WWE and AEW’s highest viewed matches of 2020 came near the end of the year, with Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens on Smackdown and a Chris Jericho and MJF tag team match receiving the highest viewership.
Dave Meltzer tweeted, “All because of the lead-ins, the Reigns vs. Owens on 12/25 and the Jericho/MJF vs. Top Flight bouts on 12/23 were the most-watched WWE and AEW matches respectively of 2020.”
He added, “But neither of those is truly indicative of anything regarding wrestling.”
WWE had an NFL lead in on FOX on Christmas, while AEW had an NBA season debut lead in on TNT, airing in a later time slot. AEW’s ratings were overall down for their December 23rd show with 775,000 viewers, but the Jericho/MJF tag match must have had in excess of 1.1 million viewers in order to have been the highest viewed AEW match of 2020. Chris Jericho is the ‘Demo God’ and ‘Million Viewer Man’ so it is a fitting accomplishment for Le Champion.
Smackdown on Christmas drew an average of 3.335 million viewers, with 4.097 million watching the first hour featuring the Reigns vs. Owens cage match (which drew 5.04 million viewers), but with a steep drop in the second hour to 2.574 million viewers, closer to Smackdown’s usual numbers Fridays on FOX.
All because of the lead-ins, the Reigns vs. Owens on 12/25 and the Jericho/MJF vs. Top Flight bouts on 12/23 were the most-watched WWE and AEW matches respectively of 2020.
— Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) December 31, 2020
But neither of those is truly indicative of anything regarding wrestling.
— Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) December 31, 2020
