This past Saturday night, WWE and AEW did their best to present pro wrestling fans with something they want to watch. On WWE’s end, they delivered their latest, big premium live event, SummerSlam, and in the main event, Roman Reigns retain his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship over Jey Uso after Jey’s brother, Jimmy, returned and cost him the match, a booking decision that has largely been met with skepticism. AEW Collision, on the other hand, featured CM Punk retaining his “Real” AEW World Championship over Ricky Starks, the latter of which attacked special referee Ricky Steamboat after the match was over, garnering a ton of heat.
Despite AEW putting its best foot forward, Collision still took a noticeable hit in the viewership department against WWE’s tentpole event. Wrestlenomics reports that Collision averaged 417,000 viewers, down 44% from the week before. In the coveted P18-49 demographic that is most valuable to advertisers, they averaged 164,000 viewers, down 54%.
Of the eight episodes of Collision that have aired so far, this is the lowest overall and P18-49 viewership of any installment. The previous record for lowest viewership came for a pre-taped episode on July 1 that saw the show average 452,000 viewers, with about 172,000 in the P18-49 demographic.
Collision ranked number sixteen for cable originals on Saturday night, below the top five standing the show has consistently held and what Warner Brothers Discovery is said to view as success. It also went up against UFC Fight Night on ESPN, the number one cable original for the day, and an MLB game that aired on FS1.
Collision will look to rebound this Saturday night when CMFTR takes on House of Black for the AEW Trios Championships in the main event. It is also likely we hear more from Starks following his loss to Punk and subsequent attack on Steamboat.