John Cena’s return to Friday Night SmackDown led to the show’s third-highest number on Fox since moving to the network last October.
Based on the overnight figures, SmackDown averaged 2,717,000 viewers, which is their highest number since the Draft episode on October 11th last year and up 9% from last week.
This show would only trail the draft and the debut on Fox from October 4th that featured an appearance by The Rock in viewership.
The show averaged 2,736,000 in the first hour and 2,697,000 in the second hour with the show building to Cena’s appearance in the final segment to set up his match The Fiend at WrestleMania 36. The appearance by Cena had been promoted for weeks on WWE programming.
The show also saw an appearance by Bill Goldberg in the first segment following his Universal title win on Thursday at Super ShowDown and announcing his match with Roman Reigns at WrestleMania.
SmackDown registered an 0.8 in the 18-49 demographic and an 0.5 with 18-34s, which were both number one among network programming on Friday night.
The final number that reflects the entire country will be out on Monday.
