WWE News: Balor Club brings Raw ratings to highest viewed episode since September 2018

What's the Story?

Monday Night Raw gave fans exactly what they were looking for and the ratings improved dramatically because of it.

The January 14 episode of Raw averaged 2.72 million viewers and was the highest viewed episode since September.

In Case You Didn't Know

Raw started with Braun Strowman being stripped of his Universal Championship match after damaging Vince McMahon's limousine.

A fatal four way between Baron Corbin, Drew Mcintyre, Finn Balor and John Cena to determine the new challenger for the title was announced for the main event of the show.

The Heart of the Matter

Raw was number one for Monday Night Cable this week and was up nearly 400,000 viewers from the first Raw of 2019 which averaged 2.32 million viewers.

The following is the hourly breakdown of this week's edition of Raw:

Hour one: 2.775 million

Hour two: 2.781 million

Hour three: 2.610 million

The show's main storyline revolved around determining the next challenger for the Universal Championship and featured one to two segments every 30 minutes that built up to the main event.

The central storyline was successful in keeping viewers with only 165,000 fans tuning out by the end of the show - much better than the 500,000+ viewer who stopped watching last week's show by the third hour.

Other key moments from the show included Ronda Rousey and Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax and Tamina, Nikki Cross making her debut in a six-woman tag team and the Intercontinental Championship match between Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Bobby Lashley.

What's Next?

The next episode of Raw will be the go-home show for the Royal Rumble and the last chance for any big announcements from the flagship show.

This was one of WWE's best episodes of Raw in a while according to fans and hopefully, WWE can keep the momentum going.