WWE RAW 10/12/2026: 3 Things We Hated & 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE Raw," the show that saw an unlikely new member added to the already formidable group known as 946! The WINC staff has some thoughts about that, don't you worry — we also have some stuff to say about the men's Intercontinental Championship match, Oba Femi's promo segment with Paul Heyman, Chelsea Green eating a loss to Judgment Day's Roxanne Perez, and more!

If you missed the show, please be sure to check out our "WWE Raw" 10/12/26 live blog, which contains all the objective fact you could possibly want as it comprehensively covers everything that went down Monday night. On the other hand, if you want the WINC crew's opinion on the matches and segments that stood out to us the most (either in a positive or a negative sense) this column is the place to be. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 10/12/26 episode of "WWE Raw!"

Perhaps there has been no other return to WWE in 2026 that is as baffling as Big Cass, returning to squash Je'Von Evans in August and very quickly reduced to a laughing stock in his subsequent matches. It of course does not help that big men in wrestling tend to be boring. That's a fact. For every one marginally compelling big man you could more than likely name 10 who were not.

That's not to say that Cass is bad, but when the booking and presentation is, he doesn't stand a chance. To recap: Cass returned to beat down Evans, he then beat Evans; he was then beaten by Dragon Lee through the help of Evans, and this week he was beaten by Rey Mysterio with the help of Lee. Next week he will probably face Rey Fenix and be helped by Mysterio, and so the cycle goes on until a financial quarter ends and someone with a spreadsheet justifies their paycheck.

All the while, he is picking up wins on "WWE Main Event" in matches running less than five minutes. The company clearly doesn't know what to do with him. Commentary, specifically Corey Graves for reasons known, certainly knows what to do with him: bury him. This week it was back to Cass being a "bully" and "not the brightest star in the sky." Bear in mind that Graves is a heel color commentator, and Cass is the heel, so he is breaking character to dump on the guy any chance he can get. That's a counterintuitive way of presenting talent, personally.

All of the mismatched booking could likely be forgiven, as it so often is, if Cass was someone that could capture attention. But the booking is boring and unfortunately he just isn't that exciting. He's not a Penta or a Chad Gable where it becomes, "Man, I just wish the company would give him a chance." He's Cass and he just blends into the bland.

If anyone has watched him in AEW or even TNA it's clear that he can be entertaining, so it's not entirely fair to place the blame squarely on him. WWE knows who they signed. They had him before, tried the same stuff and it didn't work. What kind of hubris convinces someone they'd be able to do the same thing with a different result? That's textbook, definitive insanity.

Written by Max Everett

It feels like a rare occurrence in modern day WWE to see a wrestler use any semblance of intelligence or be wary of an offer from someone that they don't definitively know whether or not they can be trusted. Oba Femi was a rare example of someone who should be doing both of those things actually doing both of those things when Paul Heyman seemed to be gearing up to offer Femi his managerial services.

Femi is a man who can speak for himself, both with his words and with what he does inside the ring. He really doesn't need someone else who can talk for him, which is why I think it was a smart move for WWE to opt to have Femi grab the microphone straight out of Heyman's hand and tell him that he's an Oba Femi guy instead of a Paul Heyman guy. Despite Heyman's clear interest in him, Femi has no reason to trust Heyman. There's some good logic and in-ring psychology at play here in a company that generally struggles with those things throughout their ongoing storylines, and it's brought a little renewed interest into a storyline between Femi and Heyman that I have grown to be tired of (especially with Femi already feuding with two separate members of The Vision at this point).

Written by Olivia Quinlan

Coming out of WWE Money in the Bank 2026, the collective response to Liv Morgan regaining the WWE Women's World Championship was along the lines of "well that's a shame." You could kind of see it coming given that WWE sees Morgan as arguably the top star in the women's division after Rhea Ripley, and the fact that Stephanie Vaquer won her title in her home country of Chile at a house show, so it really was just a one-time thing to pop a crowd and give them a feel-good moment before giving the title back to Morgan.

But wrestling doesn't stop for anyone and WWE Crown Jewel 2026 is around the corner (whether it takes place in Saudi Arabia is a conversation for another day), and that means we have two champion vs. champion matches to build towards. For the ladies, Morgan is set to go one-on-one with WWE Women's Champion Chelsea Green, and they started building that match this week on "WWE Raw" in a segment and match that was all over the place.

On the microphone, it was low-hanging fruit 101. Morgan calling Green a placeholder champion, Green calling Morgan a placeholder girlfriend for Dominik Mysterio — catty insult after catty insult before Roxanne Perez, the woman who should have won Money in the Bank on Saturday lest we forget, stepped in and said that Green couldn't beat her which led to an impromptu match.

Between the bells, it was a match that was just kind of there. Green and Perez wrestled a standard match while Morgan was at ringside yelling and screaming to try and throw everyone off, but it was in the result that this whole portion of the show felt strange because after a distraction from Morgan on the outside, Green lost. One half of the Crown Jewel champion vs. champion match lost, just like that.

Obviously, if you're allergic to taking a loss here and there in wrestling then you may as well not be in the business because you're going to lose a match at some point. However, this was not the way to go. You can't run down one of your champions by calling them a placeholder and then have them lose 20 minutes later — that's no way to build to a big match is it? It makes Green look pathetic, and sure, she will probably get her win back next week when she defends her title against Perez, but if you want to keep her strong, you want Morgan to be worried. Instead, Green looks like a geek and that's not the look you want.

Written by Sam Palmer

We're two nights removed from MITB and the best match of the last 48 hours in WWE came on "Raw." Chad Gable defended the Men's IC title against Rey Fénix. The two got a lot of time, which gave the match room to breathe. They were able to showcase their strengths and what they bring out in each other.

Fénix has spent a lot of time in AAA this year, as did Gable. WWE has struggled to find a place for Fénix since signing him, especially compared to his brother Penta. They tried him in several tag teams and seemingly gave up on him for a while. He made his "Raw" debut in the tournament to crown a No. 1 contender for Roman Reigns in Mexico. While he would fall to Penta, I'm glad to see that they've continued to utilize Fénix on WWE programming.

Gable has had a strange journey from his path detouring in AAA as the OG El Grande Americano to coming back to WWE as himself and going on an apology tour with the luchadores. Since winning the IC title in August, he's defended the titles against only luchadores (Rey Mysterio, Dragon Lee, and Fénix). Perhaps it's because of his work in AAA or maybe it's because he is at his best working the lucha libre style. Regardless, Gable is doing some of his best work.

It's nice when WWE focuses on the second W in its name and less on the E, especially when the matches are like the one we got from Gable and Fénix.

Written by Samantha Schipman

It's that time of the year where WWE allocates weeks to building largely inconsequential matches for a title belt that means nothing but the materials used to make it. With Money in the Bank in the rear-view, tonight marked the first step towards Crown Jewel. 

Chelsea Green confronted Liv Morgan to establish their Women's Crown Jewel Championship match, while on the other side of things ... there was no other side of things, Sami Zayn was booked against Roman Reigns without a further word said on the matter. 

Now one understands that it is a Herculean trial to get Reigns to turn up to TV. Of course that does beg the question as to why he continues to hold the world title, but the response to that is often, "Well, duh, he's Roman Reigns," so what is the point of challenging the status quo?

Someone who absolutely could have appeared to even try and establish some precedent for the match was Sami Zayn. It's not as though the company cared about the brand split when Green was confronting Morgan and Rey Fenix was challenging Chad Gable. It's not as though he is on a part-time contract. But he wasn't there and the match was just announced as though it was a brand sponsorship. Seriously, between "Agent of Shadows" and the litany of other nonsense that was announced one would be forgiven for even missing the announcement. 

Zayn and Reigns is actually a marquee match — not just on name value, not because the Crown Jewel title is actually worth a damn, but because of the personal history there, the fact that Zayn is facing Reigns for the first time since he challenged for the title in Montreal three years ago. In fact it was that same title that he has since gone on to win twice, to the point he is now standing across from Reigns not as the challenger but as a fellow champion. That's compelling TV. WWE is not really in the business of making compelling TV anymore, obviously.

Aside from that specific match and the build to it, there is also the fact that this whole gimmick blows because it suspends actual progression. No one on tonight's show even indicated that they would be the next challenger for Reigns' title aside from Penta, Mister Money in the Bank, and Oba Femi, in the vaguest of shots from the King of the Ring. That undermines the world title and really shows the seams of WWE's one-dimensional booking. Zayn and Reigns may have a match booked, but that doesn't mean the entire roster should just bite their tongue as though there will not be events in the future.

Written by Max Everett

I knew I was going to like the chaos that was the main event, finally pitting the 946's Royce Keys, Bronco Nima, and Lucien Price against the Usos and Solo Sikoa, even though I knew it was going to end in a wonky finish due to interference by Jaida Parker or a returning Jacob Fatu or something. We are building to Survivor Series: Wargames, after all, and we have quite a long time until then, so the interference angle made sense in my mind, at least.

I liked when Adam Pearce told referee Chad Patton backstage basically to ignore the chaos and just count the pin or ring the bell for a submission, pretty much making this a no disqualification match, since he knew where things were going, too. I didn't, however, expect to be loving the addition of Carmelo Hayes to the 946.

After Hayes blacked out his X profile over the weekend, I started to worry in the back of my mind whether or not his contract was up. We haven't seen him on WWE programming since August, and he notably missed SummerSlam after also missing WrestleMania. I figured if something happened, we'd hear about it this week, and then I kind of moved on from the thought. When I realized it was his face behind the bandana when he intercepted Sikoa's Samoan Spike, I let out a little shriek of happiness in my living room. I'm so glad to see him back on television and in one of the biggest angles going in WWE right now.

The match itself was chaotic fun, starting in a brawl and ending in an even bigger one. The Usos and OTM once again battled into the crowd and nearly to the back, like we saw at Money in the Bank over the weekend. I especially liked Parker getting involved; after she sent Patton over the ring barricade to kick off the second half of the insanity, she also hit a splash to the Usos off one of the guardrails to the floor below in the crowd.

I thought Keys and Sikoa, who were left at ringside, did a good job pacing things so the camera was on them when it needed to be, after one spot was missed earlier in the match. Sikoa sent Keys through the commentary desk and hit him with a splash in the ring, and that's when Hayes showed up. He helped 946 beat down the Bloodline, and the formidable faction stood tall to end the show.

I love this for Hayes, and I love this for the 946. I'm excited to see where this goes going into WarGames, and the angle is making "Raw" worth watching.

Written by Daisy Ruth