Dean Ambrose shocked the wrestling world last night when he posted a new video on social media announcing the return of Jon Moxley.
The tweet was sent just after midnight on Wednesday morning, meaning it's been live for less than 12 hours. As of this writing, "Jon Moxley" was trending on Twitter about an hour ago while "Dean Ambrose" trended throughout the night and into the morning.
As of this writing, Ambrose's tweet has over 14,000 retweets and over 44,000 likes.
For fun, if you take every tweet sent from the official WWE account, including retweets originally sent by the WWE Universe account, during the course Tuesday's SmackDown (70 total tweets), they add up to 19,459 retweets and 73,168 likes.
Going back a bit to the the biggest show of the year, Becky Lynch winning the Raw and SmackDown Women's Titles at WrestleMania 35 garnered 6,300 retweets and 22,000 likes. Kofi Kingston winning the WWE Title at WrestleMania 35 has 18,000 retweets and 53,000 likes.
Keep in mind, the official WWE account had 10.5 million followers and is retweeted by all other verified WWE accounts. Ambrose has 606,000 followers.
Becky Lynch is widely considered to be the best at social media in WWE with her tweets doing huge numbers. For example, her first tweet following her WrestleMania 35 victory currently has 15,000 retweets and 81,000 likes. But even some of her best tweets didn't do the numbers Ambrose's return video did. Lynch's infamous "penis photoshop" has 3,300 retweets and 23,000 likes. Her "mugshot" photos sit at 7,600 retweets and 52,000 likes. Lynch's recent tweet aimed at Lacey Evans currently has 1,700 retweets and 15,000 likes. Lynch also has one million more followers than Ambrose.
The actual "Jon Moxley Return" video has 1.3 million views.
— Jon Moxley (@JonMoxley) May 1, 2019
There isn't a truly fair comparison for this because WWE will post videos on their Twitter account and YouTube. For example, Kofi Kingston attacking Kevin Owens to close last night's SmackDown has 44,000 views on Twitter. But if you head to YouTube, the full main event segment with Owens and Kingston has 415,000 views.
It's nearly impossible to predict how many views Ambrose's video would have if it were on YouTube and Twitter or if it were just on YouTube.
But, in an effort to have more fun with numbers, I looked at some other wrestling videos on YouTube. The heavily hyped Cody Rhodes promo against his brother Dustin and the Attitude Era currently sits at 213,000 views. No video uploaded by the WWE account pertaining to Tuesday's SmackDown has over 1 million views. The Hardy Boyz-Lars Sullivan segment is closest with 909,000 views.
Only one segment from Raw, the AJ Styles-Seth Rollins contract signing, has over 1 million views.
Keep in mind, when it comes to Twitter, these numbers are not an exact science. Twitter does not count quote tweets as retweets. Seth Rollins quote tweeted Ambrose's video this morning with nothing more than a fist emoji. His quote tweet has 1,100 retweets and 7,1000 likes. The quote tweet brings extra attention to Ambrose's video, but that tweet could also be the first fans are seeing of the video. And instead of retweeting or liking the source, they retweet or like Rollins' quote tweet.
What do these numbers mean? In short, Ambrose has caught the attention of the wrestling world online. He stole headlines from WWE and increased speculation over his next move. He created more buzz for himself in a 90-second video clip than he's had in WWE since his heel turn back in October.
How that translates elsewhere (ticket sales, television ratings, subscriptions, etc...) remains to be seen.
