WWE’s ratings have been tanking for ages. Are things now about to change?

Since my WWE: State of the Universe post which I wrote just after Extreme Rules, things seem to have gotten even worse for WWE.

In that article, I suggested that while WWE has the best pool of talent it’s ever had to pick from, all the wrong people and/or storylines were being pushed. A general lacklustre booking and overwhelming lack of direction or cohesion caused me to seriously struggle to find things in the “product” to get invested in.

Even the likes of Finn Balor, who could easily just pop his collar for 30 minutes and still earn my Match of the Year nomination, has been so poorly utilised since his return from injury that even he wasn’t enough to make me tune in for three hours every week (his lack of a PPV match at Great Balls of Fire was enough to make me cry).

Sadly, the ratings support this sentiment. WWE has never performed this poorly in terms of viewership. People have straight-up stopped tuning in. You can blame it on basketball season all you like, but the truth is – clearly – fans just don’t feel the need to watch WWE’s flagship programming anymore. They’re not getting a return on their time, and it’s become clear that you can go over a month without watching a single episode and not miss a damn thing.

That’s why I love this Kurt Angle program so much.

When describing pro wrestling to my friends, I’ve always used the phrase “soap opera in spandex.” Having fantastic, technically amazing matches is a huge part of wrestling (and how most indy promotions manage to stay afloat), but a TV show without storylines is like an NHL game without a massive brawl – boring.

The small tidbits of Kurt reacting (like only he can) to worrying texts and confiding in his new BFF Corey Graves has been excellent. Sure, most of the entertainment factor comes from Kurt Angle being a horrendous actor, but soap actors are meant to be bad – it’s part of the fun.

Just what had Kurt done? Was it an illicit affair? Some criminal activity? Maybe an illegitimate child (like all the gossip sites had been reporting for weeks)?

Though what it ended up being really didn’t matter. A genuine buzz created entirely through storylines developed in backstage segments, tweets, and commentary had emerged in the WWE for the first time in months. It was the thread people needed to get invested in the show again, and the ratings proved it. Kurt’s big announcement, advertised in plenty of time ahead of the episode of course, was the most viewed Raw in weeks. 3.153 million viewers tuned in for Kurt’s big night, up 5% from the previous week.

Incidentally I think Jason Jordan’s reveal as Kurt Angle’s illegitimate son is awesome. Jordan’s in-ring work has been excellent and he, with Chad Gable, was one of the true superstars of NXT (a sentence I take great pleasure in writing). The pairing makes sense, and proves that actually, when we want it to, kayfabe still exists.

Finally, we have something interesting to follow week-to-week on WWE’s principal TV show – and that’s good news for everyone. Hopefully the momentum will carry through the weeks, and spur other interesting threads to develop as we build up to SummerSlam.

Already Finn Balor seems to be getting into something awesome with Bray Wyatt. Maybe Raw is about to get a whole new lease of life, and we can all go back to writing off our Monday nights for this show that we love.