WWE Raw: 2 things that went right on the Oct. 25 episode

Monday’s episode of WWE Raw emanated from the Toyota Center, the arena that’s the home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, and much like those Rockets, who are entering a new era of sorts following the James Harden years, this was the Raw brand’s foray into what the company would describe as something of a new era.

This being the first show with the freshly-reshuffled Raw roster, Monday’s show gave WWE a chance to set the tone for how the rest of the year would look for the red brand. In some ways, we got the same aggravating stuff, but in others, there were legitimate reasons for excitement.

We can talk about the not-so-good stuff a little later, but for now, let’s focus on the positives we saw on this week’s telecast.

These are two of the things that went right on the Oct. 25 episode of Raw.

Seth Rollins wins the Fatal 4 Way Ladder Match

Honestly, any of the four wrestlers could’ve won this Fatal 4 Way Ladder match — the winner receiving a future WWE Championship match at some point — and this still would’ve gotten a mention in this piece due to the quality of the match; this was one of the best televised WWE matches of the year.

Sure, it was dumb to set up a top contender’s match with four men who are coming off of high-profile defeats. And yes, using the show-opening “wrestler talks, gets interrupted, fight breaks out” formula to get there is enough to make you invoke that meme from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

But again, the strong work from Seth Rollins, Finn Bálor, Kevin Owens, and Rey Mysterio combined with a decisive conclusion (which are mostly hard to mess up in ladder matches) made this a thumbs-up segment. As for Rollins, he should make for a fun challenger to Big E’s WWE Title.

Becky Lynch and, especially, Bianca Belair

There is still plenty of issues that WWE needs to address when it comes to the Raw women’s division — some of those issues presented themselves on this episode — but Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair remain the least of those concerns.

Fresh off of the title switch incident, Lynch came to Monday’s Raw and addressed the Houston crowd, gloating over her legal-but-unethical win over Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks at the propaganda show before running down the rest of the Raw distaff division (it was a subtle opening for the fans to cheer the wrestlers she named).

This brought out Belair, who proceeded to cut arguably her best promo since joining the main roster. Mor important than her main thesis — she basically challenged Lynch to another title match — were the digs at Lynch allowing herself to be defined by the championship and Belair’s intense delivery while exhibiting a measure of restraint in order to get her point across.

Of course, this ended with physicality, which Belair got the better of before Lynch raked her eyes and used a kendo stick to deliver a White Russian Legsweep, which led to a championship bout between the two being booked for next week’s Raw. This angle was more than good enough to hook fans in for Belair/Lynch II.