Did you think becoming a father (congratulations, by the way) was going to stop The Miz from making his presence known as WrestleMania draws near? Absolutely not. The Intercontinental Champion showed up to Raw as motivated and focused as ever to retain his title at WrestleMania, scouting every second of the latest one-on-one bout between his two challengers: Seth Rollins and Finn Bálor.
What he saw was a first-rate battle between two old foes whose rivalry still simmers and, perhaps, a path to keeping his gold and bringing it home to his daughter. Miz proclaimed on commentary that his ideal scenario was for the WrestleMania Triple Threat to go long, thereby sapping Rollins and Bálor of their respective strengths and allowing Miz to pick up the win. The Raw match certainly stretched on far longer than a typical contest, to the point that the two former World Champions resorted to wild haymakers and whatever big moves they could muster while Miz urged the match to stretch on as long as it could.
Rollins, who made it very clear that he wanted the “momentum” that a win could give him, seemed to pull an answer out of thin air each time The Extraordinary Man began to roll, even kicking out of Bálor’s previously successful rollup of the superplex-Falcon Arrow combo at the last second. Finn showed some resilience of his own, escaping a running powerbomb into the barricade and dropkicking The Kingslayer into the blockade instead.
The match came down to dueling rollups, which Rollins managed to writhe free of and achieve the win by stomping Finn into the mat, but it’s Miz, with his title held high, who goes into WrestleMania as the most energized of all the combatants — and, with Monroe Sky watching, maybe the most motivated as well.