John Cena returned to WWE on this week's episode of Monday Night Raw without any obvious rhyme or reason.
Just over a month ago, Cena made a forgettable appearance at Survivor Series as a member of Team SmackDown (what was the point of him being pinned by Kurt Angle?), and his return on this week's Raw came with very little hype and absolutely no build whatsoever. Yet, the timing of his return wasn't at all a coincidence.
Cena's return to SmackDown in late December 2016 after a lengthy layoff catapulted the blue brand to its first and only viewership victory over Raw since the brand split in July 2016, so the obvious hope was that Cena's addition to the Christmas day edition of Raw would result in strong TV ratings and viewership. WWE has, after all, struggled with declining viewership around the holidays, and episodes of Raw or SmackDown that fall on Christmas Eve or other holidays (which have traditionally been taped episodes) have typically bombed.
Still, the decision to randomly bring back Cena on a special live Christmas Day edition of Raw reeked of desperation. It came with little thought or effort, and his predictable win over Elias marked yet another waste of Cena after the pitiful use of "The Champ" at Survivor Series.
This week's episode of Raw took place at the Allstate Arena in Chicago, which has historically been a strong market for WWE but not as of late. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t WrestlingInc), WWE failed to sell out both the Backlash and NXT TakeOver events that were held at the Allstate Arena back in May while attendance at events held there has dropped considerably over the last several years:
While there was a majority of the upper deck tarped off for Takeover, Backlash had very few empty seats but was not sold out...WWE reportedly had around 9,500 Backlash tickets sold before they started announcing matches and ended up with around 9,800 - 10,000 tickets sold. It was believed by some that a sell out for Backlash was a given but that was not the case.
The Allstate Arena can usually hold more than 18,000 fans for a pro wrestling event. A September 2016 RAW live event drew 9,500 fans while a March 2016 RAW episode drew 10,800 fans. The 2014 Payback pay-per-view had an announced attendance of 13,311 fans while the 2015 Extreme Rules pay-per-view had an announced attendance of 14,197 and the 2016 Payback pay-per-view had an announced attendance of 13,250.
Cena is a known live event draw who almost single-handedly helped SmackDown generate better average live event attendance than Raw earlier this year, so it appears that WWE's desire to use Cena's drawing power on this week's Raw came at the expense of having a worthwhile storyline for him. Sure, we got a match between Cena and Elias that may (and let's stress that may part) help Elias get more over, but WWE didn't announce it beforehand and it will ultimately have little to no effect on future storylines.
That can only be described as questionable booking when you consider that there will likely be limited opportunities to use Cena going forward.
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