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It was Monday Night Wars II, and it lasted… about two months.

Spike TV pre-empted Monday’s TNA Impact! with a re-airing of Star Wars III. The Star Wars rerun captured about a half-million viewers. Compare that the Impact, which was drawing around 1.1 million viewers, and you can decide for yourself if moving Impact! back to Thursday nights is a good move for Spike TV.

You can show all the slideshows you want that Impact does better numbers than any other programming on Monday night, but all Spike TV cared about, in the end, was how badly WWE Raw was beating them each and every week.

On Monday, by comparison, Raw drew 4.43 million viewers on USA.

Raw easily won its first showdown with TNA Impact on Monday night, now that the second coming of Monday Night Wars has begun officially and in earnest. Raw drew a 3.4 rating and 5.1 million viewers, while Impact managed only a 1.0 rating and 1.4 million viewers head-to-head with Raw.

It’s early and no first-night-upset was expected. A monkey wrench was also thrown into the works, also; History Channel’s runaway hit, Pawn Stars, had its second-season finale on Monday and drew a strong, record-setting 5.8 million viewers, allowing it to edge Raw as the most-watched show in all of cable.

Pawn Stars draws heavily on the same male demographic that Raw and Impact draw, so once next Monday rolls around and Pawn Stars is no longer around during its hiatus, it will be intriguing to see what gains are made by both Raw and Impact. At least we won’t have to see The Old Man on Pawn Stars trying to underbid for a set of 1920s incontinence products. Heh.