What’s the story?
This week's edition of SmackDown Live, which featured the return of John Cena and was headlined by the Independence Day Battle Royal, drew 2,329,000 viewers, which is down even further from last week’s 2,603,000 viewers.
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Despite having increasing viewership the past few weeks, only one episode drew at the 3 million mark. In addition to that, the live attendance number has also been dropping, with lots of empty seats at tapings recently.
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The heart of the matter
This week, a number of matches had been announced well in advance, such as Lana vs Naomi for the SmackDown Women’s Championship.
It also included a very entertaining rap battle segment hosted by rapper Wale and involving The Usos and The New Day, in which there was some controversy towards the end of the segment, with The Usos making a snide reference to the Xavier Woods-Paige scandal from earlier this year that has become the talking point of the professional wrestling world right now.
What’s next?
SmackDown Live is three weeks away from their exclusive pay per view Battleground, which will be headlined by Jinder Mahal defending the WWE Championship against Randy Orton in a Punjabi Prison match, in what will mark the first time that stipulation has been used by WWE in almost ten years.
Other matches that have been announced for the show are John Cena vs Rusev in a Flag Match, Kevin Owens vs AJ Styles for the United States Championship, and The Usos vs The New Day for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships.
Author’s take
Given the holiday, it is somewhat understandable that viewership didn’t turn out to be as high as expected. However, since the show featured John Cena’s first WWE appearance since WrestleMania and matches and segments announced well in advance, it also has to be considered a letdown on WWE’s end. Cena has helped viewership and live event numbers for SmackDown Live before.
An example that comes to mind would be the final episode of SmackDown Live of 2016 which featured the return of John Cena(along with an extremely stacked card). The episode saw SmackDown Live beat RAW in viewership numbers for the first time since the draft.
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