Perhaps the last truly active former WCW and WWF Heavyweight champion, Paul Wight has had some (no pun intended) big moments on Raw including his feud with the Helmsley-McMahon alliance in September and October 2013. That culminating in Big Show knocking out HHH and delivered more than 800,000 viewers for 9/16 and 10/7 episodes. Similarly, in the May-July 2012 where Big Show was fired by Laurinaitis (5/14/12, +1.03 million viewers) and wrestling John Cena for the Summerslam Title shot (7/30/12, +1.18 million viewers) demonstrated that top angles involving Big Show have been successful on television. Still, lame feuds like tagging with Kane against charisma-challenged McGillicutty & Otunga duo (5/23/11, -583k viewers) or wrestling Daniel Bryan (2/6/12, -508k viewers) have evened out his overall numbers.
The Miz: +126,000 Viewers
Tough Enough Runner-up and 2006 Diva Search Host Mike "The Miz" Mizanin had some huge segments in 2011 including overruns gaining more than a million viewers on several occasions (11/19/10-Lawler Challenge, 3/28/11-Rock/Cena, 4/4/11-Austin, 11/14/11-Rock/Miz/R-Truth,11/21/11-Cena/Miz/R-Truth). It certainly helped when the Miz was programmed to work with Cena as their 32 segments together averaged +388,000 viewers and those segments without Cena averaged +55,100 viewers).
I'm a professional wrestling analyst, an improviser and an avid NES gamer. I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota and I'm working on my first book (#wrestlenomics). You can contact me at chris.harrington@gmail.com or on twitter (@mookieghana)
Tough Enough Runner-up and 2006 Diva Search Host Mike "The Miz" Mizanin had some huge segments in 2011 including overruns gaining more than a million viewers on several occasions (11/19/10-Lawler Challenge, 3/28/11-Rock/Cena, 4/4/11-Austin, 11/14/11-Rock/Miz/R-Truth,11/21/11-Cena/Miz/R-Truth). It certainly helped when the Miz was programmed to work with Cena as their 32 segments together averaged +388,000 viewers and those segments without Cena averaged +55,100 viewers).