At last nights RAW house show in Poughkeepsie, Hardcore Holly defeated Trevor Murdoch in another Royal Rumble Qualifier bout. Thus, Holly will be in the Rumble match at the PPV.
We announced earlier that WWE has decided to do Royal Rumble Qualifying matches at their house shows, which is a nice touch to bring people in.
At the same house show, Nick Nemeth — former Spirit Squad member Nicky — made his RAW brand return, as he teamed up with Charlie Haas to take on Brian Kendrick and Super Crazy. We mentioned earlier on the site that he worked the ECW/SmackDown! tapings as well in a dark match, but he’s now back on the RAW circuit. D.H. Smith lost to William Regal while the recently called back up on the house shows circuit Vladimir Kozlov and Atlas Dabone worked with Cody Rhodes and Santino Marella, respectively.
This week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown! score a 2.8 fast national rating. That’s a very strong number and one of the higher ones the show has done as of late.
Speaking of ratings, the USA Network finished 2007 on top of the ad supported cable networks in prime time, averaging a number of 2.68 million viewers, with no doubt some help by WWE. Last year, the company did 2.63 million and was still at first place — which they also finished at in the 18-34, 18-49, and 25-54 age group breakdowns. TNT got second at 2.2 million viewers averaged, while ESPN — the carrier of the number 1 ratings show Monday Night Football — finished third with a 1.95 million. Though USA gets the win this year, remember those numbers are for ad supported cable shows, hence Disney which would have taken first with2.69 million, doesn’t count.
