John Cena Responsible For RAW Ratings?, WWE/Kimbo Slice, More

Credit: PWTorch.com Newsletter

– Since John Cena's return, ratings for WWE RAW are up 13.82 percent. In overall viewer ship, RAW's five-week average jumped from 4.57 million viewers following the Nov. 24 show to 4.73 million viewers including last week's ratings, which was a healthy three percent jump on the strength of John Cena's second week back.

– Prior to the three-hour Raw featuring the return of the Slammy's award show, Variety published a story hyping the event after an 11-year absence. Variety reports the return of the Slammy's is "part of a strategy by WWE to air more specials as a way to continue boosting the brand's profile with audiences."

– AOL released its annual Top Searches with WWE coming in second behind NASCAR in the top Sports searches for 2008. WWE topped the Olympics, NFL, and UFC which came in seventh. On the top search list for sports athletes, World Hvt. champion John Cena came in sixth behind a host of other athletes including Michael Phelps and Kimbo Slice, who took fourth. Popular NFL quarterback Brett Favre was eighth.