Account
WWE Raw Ratings Jump to 1.714 Million with Shane McMahon's Return
August 4, 2020
A new approach to Raw did provide a slight improvement, though the show ratings are still hovering near historically low levels.
Monday's episode averaged 1.714 million viewers, according to F4WOnline.com's Bryan Alvarez, an increase from the 1.617 million viewers it garnered for the July 27 edition.
Before the show, WWE teased the return of Shane McMahon and the arrival of a new faction.
The latter proved to be a bit of a misnomer, with Fightful Select's Sean Ross Sapp (h/t Andrew Ravens of WrestlingNews.co) reporting that WWE's social media team may have referenced the storyline before it was fully ready to hit the airwaves.
McMahon, on the other hand, signaled the arrival of Raw Underground, which appears to be a mixture of scripted wrestling and bare-knuckle fighting.
MVP, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin, dubbing themselves The Hurt Business, took over Raw Underground to close out the show.
It's impossible to gauge how much Raw Underground might grow Raw's audience since it wasn't advertised or explained prior to Monday night. Now that fans are aware of the concept, they might be drawn to check out what's in store next week.
The structure and presentation of Raw Underground could change, too, as WWE sees what works and what doesn't. If nothing else, it certainly has people talking right now.
In more traditional wrestling news, Dominik Mysterio will get an opportunity for revenge on Seth Rollins when he wrestles The Monday Night Messiah at SummerSlam on Aug. 23.
Rollins took Rey Mysterio out for the foreseeable future when he was victorious in the Eye for an Eye match at The Horror Show at Extreme Rules.
Dominik attacked Rollins and Murphy on Raw, leading Rollins to accept his challenge for a singles encounter on the next pay-per-view.
The Street Profits are supposed to put the Raw Tag Team Championship belts on the line against Andrade and Angel Garza at SummerSlam. Whether that happens might be in some doubt, though.
Montez Ford was standing at ringside for Angelo Dawkins' match with Garza when he suddenly fell to the floor. He was then unable to complete his own match with Andrade.
Dawkins said backstage that doctors made a preliminary determination that Ford had been poisoned.
Zelina Vega made a strong case that poisoning Ford wouldn't be a smart move by her team, lest it jeopardize the SummerSlam match.
Perhaps more will be revealed about the possible perpetrators next week.