5 Biggest Winners & Losers From WWE Raw (Oct 17)

4. Losers: The Bookers

WWE’s bookers and writers take a lot of criticism. It’s not always entirely justified, but they don’t do themselves many favours, particularly on Raw. SmackDown mostly keeps things logical, but Raw’s creative direction has been a mess since the Brand Split kicked in. It reached a nadir at Clash of Champions, but they keep taking the weekly show in directions that satisfy nobody, and last night’s was very shoddy in this department.

Repetition and predictability are two things that kill interest levels, and Raw is rife with them. Next week’s Raw will see Cesaro and Sheamus meet The New Day in a non-title match one week before they face at Hell in a Cell, and Seth Rollins, Chris Jericho, and Kevin Owens will wrestle a Triple Threat that feels like a waste of a good PPV main event. Furthermore, last night saw Sheamus lose to Big E in the same manner that Cesaro lost to Kofi Kingston last week, and the night opened with Rollins vs. Jericho - a repeat of last week’s main event.

Raw may have the bulk of WWE’s most exciting wrestlers, but the bookers are doing a horrendous job of utilizing them. The show was stale long before the Brand Split, and somehow, it’s only getting worse. There are countless factors contributing to the red brand’s post-Draft failings, and extreme repetition is certainly one of them.