On the latest episode of the “Nitty Gritty Dirt Show” on RussosBrand.com, host Billi Bhatti and former WWE writer Vince Russo, discussed how USA have issued a bold claim to WWE and Vince McMahon – wanting WWE Monday Night RAW to hit two million viewers plus for their latest show. Unfortunately, Raw only drew just over 1.8 million viewers. Wrestling-Edge transcribed Bhatti’s comments below.
Bhatti: Let me give you a little scoop here on the free show. WWE have had conversations with the USA Network and this upcoming week is the most important week that WWE has had in a long time. I haven’t seen anything built up for it at all, I haven’t seen anything promoted for it but internally I know this date has been circled for some time. Now, the Legends RAW I was surprised that it happened when it happened. I guess WWE always do something for the first RAW of the year and they didn’t have any football competition in that period.
Bhatti continued:
Bhatti: Now they knew they had the college championship game coming up, the college championship game actually does better than a lot of the NFL playoff games. It doesn’t do better than the Super Bowl but it does do better than a lot of the individual Monday Night Football games and it does better than the playoff games as well. A lot of people end up watching that college championship so that was WWE’s excuse. I know AEW had an excuse last week where they had a particularly low rating because it coincided with the invasion of the Capitol, etc.
Bhatti also said:
Bhatti: So they all have these excuses, they are loaded up with excuses and on Monday. There is no excuse at all. This is a day where we are beginning to move toward WrestleMania and it’s been circled and targeted for a long time. So I believe it’s going to be the 18th of Monday. There is no football, no sports, no nothing. Yes, there is probably a bit of basketball on but the USA Network are expecting a two or two plus for Monday Night RAW.