WWE Raw Results: Highlights, Analysis, and Grades for April 24

Source: WWE.com

Dean Ambrose & Chris Jericho vs. The Miz (w/Maryse)

Result: No contest

Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

Poor Miz. He gets a note that he has a tag team partner, only to get stood up. Not cool, partner. (Should have went with The Drifter, Mike!)

So, Kurt Angle – again, being 100 percent fair and in the right, even if this seems to be anti-Miz – won’t allow the match to be canceled. He makes it a handicap match – unless the mysterious partner shows up. I gotta tell you, Raw is pretty awesome when there’s no McMahon presence to screw things up on a weekly basis. Let’s all enjoy this while we can.

Some people will try to say that a heel being at a disadvantage in a handicap match is bad from a storytelling perspective. Most of the time, that’s true. A handicap match should see a babyface valiantly fighting off seemingly insurmountable odds, or coming up just short no matter how hard they fight. But here, it works because the authority figure gave the bad guy a chance to even the odds. He couldn’t, so he has to pay. Makes perfect sense.

I like the way the match was laid out – Miz was able to take control for a bit, because he is legitimately great. But the numbers game got to him, and he tried to bolt. And then we found out exactly what Bray Wyatt plans to do on Sunday to Randy Orton.

Now, this is a Bray Wyatt that I can get behind. It’s a little goofy, of course, but after all these years someone is finally trying to use Bray as a legit monster. He singlehandedly took out three guys (granted, after they had beaten each other down in a match, but still).

What concerns me is that it looks like we’ll be doing Bray vs. Ambrose again, and I don’t want to see any more television sets explode. And where does this leave Finn Balor, who seemed to be Wyatt’s first feud? Seems like we’ll find out after Payback.

Related Story: Taking WWE Title Out of Orton/Wyatt Match Is Right Call

What did you think of this week’s episode of Raw?