The combination of being the day after a major pay-per-view that ended with curiosity, and the show-long Brock Lesnar cash-in tease led to Raw doing 2.52 million viewers last night, up seven percent from the week before, even though last week had no NBA playoff competition.

It was the best the show has done since the start of the playoffs. Even with the push of the 24/7 title and the strong tease of a cash-in, the third hour still was down 14.2 percent from the first hour. That figure is much better than recent weeks, but still would have been considered a huge drop two years ago.

The same week last year, which also went against the NBA playoffs, but wasn't coming the day after a PPV, did 2.66 million viewers, so Raw held up far better than any show has done in a long time based on year-over-year comparisons.

Raw was seventh on cable, trailing only NBA and news related programming. Game four of the Warriors-Trail Blazers series did 7.79 million viewers going against the final two hours of Raw.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 2.68 million viewers

9 p.m. 2.58 million viewers

10 p.m. 2.30 million viewers