NXT Ratings Rise For Heatwave Special

There was an increase in the television audience for WWE NXT for this week’s Heatwave special.

While it wasn’t a Premium Live Event style show, NXT Heatwave was a card full of big matches throughout the night this past Tuesday.

In the main event, Carmelo Hayes successfully defended the NXT Championship against Wes Lee, the former NXT North American Champion. After Wes went for a leaping attack on the floor, Hayes moved and Wes went crashing into the barricade head first. Back in the ring, Carmelo hit the Nothing But Net leg drop for the win.

Another big match saw Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley and NXT North American Champion Dominik Mysterio of The Judgment Day lose to Dragon Lee & Lyra Valkyria in a mixed tag team match. It was a controversial finish because Raquel Rodriguez showed up to fight with Ripley outside the ring while the referee was dealing with action in the ring. This led to Dragon Lee finishing off Dominik for the win.

Due to Heatwave being a card full of grudge matches that were built up well, the audience grew for this week’s show.

This week’s NXT audience was 720,000 total live viewers according to Wrestlenomics. That’s a rise of 6% over last week’s episode that drew 680,000 viewers. The 18-49 demo rating remained the same as last week with a 0.19 audience for the show.

It was just two weeks ago when the August 8th episode of NXT drew 776,000 viewers, which was the highest total audience for the brand since April 2021.

The Next NXT PLE Is No Mercy

WWE has decided to bring back the No Mercy name for the next NXT Premium Live Event on Saturday, September 30th in Bakersfield, California.

There are no official matches announced yet, but we did learn on NXT this past Tuesday that new Heritage Cup Champion Noam Dar will defend the Cup against whoever wins the eight-man tournament that starts this coming Tuesday on television.