[RyanPelley]

From skimming through the 'Wrestling Observer' thread, I decided to look more into the numbers of "The Main Event". Meltzer expected it to have huge ratings, but hell, I don't think anyone could have predicted the outcome.

A rating of 15.2, with 33 million viewers. Ridiculous.

Even if there's another boom period, do you think this record will stand forever?

 

[Mike Zybyszko]

Re: Do you think "The Main Event"'s rating will ever be broken?

This is one of those kinds of records that may never be broken. I guess its possible eventually if the population of the world increases by a large enough amount to raise the number of wrestling fans. There would then have to be a match with two guys as legendary as Hogan and Andre.

 

[Rock316AE]

Re: Do you think "The Main Event"'s rating will ever be broken?

No. There were 3 matches in the peak of the Attitude Era with more than 10 million viewers but it's impossible to create this monster buzz and numbers on a weekly cable TV show. SNME was like a huge PPV on free TV, a rare event. If you do something like Rock/Austin at WM17. Let them just talk about their match for a year, hype it as the biggest match in TV history while they're never wrestling on TV, then do WM17 on TV and maybe, this show will do something close to that. But other than that, nothing.

 

[Cynic]

Re: Do you think "The Main Event"'s rating will ever be broken?

Not a chance. Even the highest ratings during the Attitude Era didn't come close to touching that rating. It's inconceivable.

 

[*Eternity*]

Re: Do you think "The Main Event"'s rating will ever be broken?

Never. Wrestling during that time was practically a household sport, nowadays its not all that relevant as it was during that time. Not even the Attitude Era at its best could get even a fraction of the viewers that the ''the Main Event'' got.

The only way I could see the WWE getting a rating even close to that is if they let WrestleMania become a free non-PPV event(like the SuperBowl) with the Main event being John Cena vs The Rock vs Stone Cold vs HBK vs Undertaker in a HIAC match with Hulk Hogan as the ref.

 

[RyanPelley]

Re: Do you think "The Main Event"'s rating will ever be broken?

I was just re-thinking everything. Andre - Hogan at Wrestlemania 3, the biggest match of all time. Something that drew in over 93,000 people in person... Then, the long awaited rematch. Still, considering all of that, 33 million is just unreal.

 

[WrestlingFan96]

And that's not including all of the people that wacthed who's T.V's aren't accounted for in the Nielsen ratings system.

 

[RyanPelley]

Definitely. And all of the streams people watched on.

 

[wildx213]

If the WWE ever had a match that big it would be on PPV, not on free tv. So the record will never be broken, at least not for a very long time.

 

[dxbender]

There were way less channels back then, and way harder to even see wrestling(I think around this time, a good number of people still thought it was real?), so of course numbers would be huge.

No way it'd ever draw that much. No tv show can even draw that much(minus the superbowl).

Idol I believe is most watched show on TV today? And that got like 20M or less viewers?

It's possible to get 33M people to watch worldwide, for all we know, Raw gets 33M viewers worldwide(we don't know how many people watch Raw in countries like india,china,japan ect)

 

[RyanPelley]

^ Hmm, well, considering all of that, I have a genius way of getting Smackdown to be the most watched show in history.

A) Bring UPN back. Even with the bad adverts.
B) Put Smackdown back on UPN.
C) Shoot smoke bombs all around the world, so people can't go outside.
D) Cut the power to every major cable station.
E) Cut the power to every ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PAX, and what other local outlet.

Oh, and probably burn every other means of entertainment. Ta-daaaaaaaaa.

 

[ejc8710]

also keeping in mind no internet or dvr's to speak of back in the day so ppl were not like ill watch it later on you tube or some

 

[Mike Zybyszko]

also keeping in mind no internet or dvr's to speak of back in the day so ppl were not like ill watch it later on you tube or some

It has nothing to do with that. Far less people watch wrestling now than they did then. If the numbers were still the same or better, but people were recording to watch later then the WWE would not have lost so much money as they have the last few years.

This is all about the popularity of the product, and right now it just isn't very popular.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

No, the only way I could ever see the WWE even coming close to that number would be them having WM on free TV with some main event like Rock vs Taker.