The return of WWE‘s “Saturday Night’s Main Event” did well in the ratings for NBC.
The two-hour broadcast pulled in 2.3 million viewers on Saturday night between 8 and 10 p.m. ET/PT. That includes 1.59 million viewers on NBC and an additional 700,000 who streamed it live on Peacock. By comparison, the NBA Cup semifinal matchup between the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder averaged 1.89 million viewers on ABC alone, according to Nielsen data.
This marked the first “Saturday Night’s Main Event” since 2008. That event, which also aired on NBC, drew 2.4 million viewers at that time.
The latest show took place at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island, N.Y., the site of the first-ever “Saturday Night’s Main Event” back in 1985. The event saw Hall of Famer Jesse “The Body” Ventura make his long-awaited return to WWE, with Ventura once again serving as the color commentator as he did on the original broadcasts of the show back in the 1980s.
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The matches for the night included Chelsea Green defeating Michin to become the first ever WWE Women’s United States Champion. Elsewhere on the show, World Heavyweight Champion Gunther defeated both Damian Priest and Finn Balor in a triple threat match. The main event saw Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes take on Kevin Owens, with Rhodes emerging victorious. After the show went off the air, however, Owens attacked Rhodes, with Rhodes being carted out of the arena on a stretcher.
This was the first of four quarterly WWE primetime specials for NBC, which were first revealed when WWE signed a new five-year rights deal with NBCUniversal that saw WWE’s weekly “SmackDown” series move back to USA Network. The next “Saturday Night’s Main Event” will take place on Jan. 25 in San Antonio, TX.