WWE: LA Knight on Pitched Black Match, Veer Mahan Update, More on NXT Jan. 10, 2023 Viewership

LA Knight Comments on Upcoming Pitched Black Match Against Bray Wyatt

A recent episode of the WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves podcast featured LA Knight as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Knight’s thoughts on what he has been told so far in regards to the nature of his upcoming Pitched Black match against Bray Wyatt at WWE’s Royal Rumble 2023 event later this month.

“Pitch Black Match, it’s something new in the making. There was something to the point of, ‘I don’t know what the hell this is, what the hell this is going to be.’ Every indication I’ve been given is that this is going to be a kick ass street fight and be kind of in the dark. I don’t know what the lighting is going to be, how it’s going to work, what other kind of factors or elements are going to come into play. All I know is it’s going to be a fight at the Royal Rumble.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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Reason for Veer Mahan’s Recent Absence from NXT

Veer Mahan was noticeably absent from WWE’s NXT New Year’s Evil 2023 special this past Tuesday. Mahan had been originally advertised to compete in a tag team match with Sanga against The Creed Brothers on the show. This match did not take place and instead Jinder Mahal made a surprise appearance attacking the Creed Bros and joining forces with Sanga.

The reason for Mahan’s absence was later revealed by Mahan on Instagram to be due to a family-related issue involving his father passing away earlier this week after suffering from an illness.

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A post shared by Rinku Rajput (@veermahaan)

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More on NXT Week 170 Viewership – Jan. 10, 2023

The January 10th episode of WWE NXT saw NXT gain a large increase in overall viewership and key demographic rankings but also suffered a slight decline in key demographic ratings. This week’s episode was notable for being the New Year’s Evil 2023 special.

NXT drew 700,000 viewers and a 0.15 key demographic rating on USA Network. NXT’s key demographic ranking for that night was 17th place.

Detailed viewership and key demographic breakdowns were not available in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Dave Meltzer reported that the main reason for NXT’s mixed results this week was due to the large gains from their Teenagers demographic and male key demographic viewership groups, which were up 40% and 8.1% respectively compared to last week’s show. This mostly offset the large decline from their younger key demographic viewership, which was down 18.2% compared to last week’s show.

In terms of head-to-head competition, the NBA game of Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Miami Heat drew 809,000 viewers on TNT, the College basketball game of North Carolina vs. Virginia drew 915,000 viewers on ESPN, the College basketball game of Michigan State vs. Wisconsin drew 1,060,000 viewers on ESPN, Bering Sea Gold drew 730,000 viewers on Discovery Channel, and Curse of Oak Island drew 2,405,000 viewers on History Channel.

In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 202,000 viewers. Meltzer reported that the male/female viewership split was 133,000 male viewers and 69,000 female viewers for a split of 65.8% in favor of males.

In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was up 8.2% in overall viewership and up 14.1% in key demographic viewership. Meltzer reported that NXT’s 18-34 viewership was equal compared to the same week last year.