This news probably won't surprise you, but Friday night's episode of AEW Rampage drew a huge audience on TNT. Featuring the debut of CM Punk, the show's second instalment was up massively from the first, drawing 1.129 million viewers compared to the premiere's still extremely impressive 740,000 viewers.
With a 0.53 rating in the 18-49 demographic, Rampage was nipping on SmackDown's heels. With 2.102 million viewers, that show did a 0.57, but it's incredible to see the way the gap has closed in in that key demo (which is actually more important to many advertisers than the total numbers of viewers).
AEW Rampage's first quarter-hour, which featured Punk's incredible debut, was watched by 1.341 million viewers. This shows that the former WWE Superstar is a draw, and it's now impossible to imagine him not having a significant impact on both Dynamite and upcoming PPVs like All Out next month.
Should Bryan Danielson and Bray Wyatt join Punk, we could see AEW take another big step forward in terms of ratings. Last week's RAW, for example, did 1.86 million viewers (for the SummerSlam go-home show). With Dynamite frequently topping 1 million viewers, adding even just a couple of hundred thousand viewers will bring AEW that little bit closer to beating WWE's flagship show.
Some analysts even believe that will happen when football season begins and RAW takes a hit, but one thing we can say for sure is that WWE might soon have to acknowledge AEW as competition.
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