Up against a juggernaut BCS Championship game between Notre Dame and the University of Alabama, WWE RAW, already facing recent ratings struggles, will deal with one of its biggest viewership challenges of the season.
Expectations for the rating have to be tempered, but perhaps not by too much, as WWE has worked to stack its three-hour flagship telecast.
In addition to a TLC match between WWE Champion CM Punk and challenger Ryback, RAW will also feature a return appearance from The Rock, who begins his four-month WrestleMania campaign. Rock will not appear on every telecast in between Monday’s show and the WrestleMania 29 event, but he will figure into storylines all the way through.
While The Rock’s first key checkpoint will be a Royal Rumble match with the WWE Champion, the larger question concerns his opponent for ‘Mania. All indications up to this point suggest his opponent will be John Cena, a rematch that has been internally planned for months, although it is worth noting that WWE did not formally announce that match the way it did their first bout a full-year ahead of WrestleMania 28.
Regarding his return, The Rock told Showrenity, “The storyline will be that starting this coming Monday [for RAW], I’m gonna go back, and it’s going to be a big return…That will lead to, hopefully, what will be the biggest WrestleMania of all time at Giants Stadium. I will headline that show, with someone who I can’t say right now. We’ve got an amazing four months lined up and planned out that will culminate in the biggest WrestleMania of all time. It’s going to be a hell of a thing.”