10 Best Raw Segments Of 2017 So Far
8. The Miz Ruins His Own Celebration (6 June)
WWE doesn't give its audience a lot of credit, but this segment serves as an excellent example of why they should. The familiarity of The Miz holding a self-aggrandising title celebration was only further compounded by the presence of an unexplained masked man in a bear costume. Any viewer capable of basic trope recognition understood that the masked man would shockingly turn out to be his rival Dean Ambrose.
When The Miz preemptively attacked the bear, it was to the fans' great amusement that he unveiled the man in the costume to be... some guy. With the arrival of a large, suspicious package, we were treated to an even funnier iteration of the same swerve. The Miz's paranoia getting the best of him was wickedly funny as he fiercely attacked this cardboard box, and the near-perfect execution of his elbow drop only enhanced the enjoyment. The saying goes that Ric Flair could make a broomstick look good in the ring, but The Miz is clearly the absolute champion when it comes to wrestling inanimate objects.
The Miz's failed attempts to outsmart Ambrose constituted a rarely seen subversion of audience expectations, and his growing anger and exasperation when objects turned out not to have Dean Ambrose inside them was a stroke of comic genius. This just made it all the sweeter when Dean was revealed to have been the cameraman in the ring the whole time. It was a clever, unexpected reveal that concluded an amusing and intelligent segment, which aren't words that can often be used to describe something that happens on Raw. Anything that does fit the bill like that deserves to be celebrated.