EA’s Weekly RAW YouTube Report (8/27/18)

As we all know, social media and other outlets have become a huge means of drawing in interaction and viewers for WWE. Most people will point to television ratings like they did during the Monday Night Wars in the late 1990’s, however that can be skewed with so many various means of watching today that do not include cable television.

As you’ve become accustomed to, here is this week’s RAW YouTube Report (2:30 PM EST, 8/29/18):

1. Roman Reigns & Braun Strowman agree to battle inside Hell In A Cell – 3.1 million views
2. Trish Stratus interrupts Elias’ performance – 1.7 million views
3. Braun Strowman turns on Roman Reigns in the main event – 1.6 million views
4. Kevin Owens quits WWE – 1.4 million views
5. Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens – 1 million views
6. Dean Ambrose vs. Jinder Mahal – 983k views
7. Alexa Bliss compliments Trish and announces her title rematch – 594k views

After last week’s RAW YouTube Report was loaded with at least a million views for every clip in our top seven, we see just a little evidence of that heading the other direction this week, but not by a lot. To no surprise, Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman occupy two of the top seven, coming in at numbers one and three. Number one was the opening segment of the show, where Braun agreed to cash-in his Money In The Bank inside the Hell In A Cell on September 16th, while number three saw ‘The Monster Among Men’ surprisingly turn against the Universal Champion, joining Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre in beating ‘The Big Dog’ down. Strowman has proven to be a factor in these YouTube reports for a number of weeks now. Couple that with the weekly strength of performance by Reigns’ clips and that leads to more success. But then again, everyone hates Roman, right?

Number two this week was a welcome surprise return by WWE Hall Of Famer Trish Stratus in her hometown of Toronto. Trish is one of the all-time greats and a name that people who don’t watch WWE anymore will always remember from the Attitude Era (which is overly romanticized if you ask me). Everybody likes the return of a legend and I bet we’ll see more evidence of that in tomorrow’s SmackDown Live YouTube Report.

Coming in at the fourth and fifth spot is arguably the most talked about segments of the whole show. Owens and Rollins gave us a stellar match, but the talking point was ‘The Prize Fighter’ quitting after taking the loss. I don’t think anybody really knows where this is going at this point, but anybody with any sense realizes that KO is one of the best performers in the entire company (I’d personally argue he’s THE best overall performer). After getting basically destroyed by Braun Strowman for a while, I think there’s a lot of people wanting to see him do something interesting and this certainly fits into that category. I know I’m intrigued to see where it’s all going (imagine if he comes back with…Neville).

Sliding into number six is Dean Ambrose with what’s essentially a nothing match against Jinder Mahal. ‘The Lunatic Fringe’ is still riding the wave of his return a couple of weeks ago, but I personally am not interested in him still. I don’t really get what the point of bringing him back to do essentially nothing (outside of playing a sidekick to Rollins and Reigns) accomplishes. I really hope they do something else with him and soon.

Finally, we get the “best of the rest” at number seven playing off of Trish’s surprise appearance. There wasn’t much else for competition (unless Balor vs. Corbin for the 100th time is your cup of tea), so it doesn’t take much for a simple Alexa Bliss promo to make our list. It wasn’t much to fawn over, as she merely plugs her match against Trish at Evolution, but also announces she’ll be taking her rematch for the RAW Women’s Title against Ronda Rousey at Hell In A Cell.

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