Possible reason why CM Punk’s segment with Seth Rollins on WWE RAW didn’t close the show

As seen during the December 11th 2023 edition of WWE RAW, CM Punk made his decision to sign an exclusive contract with the RAW brand and was then confronted by world heavyweight champion Seth Rollins. The segment aired at 9:00 PM Eastern and Cody Rhodes vs. Shinsuke Nakamura closed the show.

Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com noted the following about the decision…

“They didn’t put Punk’s decision on last which is interesting because Punk’s decision was the #1 thing. I think that the idea was they knew that even if they put Punk’s decision on last, even though that would hold more viewers better than this match, less viewers would see it. So they put the Punk decision on at 9 o’clock when they think they would get the highest, it’s usually the high point of the show.” (quote courtesy of SEScoops.com)

As of Tuesday morning, the Punk/Rollins segment is WWE’s most-watched RAW video on YouTube by a large margin with 850,000 views. In comparison, the Rhodes/Nakamura match has 105,000 views.