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WWE's Survivor Series 2023 featured the return of two of the company's biggest stars. The 14-time World Champion Randy Orton returned to the wrestling ring after being out of action for 18 months due to a back injury, and the former AEW star CM Punk returned to Stamford-based company after almost a decade.
Two days later, Orton and Punk appeared on Monday Night RAW. While The Viper faced 'Dirty' Dominik Mysterio in a singles match, The Second City Saint closed the show with a promo addressing his return to the Stamford-based company.
Propelled by the star power of the former world champions, RAW scored big in the TV ratings department with a total viewership of 1,884,000 million viewers. In comparison, the recent edition of AEW Dynamite had a viewership of 845,000.
AEW Rampage and Collision, airing together as a three-hour show on Saturday in the same time slot as Survivor Series, had a viewership of 264,000 and 317,000, respectively.
Recently, a Twitter/X post compared the total viewership of AEW's three shows airing last week with the post-Survivor Series edition of the Stamford-based company's longest-running weekly show.
Wrestling fans responded to the ratings figures by mocking the Jacksonville-based company, with some claiming that AEW made a mistake letting CM Punk go. Others praised WWE and Triple H for the company's recent success.
Here are the reactions:
Mark Henry comments on CM Punk's WWE return
CM Punk's return to WWE has garnered extreme reactions from the professional wrestling world. Some fans and analysts have expressed excitement at the possibilities that the company could explore with The Second City Saint's second WWE run.
Speaking recently on Busted Open Radio, Mark Henry said some of the company's top stars might not like the spotlight that Punk would get as it would equate to less screen time for them.
However, the 52-year-old said that it was the nature of the business and everyone would have to accept it as it is.
"There are some people at the top that's not gonna be happy because they're gonna get less minutes. They're gonna have to acquiesce to the new addition to the company. There's a lot of people that will take their ball and go home. Hell, Steve Austin took his ball and went home before. Everybody always comes back. They always realize, 'The business is bigger than me, I don't want to be on the wrong side.' The ones that do, we don't give a s**t about them anyway," Mark Henry said. [H/T WrestlingNews.co]
Details on CM Punk's contract following blockbuster return. Read the report here.
