Given her placement at the forefront of recent RAW and SmackDown! episodes, it is clear WWE sees AJ as the type of Diva who can transcend the “women’s division.”
She is being portrayed as an absolute focal point of WWE television, and according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, there are no immediate plans for that role to drastically shrink. Granted, her presence will likely not overshadow the Triple H vs. Brock Lesnar or John Cena programs ahead of Summerslam, but she will certainly not fade into the background following the Money in the Bank pay-per-view.
But what is the reaction from WWE’s “universe” of fans? Ratings for her key appearances on this Monday’s RAW provided a mixed bag of answers to that question.
According to the Observer, her mixed tag match in the 9:45PM and 10PM quarter hours failed to elicit much interest, with the first quarter (it also included the Paul Heyman interview) losing 383,000 viewers and the latter (which also included Heath Slater vs. Doink) gaining only 234,000 viewers, both of which are weak numbers.
Granted, Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus and Vickie Guerrero, the other participants in that match, have not been positioned as major draws in recent months, meaning that AJ received little assistance in trying to attract viewers. Insofar as there have been segments built around CM Punk and Daniel Bryan that performed comparably, it would certainly be excessive to call the AJ experiment a disaster.
A later AJ segment, meanwhile, provided additional evidence against her being a flop. Her angle to conclude John Cena & CM Punk vs. Chris Jericho & Daniel Bryan match, which built into the overrun segment, helped attract an additional 684,000 viewers, which is a solid number for an overrun segment in 2012.
Analysis of that overrun gain is complicated, however, due to the presence of John Cena. Cena’s segments typically draw well, and it would not be unfair to give him some of the credit for the spike at 11PM.
At the same time, the segment’s female audience did not grow the way a Cena match typically would, suggesting that the WWE audience did not view this as a “Cena segment.” Given that Cena and Jericho wrestled to the back to help put the last several minutes of spotlight on AJ, that conclusion is certainly a fair one.
Alternatively, one not sold on AJ’s drawing power could use the female demographic data to claim that the final RAW segment would have fared better had the tag match focused on the John Cena vs. Chris Jericho dynamic rather than on AJ, Daniel Bryan and CM Punk.
