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WWE Raw Ratings Decrease Despite Drew McIntyre, Bobby Lashley and Fastlane Hype
March 16, 2021
Ratings for Monday night's episode of WWE Raw featuring the announcement of Drew McIntyre against Bobby Lashley for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 37 declined compared to last week.
According to Bryan Alvarez of F4WOnline, Raw averaged 1.843 million viewers during its three-hour broadcast on USA Network, which was down slightly from last week's 1.9 million.
WWE announced at the top of the show that McIntyre will challenge Lashley for the WWE title at WrestleMania. That led to plenty of chaos with The Miz challenging McIntyre to a match and Sheamus attacking Lashley.
McIntyre beat Miz with relative ease, while Lashley beat Sheamus in a battle in the main event ahead of a match between McIntyre and Sheamus at Fastlane on Sunday.
Raw also featured a pair of title matches in Mustafa Ali vs. Riddle for the United States Championship and New Day vs. Hurt Business members Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin for the Raw Tag Team Championships.
Riddle beat Ali to retain the U.S. title, but Alexander and Benjamin weren't so fortunate, as they dropped the Raw tag team titles to Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, making New Day 11-time tag team champs in WWE.
After New Day scored the big victory, they were interrupted by AJ Styles and Omos. Styles noted that since he had nothing planned yet for WrestleMania and had never won the tag team titles before in WWE, he wanted to challenge New Day.
Kingston and Woods accepted, meaning it will be New Day vs. Styles and Omos at WrestleMania 37, marking Omos' in-ring debut on the main roster.
Also on Raw, Shane McMahon goaded Braun Strowman into a match, but it never started, as Shane hit Braun with a camera, put him through the announcers' table with an elbow and then poured green slime on him. That resulted in a match between them getting announced for Fastlane.
The rivalry between the teams of The Miz and John Morrison and Damian Priest and Bad Bunny was rekindled as well when Miz hit Bad Bunny in the back with a guitar after Priest beat Jaxson Ryker in a match.
Other key happenings included Raw women's champion Asuka returning to beat Shayna Baszler, Mandy Rose and Dana Brooke defeating Naomi and Lana, and Randy Orton accepting Alexa Bliss' challenge for a match at Fastlane.
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