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

Monday’s episode of WWE Raw, which took place in Houston’s Toyota Center, served as the official (somewhat) reset for the brand following the WWE Draft from a few weeks ago. In some cases, the new roster gave us some relatively fresh matches. In others, unfortunately, it was the same old stuff.

This repetition also presented itself in some of WWE’s booking decisions. And since we’ve already talked about the positives, let’s now focus on the negative. There weren’t as many as we usually see on Raw, but they still reflect a broken booking philosophy that will make it hard for the promotion to maintain any momentum they picked up on this show.

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

Damian Priest vs. T-BAR ends in a disqualification

Before getting to this match, WWE should’ve left Damian Priest’s entrance alone. There’s nothing particularly wrong with his new routine, but it’s far more generic than the old one and doesn’t help him stand out.

Now to the match against T-BAR (why does he still have that name?)….well, there isn’t much to say about it outside of the short length and the disqualification finish; the latter was triggered by T-BAR throwing a rolling chair at the United States Champion.

This, as it always does, begs the question: Why not just have Priest pin T-BAR clean, especially since Priest beat him up and hit his finisher after the match anyway? It’s not like this protected T-BAR — which is a moot point, to begin with, since he still has that name and thus the ties to one of the worst groups in WWE history — and the post-match aggression Priest showed could’ve been highlighted throughout the match before the finish. All this did was waste everyone’s time.

The Dirty Dawgs become number one contenders and get the title shot on the same night.

I know that this match and the ladder match accounted for the only two matches on the show (admittedly, this was a solid match with a good finish), but why not hold off on it until next week?

Setting aside that it’s weird to book the heels to wrestle twice in one night, particularly when the second match is against a fresh babyface team, saving this for next week and using the time in between to promote this match seems more effective than burning through it on the same show that featured the very number one contender’s match to set up the title bout.

Remember this when WWE uses the “Brand to Brand Invitational” to freshen up the show in the near future.