John Cena back on Friday Night Smackdown brought extra eyeballs as last Friday’s show, the last one of 2022, ended with 2,629,000 viewers, up 253,000 viewers from the prior week. This was the most-watched Smackdown since the December 25, 2020 episode which had the NFL lead-in and excluding that, it was the most watched since the October 18, 2019 episode which was the second one ever on FOX.

Smackdown did a 0.64 in the 18-49 demo, up 0.09 and the highest since May 7, 2021. It was #1 on network television and #7 overall in all of TV as the college football coverage on ESPN took all the top spots. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)