WWE Monday Night Raw results and observations (4/24/17): Kalisto is not going to be around for a while

Despite Raw being three hours every week, the program can provide plenty of episodes where it felt nothing happened at all.

That may seem like a hard thing to do, but it is actually something Raw does quite often. This week's installment of the show was a prime example of that.

Raw has been a pretty entertaining show since WrestleMania, but I thought it took a step back this week. The timing of it could not have been worse since the brand's "exclusive" pay-per-view Payback is coming up this weekend.

This show was by no means terrible, but it came up awfully short of its goal of building the last bit of hype for Payback.

Before I go into my full analysis, here are the full match results from the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.:

- Matt Hardy def. Sheamus

- Jack Gallagher & Austin Aries def. Neville & TJ Perkins

- Dumpster match – Kalisto def. Braun Strowman

- Dana Brooke def. Alicia Fox

- Seth Rollins, Finn Balor & Big Cass def. Samoa Joe, Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows

- Sasha Banks def. Alexa Bliss via count out

- Apollo Crews def. Curt Hawkins

- Dean Ambrose & Chris Jericho vs. The Miz ended in a no contest

Here lies Kalisto

When it was announced Saturday that Kalisto would be facing Strowman in a dumpster match on Raw this week, everyone thought for sure that this would spell the end for the luchador's career.

As expected, Strowman beat Kalisto from one side of the ring to the other.

However, Kalisto managed to pull Strowman down into the dumpster and technically won the match. I thought dumpster matches were like casket matches in that a wrestler had to pull the lid over the dumpster to officially win.

Apparently, that wasn't the case Monday, as Kalisto won by simply getting Strowman into the dumpster. Strowman didn't even leave his feet while in the dumpster.

Kalisto winning turned out to be the worst decision of his life, as Strowman beat the daylights out of him after the match.

Strowman picked up Kalisto, tossed him into the dumpster, closed the lid and pushed it to the stage. Referees tried to prevent Strowman from doing further damage, but Strowman wasn't done yet, as he pushed the dumpster off the stage a la the New Age Outlaws back in 1998.

The only difference was that this time, the stage was merely a couple of feet off the ground, lessening the impact for Kalisto.

Regardless, Kalisto was placed onto a stretcher, put into an ambulance and whisked away to the hospital. Unfortunately, Strowman did not tip the ambulance over before it left.

This segment wasn't nearly as entertaining as Strowman's destruction of Roman Reigns a couple of weeks ago, but I guess it served its purpose in feeding the monster among men that is Strowman.

It just didn't feel like the fans were as invested in this segment as they were Strowman's prior exploits. Maybe it was because fans have no reason to care about Kalisto at the moment.

Hopefully, the next time we see Kalisto is on 205 Live. By the way, Kalisto debuted some cool gear that made him look like Drago from Lucha Underground and had some new theme music.

Makeup czar Tom Savini made Kalisto's mask, which explains why it looked so awesome.

I like to think Reigns would have appeared on the show this week to thwart Strowman at some point, but with the unfortunate and untimely death of his brother and former wrestler, Matt Anoa'i, Reigns was probably given extra time away from television to grieve with his family.

Bray Wyatt showed up for no reason at all apparently

The story that played out throughout this week's episode of Raw was The Miz searching for a partner — or co-star — to team up with for his match against Jericho and Ambrose, who suddenly kissed and made up after their feud from last year that involved Ambrose destroying Jericho's $15,000 light-up jacket and Jericho smashing a potted plant named Mitch over Ambrose's head.

Not to mention, Ambrose slamming Jericho into a bed of thumbtacks.

But Jericho and Ambrose let bygones be bygones for their match Monday night.

The Miz showed up to the match with a note from someone that wanted to be his partner. The only problem was that his mystery partner didn't show up, meaning that he had to start the match on his own.

Yes, WWE had The Miz, a bonafide heel, work a match against two babyfaces in the main event. If it were two heels going against a vulnerable babyface, the fans may have cared.

Instead, we got this and I don't think anyone watching gave a hoot about what was happening.

Eventually, Wyatt showed up and beat everyone up, including The Miz. The Miz thought Wyatt was on his side, but nope. Wyatt turned on him, too, and hit him with Sister Abigail to close out the show.

Why all of this happened? I have no idea.

Here is the problem with WWE going through with Wyatt's House of Horror's match with WWE champion Randy Orton despite the two being on separate brands: They can't come face-to-face on television until Payback.

So instead of attacking Orton, Wyatt is forced to attack people on his brand because Orton isn't around to take the beating. I guess somebody has to catch that whopping. It's not going to catch itself apparently.

Wyatt does show up on Smackdown Live, but not in the arena. He is only on the titantron cutting one of his famously cryptic promos because he is the only wrestler in WWE with access to the production truck whenever he wants to use it.

Wyatt isn't just an evil wizard. He is an audio/visual one as well.

I'm not even sure if Wyatt's appearance set up anything for him once Payback, along with his feud with Orton, is done and over with. I guess he could feud with Ambrose, but who really wants to see that again?

It looked like Wyatt was going to have something with Balor a couple of weeks ago, but they have not crossed paths since. Heck, Balor hasn't even uttered a word since returning to television the night after WrestleMania.

At the end of the day, the match and the angle involving Wyatt felt like it accomplished nothing except maybe give Wyatt some steam heading into his match with Orton, which by the way, is still a mystery to everyone, including WWE apparently.

Finn Balor, partner for hire

Speaking of Balor, he has suddenly gone from the Demon King to tag team partner for hire, as for the second time since returning to television, he was a surprise tag team partner.

The last time it was only for Rollins. This time, it was for Rollins and Big Cass. Enzo Amore was scheduled to take part in the match, but Anderson and Gallows took him out of commission before the match could even begin.

I must say that it was very weird seeing Balor fighting against Anderson and Gallows given their very public history together as members of the Bullet Club. It almost felt like I was watching members of the same family fight each other.

I'm not sure what is going on with Balor at the moment. His return was much ballyhooed, but there hasn't been much from WWE concerning him since then. It almost seems like the company is in a bit of a holding pattern with him until Payback is done.

WWE created a bit of a mess with the Superstar Shakeup and it seems like it is waiting until Payback to finally clean it up. Maybe, that is when Balor is in a more prominent position on Raw.

We know one thing, though. Balor will actually speak at Payback because he will be a guest on Miz TV, which will take place on the kickoff show.

Matt Hardy won by nefarious means

Matt and Jeff Hardy have shown nothing but respect to the No. 1 contenders to their Raw Tag Team titles, Sheamus and Cesaro, but on Monday night, the duo used some nefarious tactics to help Matt Hardy pick up a win over Sheamus.

Jeff Hardy distracted Sheamus, which allowed Matt Hardy to hit the twist of fate for the win. Jeff Hardy's tactic angered Cesaro to the point that he did not want to shake hands with the champions after the match.

Surprisingly, it was Sheamus that kept everything under control and shook hands with Matt and Jeff Hardy.

I was fully expecting Sheamus to deliver a brogue kick after the match, but he didn't, which made me more intrigued for their tag title match at Payback.

I think that there is an interesting story playing out here between both teams that should come to a head at the pay-per-view. Because of that, I have a feeling the mutual respect between the teams will end that night.

Crews promoting the Titus Brand?

Titus O'Neil is not the best in-ring performer in the world, but he makes up for it with his natural charisma. Crews is the opposite, as he has all of the physical tools any wrestling promotion could ever want, but is lacking in the charisma department.

That is what makes their awkward pairing so interesting to me. Crews could use a mouthpiece since nothing he has said so far on television moved me one way or the other and O'Neil can be just the mouthpiece he needs.

O'Neil transitioning to a manager of sorts could do wonders for him since he was doing next to nothing as an active wrestler.

If nothing else, they could make for some funny moments together like this:

Crews is reluctant to promote the Titus Brand right now, but I can see him coming around to it in due time, and maybe being around a guy like O'Neil can bring something out of Crews that we have not seen before.

Whatever that turns out to be has to be better than what WWE was doing with him before, which was nothing. It amazes me that a company with an entire team of creative minds could not come up with something for Crews that could help fans take him seriously.

Maybe the team did and Crews was unable to pull it off, but WWE should be going out of its way to make a guy as talented as Crews among one of its top stars.