The March 6 edition of “WWE SmackDown” saw a decrease in viewership, despite the advertised main event that pit Cody Rhodes against Drew McIntyre for the Undisputed WWE Championship. The show was number two for the night on cable, however, and viewers saw Rhodes emerge victorious from the bout to head into WrestleMania 42 as champion.

According to Wrestlenomics, with data from Programming Insider, the March 6 episode of the blue brand drew an average of 1.90 million viewers, a 14 percent decrease from the previous week’s 1.379 million viewers. The episode earned a 0.27 rating in the ever-important ages 18-49 demographic, a 21 percent decrease from the previous week’s 0.34 rating.

The average viewership for the March 6 episode of “SmackDown” was down 22 percent compared to this time last year, which saw an average of 1.53 million viewers. The average rating was also down compared to March 2025, by 41 percent, when the average rating was 0.46.

The main event of “SmackDown” saw Rhodes taken on McIntyre for the title in a match announced by General Manager Nick Aldis following Elimination Chamber. McIntyre interfered in the match, costing Rhodes his opportunity, and now, it will be the new champion to take on Randy Orton on “The Grandest Stage of The All.”

Elsewhere on the show, Carmelo Hayes was successful yet again in his United States Championship open challenge when he defeated AAA’s El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss were successful in a match against Giulia and Kiana James, and Damian Priest and R-Truth became the new number one contenders to the WWE Tag Team Championships after winning a tag team turmoil gauntlet match.

Charlie Dempsey is officially the newest member of “WWE NXT’s” Birthright stable, alongside Lexis King, TNA Knockouts Champion Arianna Grace, Channing “Stacks” Lorenzo, and Uriah Connors, after betraying former No Quarter Catch Crew stablemate Tavion Heights during a tag team match on Tuesday’s edition of “NXT.”

King in particular had been courting Dempsey, the son of WWE Hall of Famer and former “NXT” General Manager William Regal, for weeks, wanting him to “accept his birthright” and join the stable of second-generation stars. Dempsey had been hesitant, and last week, he agreed to team with Heights to take on King and Connors in a tag team match.

At one point in the bout, when both Dempsey and Heights were outside of the ring, Dempsey blindsided his former stablemate and hit him with a suplex, as Regal and Fit Finlay, another Hall of Famer and the father of Connors, looked on from the stage.

Connors hit Heights with a Shining Wizard back in the ring, and King hit The Coronation for the victory, all with Dempsey still on the outside. After the match, Dempsey traded glances with his father and Finlay, then slid back in the ring to join officially the stable.

Ronda Rousey said that her upcoming fight with Gina Carano had originally been planned under the UFC banner before agreeing to headline MVP’s first MMA event in May. 

Rousey and Carano are both due to return to the sport they retired from, the former after her last fight in 2016 and the latter in 2009. But Rousey said during the press conference for the upcoming fight that they had originally intended to see it happen in UFC. Though ultimately that turned out not to be the case. 

“It’s become about changing the entire landscape of the sport and challenging the monolith that the UFC has become,” Rousey said. “I’m so grateful that Gina trusted me when it wasn’t going to work out with the UFC. I told her, I was like, ‘We can do this on our own. We don’t need them. We don’t need anyone.’ And she said, ‘I’m going to follow your lead. I’m going to trust you.’ And that’s what led us to MVP, and to Netflix, and to us sitting here to put on the most viewed MMA fight of all time.”

Carano said that she was first approached with the idea while Rousey was three months pregnant in December 2024, and Rousey added that while she knew they could promote the fight by themselves she approached Dana White with it first out of love and respect. 

“Originally we were going to do New Year’s, and it was going to be the last fight under the pay-per-view model, and he offered me the best pay-per-view structure ever and I was so grateful. But then Gina said she needed more time to get into the best shape possible and that she wanted me to fight the best version of herself. I think that was fate. It was meant to be,” she said. 

Rousey continued to say that, once the UFC had moved from pay-per-view to streaming through Paramount+, White had a fiduciary duty not to stage the best fights but to maximize shareholder value. And thus it just made sense for them to stage the match for themselves with the help of MVP.