Roman Reigns’ Return Hailed Successful as WWE Repeatedly Humiliates Tony Khan’s AEW

SmackDown has been on a roll for some time now as one of the best shows in the pro wrestling industry. While Roman Reigns made his announced return after a 2-months break, the crowd at Tulsa gathered in huge numbers to acknowledge The Tribal Chief. Though Tony Khan has tried his best to topple WWE shows, he has been repeatedly outdone by Triple H and co.

Last week, WWE repeated its dominance over AEW as they won the Tuesday Night War between Dynamite and NXT. WWE closed the week with a dominant performance with SmackDown as Cena, Knight, and Reigns arrived SmackDown.

SmackDown dominates TV viewership for October month

The Wrestling Blog tweeted on X on October 16th the data for Friday Night Wrestling War on TV from last week. The caption read, “Viewership for this past Friday: AEW Rampage 407,000 viewers. WWE SmackDown 2,417,000 viewers” It was the data for the Live TV viewership.

Wrestlenomics.com, an extremely popular site for pro-wrestling data, reports that the WWE SmackDown show has dominated the wrestling business on TV. Last week, AEW Rampage recorded 407,000 viewers for their show while SmackDown recorded almost 6 times the number. For the age category (18-49) ratings, AEW Rampage was at 0.14 while SmackDown was at 0.62. SmackDown is the only wrestling show with over 0.5 ratings for the given category this month.

Wrestlenomics also reports that SmackDown has dominated the business (viewership-wise) since November of 2022. The next best show in the last 10 months is WWE RAW followed by AEW Dynamite. AEW Rampage lingers at the bottom of the list with viewership ranging from 400,000-500,000 mostly.

It is not surprising that SmackDown has once again topped the list last week. They barely had any show with less than 2 million viewers on TV, while 6 episodes this year have recorded 2.5 million viewers.

Read more: LA Knight’s Cheeky Counter Leaves Roman Reigns Impressed Ahead of Their Possible Face-Off at Crown Jewel 2023

However, TV viewership isn’t the only sphere where SmackDown has dominated the wrestling scene. They are also the leader when it comes to live audiences for their shows.

SmackDown dominates the live ticket sales

It was reported that the SmackDown show at Tulsa last week, sold over 10,700 tickets while WWE presented their season premiere. The same week, RAW sold over 9,600 tickets for their show in Omaha, NE.

On the other hand, AEW has barely fared a third of those numbers. The AEW Collision show at Toledo, OH sold over 4,300 tickets while the AEW Dynamite show at Missouri sold over 3,600 tickets. It is interesting to note that the seating capacity at both shows was around 4,500, thus reflecting AEW’s expectations from the shows.

What do you think about SmackDown show?

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