Vince McMahon Expected The Ultimate Deletion To Bomb

Despite being booked for the main event of Raw this week, Vince McMahon expected The Ultimate Deletion between Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt to bomb in the ratings.

McMahon had concerns about how the match would deliver and be received by the WWE audience. The feeling among him and other top officials is that a lot of casual WWE fans do not watch Impact Wrestling, which is where the concept originated, and therefore would not be familiar with certain things about The Ultimate Deletion (such as Hardy’s drone Vanguard1 and father-in-law Senõr Benjamin).

With that said, The Ultimate Deletion is now being considered a success among WWE management. While Raw viewership dropped 11 percent from hour two to hour three, hour three still topped three million viewers, which has only happened a handful of times in recent months.

WWE officials were also pleased the reaction to the match on Twitter as it was the No. 1 trend worldwide for over two hours.

On another note, Hardy and others struggled to get The Ultimate Deletion to air on WWE television due to McMahon’s concerns. However, with the match being considered a success, it’s quite likely that similar content featuring the Hardys will appear on WWE television in the future.