The latest overnight ratings numbers are in for WWE Friday Night SmackDown. This week, WWE SmackDown dipped in viewership as WWE continued the road to the Money in the Bank pay-per-view and the return to full-time touring in just 3 weeks.
According to SpoilerTV, this week’s preliminary WWE SmackDown viewership came back with an average of 1.859 million viewers, down from the 1.926 million viewers the show pulled last week. As far as demographics go, the 18-49 demographics, this week’s 0.5 rating saw SmackDown nab second place, falling behind to the US Olympic Trials on NBC, which had a 0.6 rating with over 4 million viewers.
This week, WWE was feeling the fallout from the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view and quickly building to WWE Money in the Bank on Sunday, July 18. This episode saw Big E qualify for the Money in the Bank Ladder Match for the first time ever as well as Carmella being named the first female SmackDown entrant into the ladder match. Carmella, of course, was victorious in two separate Money in the Bank ladder matches in 2017.
Elsewhere, Bayley and Seth Rollins were able to score a victory over their long-standing rivals Cesaro and Bianca Belair in Mixed Tag Team action and Jimmy Uso scored a victory over Dolph Ziggler, trying attempt to prove to Roman Reigns that he can be his right hand man.
Speaking of Roman Reigns, the main event segment would see Roman about to declare something that had never been done on network television before, because he felt he was out of challengers before Edge made his return for the first time since WrestleMania 37 to take out the WWE Universal Champion on the road to the Money in the Bank pay-per-view.
