WWE News: Raw Rating Sees a Big Decrease One Week After WrestleMania

Wrestle Mania is officially in the rear view mirror. Raw and Smackdown are set for a long road ahead, as a new "season" begins for WWE.

Last week's Raw saw a nice 3.4 rating. It averaged just over five million viewers and had to be considered a major building block going forward. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case.

This week, the Red Brand saw a big decrease in viewership.

The first hour drew 4,230,000 million viewers.

The second hour drew 4,342,000 million viewers.

The official number for Raw was a 3.1 rating.

My Thought on This News

I enjoyed last night's Raw. It certainly was not as good as last week, but it was a solid effort. Such a major decrease should be mildly disappointing.

What WWE sees right now may be the normal number in 2012. It may be down, but viewership is increasing in the second hour. As most know by now, star power is extremely thin right now.

The Rock won't be back for a few months. Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H "ended their era" last Sunday night. Despite one laughable report, they aren't wrestling each other ever again.

Chris Jericho is not sticking around forever. His feud with CM Punk seems to be ending soon, and who knows what is after that?

Needless to say, you can certainly understand the strong push for Brock Lesnar right out of the gate. The company can't afford to take things slow right now or even limit his attention.

Lesnar needs to be front and center right now.

His feud with John Cena will do just that. Everything else will hopefully work out for the best in the long term. All you have to do is look at the rest of the show.

Lord Tensai received yet another nice win.

Alberto Del Rio (rightfully) destroyed Zack Ryder.

Mark Henry beat the WWE Champion for the second straight week.

Plenty of heels are being built up. With the end game always being the face winning, you have to wonder how the Red Brand will be handled this summer.

The only way to find out is watching each and every Monday night. Something WWE is hoping fans start to do for the full calendar, not just a few weeks out of the year...

As for Smackdown, they received a 1.9 rating last Friday night with 2,720,000 million viewers. The Blue Brand had been hovering at a 2.0 rating with over three million viewers for awhile now.

Something seems lost on Smackdown the past few weeks. I am not sure what, but tonight's live "Blast from the Past" special is not going to help one bit.

In fact, it is going to hurt. The rating will be lower than  last week's taped show. You can mark that down folks.

Going live on Tuesdays has been proven time and time again not to matter.

Either way, we are now in the usual post-Mania "hang over" of the year. It happens every April and is now up to WWE to keep fans entertained throughout the next few months.

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