Tuesday’s edition of WWE SmackDown Live from Pittsburgh, PA at the PPG Paints Arena averaged 2.091 million viewers, up from 1.904 million the previous week, according to ShowbuzzDaily.
The episode was expected to draw poor viewership due to it falling on New Year’s Day and being pre-taped. WWE will attempt to rebound with next week’s episode and should do so as it doesn’t fall on a holiday and will air live.
Matches that took place on this show include Samoa Joe vs. Jeff Hardy, the return of John Cena as he teamed up with Becky Lynch to take on Andrade Almas and Zelina Vega in a mixed tag team match, and a Fatal 5-Way match featuring top stars such as AJ Styles, Joe, Mustafa Ali, Randy Orton and Rey Mysterio to crown a new #1 contender for the WWE Title.
WWE also hyped the Royal Rumble and the matches taking place at that show In case you missed the show, you can check out the 4 takeaways from it here.
Despite WWE putting some together some intriguing segments for the show, this episode faced some solid competition. The show had to go up against the Texas Longhorns vs. Georgia Bulldogs game that pulled in 12,971 million viewers on ESPN.