A look at the YouTube performance for this week’s WWE RAW!

As we all know, social media and other outlets have become a huge means of drawing in interaction and viewers for WWE. Most people will point to television ratings like they did during the Monday Night Wars in the late 1990’s, however that can be skewed with so many various means of watching today that do not include cable television.

As you’ve become accustomed to, here is this week’s RAW YouTube Report (2:30 PM EST, 1/23/19):

1. Finn Balor vs. Braun Strowman – 2 million views
2. Finn Balor stands up to Braun Strowman & Brock Lesnar – 1.7 million views
3. Ronda Rousey & Natalya vs. Sasha Banks & Bayley – 1.5 million views
4. Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre – 647k views
5. Lacey Evans interrupts Alexa Bliss’ big announcement – 637k views
6. Apollo Crews vs. Bobby Lashley – 400k views
7. Heavy Machinery’s first RAW match – 396k views

Our new number one contender for the Universal Title is featured at the top of the RAW YouTube ranks this week, clocking in with 2 million and 1.7 million views respectively. A big leap for Finn Balor on YouTube and something we haven’t really seen from him in the past. So can we really give him full credit? I don’t believe so. Braun and Brock are proven number grabbers, so while this is a good sign for Balor and any possible chance he has of defeating Lesnar at Royal Rumble, I’m not jumping the gun on his YouTube drawing power yet.

Coming in third this week is RAW’s usual top draw for the Women’s Division, as Ronda Rousey teamed with Natalya to meet Bayley and Rousey’s Royal Rumble challenger, Sasha Banks. There’s only been one instance I can recall where ‘The Baddest Woman on the Planet’ was in a match on RAW that didn’t pull a million and that was last week (see last week’s RAW YouTube Report). So this is much more the norm for her, as I saw last week as an aberration.

Everything from our number four clip on comes nowhere near cracking the top three, starting with that number four spot that saw two Men’s Royal Rumble favorites clash in Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre. Talk about two guys who have lost steam. McIntyre never quite reached the level of being a YouTube draw and has even seen numbers fall in recent weeks. Meanwhile, a lot of fans’ pick to win the Men’s Royal Rumble has also lost a lot of his YouTube luster. I know there are going to be members of the WWE Universe who don’t want to hear it, but Seth’s feud with Dean Ambrose killed off a lot of that momentum.

Falling just under Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre is the first time we see Lacey Evans do anything of significance on television, after only appearing backstage a couple of times, usually in the background. This may seem like a high number for a new face, but she’s a new face, which garners interest. On top of that, we also got Alexa Bliss announcing her return to the ring in the Women’s Royal Rumble this Sunday, certainly helping the clip out as well.

Rounding out our list this week at numbers six and seven are what I’ve been calling the “best of the rest”. Number seven I can explain since it was the first time we got to see Heavy Machinery in action, albeit against some local enhancement talents. Again, new equals interest nine times out of ten. However, Bobby Lashley vs. Apollo Crews beats out the RAW Tag Team Title Match, Elias vs. Baron Corbin, a promo from Dean Ambrose…quite frankly (and this is a complete guess), I’m wondering if the freshness of this match did the trick.