This week's WWE SmackDown Live viewership rose almost 300,000 viewers on last week’s 2,361,000, rounding off a very good week for the company which also saw gains for their Raw viewership for the Roadblock fallout show drawing 2.94 million viewers, up from last week’s 2.75 million.

This weeks SmackDown featured James Ellsworth against WWE Champion AJ Styles in the opening match and Baron Corbin vs Dolph Ziggler with #1 contender status on the line in the main event. The interesting thing was that neither was heavily promoted. 

WWE have a real chance to capitalize on these gains, especially with SmackDown which is arms length of overtaking flagship Monday Night Raw in viewership. 

Next week’s SmackDown has a number of big matches already announced and the return of John Cena for his first televised appearance since No Mercy in October.