WWE News: Nov. 3 Raw Ratings on the Back of Cena's Absence

With the surprise return of Mr. McMahon, the crowning of a new United States champion and, of course, the much-anticipated face turn of Randy Orton, we saw a whole lot go down this past week on Monday Night Raw.

One thing we didn’t see, though, was an appearance from John Cena.

With less than three weeks remaining until Survivor Series, many had expected Cena to be in attendance, as he still had a five-man team to assemble ahead of the upcoming pay-per-view. And while his absence was alluded to briefly by The Authority, we weren’t given a definitive explanation as to why one of the team captains was missing in action.

Admittedly, his name had been pulled from local advertising in the week leading up to the show. But in another somewhat unexpected twist, fans in attendance at First Niagara Centre were offered full refunds if they were dissatisfied with the absence of Cena.

It all made for a rather odd situation, and one that I covered at greater length in a recent article.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, the general consensus that I got from you guys wasn’t particularly favourable toward Cena. Questions were raised regarding the offering of refunds, and the majority of you felt that Raw did just fine without WWE's top star on the card.

Photo courtesy of WWE.com

Of course, the Internet Wrestling Community represents a mere portion of the overall WWE fanbase. But if we take a look at TV ratings, courtesy of Dave Scherer of PWInsider.com, it appears that the wider WWE audience was in agreement with the IWC on this occasion.

With an average audience of 4.04 million, Raw posted a healthy viewership increase of 8 percent on the previous week. In fact, the last time Raw yielded a higher average audience was 11 weeks ago on August 18—the post-SummerSlam episode.

Whichever way you look at the numbers, it makes for good reading.

And while it would be naive to pin that improvement entirely on Cena’s absence, this certainly suggests that the WWE is no longer a one-trick pony. The current roster appears to be strong enough to deal with the loss of its top merchandise-mover, even with the likes of Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns currently on the shelf.

Some may argue that the return of Mr. McMahon helped boost the ratings. But for one, the second hour pulled in more viewers than the first; furthermore, there had been no word on McMahon’s appearance ahead of the show—it was a total surprise. Cena’s removal from local advertising, however, was not.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not calling for Cena to be left of every show in future. Far from it.

But considering how reliant the company used to be on its top star, and how reluctant it's always been to leave him off of any major show, I just feel this is a clear sign of how things have improved for the WWE. And with the ratings seemingly backing up that theory, could this be the moment that management recognises this improvement?

For ratings to be increasing on the back of a show that didn’t feature the WWE World Heavyweight champion, the No. 1 contender for that very title and two more of the most over babyfaces in the company, the future looks to be very bright for the WWE.

But what do you guys make of this news?

Is the improvement in ratings evidence of a stronger talent pool? Will the WWE acknowledge this and continue placing faith in Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Dolph Ziggler and company? Or are we reading too much into these ratings?

Please feel free to comment below and chime in with your thoughts on this one, as well as any of the other issues that were covered in the article.