Viewership increased for the post-Elimination Chamber edition of Monday Night Raw.
According to Showbuzz Daily (h/t Marc Middleton of WrestlingInc.com), this week's episode averaged 1.890 million viewers on the USA Network, peaking in the first hour with 1.978 million viewers.
This marks the best viewership for Raw since the Feb. 1 episode that drew 1.892 million viewers, via WrestlingInc.com's viewership tracker. It's also a considerable increase from the go-home Elimination Chamber show that brought in 1.810 million viewers.
With the exception of the Feb. 8 show that drew 1.715 million viewers, every Raw episode of 2021 has reached over 1.8 million viewers. The "Legends Night" special on Jan. 4 stands as the most-watched episode of 2021 thus far, having brought in 2.128 million viewers.
This week's episode focused around the WWE Championship scene. The Miz successfully cashed in his Money in the Bank contract at Elimination Chamber and defeated Drew McIntyre to become the new champion.
Bobby Lashley attacked McIntyre before The Miz's cash-in, which paved the way for the latter to become the new WWE Champion.
In the opening segment, Lashley and MVP confronted John Morrison and the new WWE Champion. Lashley said he was there to collect a debt from The Miz, and he defeated Braun Strowman in the main event to earn a title opportunity on next week's show.
After losing to Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler, WWE also teased a potential split between Raw Women's Champion Asuka and Charlotte Flair. The latter subsequently confronted her father backstage and ordered him to go home, adding more drama to their storyline feud.
Good Start To 2021
As noted above, Raw is consistently reaching over 1.8 million viewers here in 2021. It's still well short of the two million mark that SmackDown is bringing in on a constant basis, but at least Raw is moving in a better direction after some concerning numbers in December. We'll see if WWE can sustain these somewhat encouraging numbers over the long run.
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