WWE panicked after seeing the viewership for the first episode of Backstage, and bringing in CM Punk seems to have worked wonders.

Pro wrestling is a unique business in a variety of different ways. One of the strangest is the focus on how many people are watching the product. WWE's and AEW's viewership is picked apart each week and many fans determine how good a show is on that alone. It's all rooted in how well Raw and Nitro would do on that front during the latter half of the 1990s.

We're not sure whether it's the ratings that scare WWE or how fans react to them, but Vince McMahon is definitely still checking them each week. That has never been more evident than when the premiere of Backstage was watched by less than 50,000 people. One week later, CM Punk closed the show.

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That episode of Backstage was watched by more than twice as many people as the previous week. WWE will have hoped that Punk revealing he would be back for episode three would increase the viewership even further. They certainly advertised it well over the course of the following seven days. All of that press was a success, and it is being reported that 180,000 fans tuned into Backstage this week to see what Punk had to say.

That's right, the presence of Punk has almost quadrupled the number of people who are tuning into Backstage. It does air on a channel that not many people have at 11 pm on a weekday, so we're not sure what WWE thinks the ceiling is for the show. Plus, FOX revealed Punk will be appearing periodically. Since WWE isn't hyping his next appearance, we're assuming Punk won't be on the show next week.

The real test will be how well Backstage does in the ratings on a week when Punk isn't around. If it can hold a number just shy of 200,000 even without the Second City Saint, that will have to be viewed as a win for both WWE and FOX. If there is a steep drop off whenever Punk isn't around, the former WWE Champion might find himself being asked to show up each and every Tuesday.

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