return as the Demon towards the end of the program. We also saw Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair have a contract signing. Finally, we got signs of a Becky Lynch heel turn and it was fully believable. Also, we got a Summerslam rematch between Edge and Seth Rollins. Rollins left victorious leaving Edge motionless as he was carted off on a stretcher.

AEW Rampage Remains Stagnant

AEW Rampage numbers fell again this week. It was watched by 670,000 people. The show did a .27 in the 18-49 demo, which is about 347,000 people.  AEW was still third on cable for a Friday. The show saw Pac take on Andrade along with a women’s trio match. Plus hometown hero Brian Pillman Jr. main event the show in Cincinnati. It was a jam-packed night of wrestling.

Smackdown is clearly the best brand for WWE right now. And AEW is doing really well for a tough time slot. Let’s see if they can keep the momentum going.