7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct. 12)

Raw was full of moving parts Monday night, making it a difficult show to grade. We had wrestlers coming and going, with superstars “debuting” on the red brand, others saying goodbye and still more having their statuses announced.

So was Raw any good? It’s tough to say. The show was a marked improvement from recent weeks, where it was offensively bad, but it’s difficult to call Raw “good” either. We got a couple of good matches, but odds are that they won’t carry over into big rivalries going forward since participants in those bouts immediately left for SmackDown.

Storylines were somewhat in flux, as loose ends were tied up in some cases, others were tied up with a bow and shipped off to Fridays, and still others were implied but not acted up (see Braun Strowman and Keith Lee). Most notably, RETRIBUTION had no role to play Monday night (aside from being drafted to Raw and being in a video recap) despite having a huge revelation last week.

We’ll give this week’s episode a mulligan for the most part and see how things shake out with the rejiggered lineups next week. But it’s tough to be optimistic after watching Raw butcher nearly everything tossed its way during the past six months.

With that said, let’s get to it…