John Cena WWE SmackDown Return Sees Huge Ratings Increase

John Cena kept up his streak of wrestling in every calendar year since his 2002 main roster WWE debut by competing on the final 2022 edition of WWE SmackDown.

In the December 30 show's main event, Cena teamed with Kevin Owens to defeat Roman Reigns and Sami Zayn of The Bloodline.

Cena's in-ring return clearly resulted in an increase of interest in the blue brand, as his appearance resulted in the show's best viewership in two years, while also tying SmackDown's highest 18-49 demo rating. The show averaged 2.629 million viewers, up 10.6 percent on the previous week.

F4W Online noted that aside from the Christmas Day episode in 2020, it is the largest total for SmackDown since the October 11, 2019 episode, which was just the second-ever on Fox.

It also added that the Christmas Day 2020 episode had a strong lead-in courtesy of an NFL game.

The December 30 episode did a 0.64 rating in the 18-49 demo, up 16.4 percent from last week.