Bengaluru, May 6: The post-WrestleMania season is a low time for WWE programming since the so-called legendary names go into a hiatus and the younger superstars get more TV time to shine bright. But as records say, it doesn't help much to pull up ratings of the shows.

Additionally, this year, weekly WWE shows are battling unique monotonicity due to the closed-set WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida without an audience. The viewerships are constantly tanking as last week's SmackDown was averaged below 2-million draw. The news is not good for Monday Night Raw, as well.

Monday's Money In the Bank go-home edition drew only an average of 1.686 million viewers on the USA Network, according to Showbuzz Daily. It was down 7.2% from last week's 1.817 million viewers creating the new lowest RAW viewership in history. Before this, the Christmas Eve episode of 2018 had the lowest record with 1.775 million viewers.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, WWE can't change the circumstances for weekly programming, right away. But they can certainly insert star powers to track back the ratings and viewerships in an upward direction. As a result, we witnessed AJ Styles, back on Raw, this week in a surprise-capacity, although spoilers regarding the same were out courtesy of John Pollock of POST Wrestling.

The sudden comeback must have something to do with the declining RAW ratings. Dave Meltzer noted on the latest edition of the Sunday Night's Main Event podcast that WWE originally planned to keep AJ Styles away for a longer period of time following his Boneyard Match loss against The Undertaker at WrestleMania 36.

But lack of marquee names on Raw forced the creative team to reverse the decision, all of a sudden. Even the men's division Money In The Bank ladder match didn't have that much bigger feel with Rey Mysterio and Daniel Bryan being the only two veteran names. The inclusion of AJ Styles into the gimmick-based match will certainly bring attention to the audience.

NEXT WEEK.#WWERaw @EdgeRatedR @RandyOrton pic.twitter.com/mB5Xh0pNN7

— WWE (@WWE) May 5, 2020

Also, it was noted during RAW that Randy Orton and WWE Hall of Famer Edge will return, next Monday Night, together. Both of them have been absent since competing at the Last Man Standing Match at WrestleMania 36 Night II. Bringing these two back on the same night clearly indicates the WWE officials aren't interested to depend on the youngsters, anymore.

Edge signed a part-time deal with the WWE, earlier this year which allows the company to use him only on limited dates. Following WrestleMania 36, he wasn’t supposed to return at least until the next big-four pay-per-view event, Summerslam in August. But it seems, WWE couldn't wait to use him on TV within just one month of WrestleMania.



Apart from airing a vignette for Edge and Randy Orton, WWE also announced that Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch will also make her return on next week's Raw. One of the major attractions of the red brand was kept off since her successful title defence at WrestleMania 36 against Shayna Baszler.

Now, she will be back to confront the 2020 Women's Money In The Bank ladder match-winner. Hopefully, confirmations of these many returns on a single episode of Raw would significantly increase the downed viewership on May 11.