WWE News: Monday Night Raw ratings down, lose #1 spot to Love & Hip Hop

What's the Story?

Hours after WWE announced the first-ever women's main event at WrestleMania, Monday Night Raw delivered a show that took a toll on their ratings.

The March 25 edition of Raw averaged 2.59 million viewers, down 110,000 from the previous week.

In Case You Didn't Know...

Raw started with the main eventers of WrestleMania 35 facing members of the Riott Squad in a Beat the Clock Challenge.

The show also featured Finn Balor earning a shot at the Intercontinental Championship, Roman Reigns agreeing to face Drew McIntyre and Sasha Banks & Bayley issuing a challenge to the women's tag team division.

The Heart of the Matter

Raw was second in ratings for Monday Night Cable, losing to Love & Hip-Hop on VH1 despite having significantly higher viewership.

The following is the hourly breakdown of this week's ratings per Show Buzz Daily:

Hour one: 2.700 million

Hour two: 2.665 million

Hour three: 2.402 million

Viewership was the strongest in the first hour of the show but was down more than 100,000 viewers from the first hour of Raw last week.

Despite the low start, Raw maintained most of its viewers in the second hour before losing, 298,000 viewers by the end of the third.

Aside from the Beat the Clock challenge that started the show, most of Raw felt like repeats of last week with Aleister Black & Ricochet continuing to face The Revival in non-title matches, Baron Corbin facing Apollo Crew and the main event between Drew McIntyre and Dean Ambrose - who made his return to TV for the first time since being defeated by McIntyre two weeks ago.

What's Next?

The Raw before pay-per-views usually garners one of the lowest ratings of the month and the same will be expected on the Raw before WrestleMania despite Brock Lesnar being advertised to return.

Hopefully, they have a few memorable moments on a show that will probably feature a lot less wrestling than this week's episode.