-- The Tuesday, September 27th edition of SmackDown Live on USA Network drew 2.340 million viewers, headlined between WWE Champion AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose.
That number was up 2% from last week, which was the lowest the company had experienced for SmackDown since the brand split.
The show was #1 in the 18-49 demo with a 0.74 rating, and was 4th for the night on primetime cable behind The O'Reilly Factor, The Kelly File, and Hannity which all air on Fox News.
It did retain a far greater than usual percentage of Raw's audience which went partially head-to-head with the U.S. presidental debate and Monday Night Football.
Smackdown is now averaging 2.564 million viewers since the brand split, which is well above what the show had been doing when airing taped on Tuesday nights. Over the same time frame, Raw has averaged 3.004 million.
Here are the ratings for both Raw and Smackdown since the split:
-- Though the match was made apparent by their ongoing feud, WWE officially announced that Randy Orton would face Bray Wyatt at SmackDown’s upcoming No Mercy pay-per-view.
WWE made the announcement on Wednesday afternoon after much of Tuesday night’s edition of SmackDown focused on the Orton vs. Wyatt angle. Orton began the show with a promo before being interrupted by Wyatt on the video screen. Later in the show, multiple segments focused on Orton trying to find Wyatt backstage.
Orton was originally scheduled to face Wyatt at Backlash, but wasn’t cleared to compete in time for the show after suffering a concussion during his match against Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam.
No Mercy is scheduled for October 9th in Sacramento, CA. The current card for the show is:
AJ Styles defending his WWE World Championship against John Cena and Dean Ambrose in a triple threat match
Becky Lynch defending her SmackDown Women's Championship against Alexa Bliss
Heath Slater & Rhyno defending their SmackDown Tag Team Championship against The Usos
The Miz defending his Intercontinental Championship against Dolph Ziggler with Ziggler's career on the line
Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt
