The Problem With Edge That No One Wants To Talk About
Roman Reign is currently driving WWE's business in a positive direction
Roman Reigns, therefore, is a star relative to this era.
The Tribal Chief returned to WWE on 23 August 2020, turned heel, and became Universal Champion seven days later. This sparked an immediate upturn in interest. Here's what SmackDown's average viewership was prior to Reigns' coronation:-
June 2020: 2.074 million
July 2020: 1.881 million
August 2020: 2.077 million
Things have since improved:-
September 2020: 2.151 million
October 2020: 2.186 million*
November 2020: 2.226 million
December 2020: 2.168 million**
January 2021: 2.216 million
In graph form:-
Clearly, the numbers are up on the whole. They're still down on last year, but WWE has at least stopped the SmackDown rot, with an increase of around 6.7% from September to January.
SmackDown is considered a much-improved show across the board over the past six months. Reigns can't claim sole credit for the upturn, but he should claim the lion's share as the man on top. He's also the only full-timer capable of breaking non-wrestler Bad Bunny's stranglehold on the merch charts. For this era, Roman Reigns is a star, driving numbers in a similar manner to Sasha Banks and Bayley for much of 2020.
Edge, depressingly, is not.
CONT'd...
* excludes an artificially low rating when SmackDown was moved to FS1 on 23 October
** excludes an artificially low rating when SmackDown was moved to FS1 on 18 December and an artificially high rating due to a strong NFL lead-in on 25 December