The Miz’s Awesome Journey to the Top

 

“I apologize in advance for my language. You’re fucking awesome.” – CM Punk at the AAW Scars and Stripes event on July 23, 2011.

CM Punk was talking to 24 year old independent pro wrestler Gregory Iron, who has cerebral palsy, in the above quote but I would say the same thing to The Miz if I was ever lucky enough to meet him. So I will now apologize in advance for my language. The Miz is fucking awesome. The Miz has been awesome for a while but the reason I am writing this now is because on July 25, Stu Saks, the publisher of Pro Wrestling Illustrated, announced on the PWI Blog that Mike “The Miz” Mizanin was named number one in the 21st annual “PWI 500”. The “PWI 500” is an annual list made by Pro Wrestling Illustrated that ranks the top 500 professional wrestlers in the world. The evaluation period for the list was from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011. The Miz lost his WWE Championship on May 1, 2011. Pro Wrestling Illustrated was created in 1979 and is considered to be the best professional wrestling magazine. I know some people are saying, “Who cares what a magazine says,” but I think this is a big accomplishment for The Miz. PWI isn’t just a random wrestling magazine. PWI is a respected magazine so being named the number one wrestler in the world by PWI should be like being named Man of the Year by TIME Magazine.  Other wrestlers that were named number one in the PWI 500 in the past include “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Bret Hart, John Cena, Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H. Wrestlers like The Rock, CM Punk, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero, Edge, and Rey Mysterio have never reached number one in the PWI 500.

I am so proud of The Miz. He may not be the best worker in the WWE right now but I think The Miz deserved being named the number one wrestler in the world. I think The Miz has great mic skills and even though he’s not a great technical wrestler, I have noticed he is good at selling injuries and he can have entertaining matches despite his limited move set. The Miz has become the WWE’s go-to guy when they want to promote major Pay-Per-Views. The Miz was on Conan this year to promote WrestleMania and he was on Lopez Tonight recently to promote SummerSlam. The Miz is currently my favorite heel in the WWE and I consider that top heel position to be very important. The reason I am so excited about The Miz being named the best wrestler in the world is because I remember when The Miz joined the RAW roster in 2009 and back then he was not a main event Superstar yet. I was a big WWE fan in the late 1990s and early 2000s but I stopped watching the WWE from 2002 to 2007. I started watching the WWE again right around WrestleMania 24 in 2008. Many of the people who are not happy that The Miz was ranked number one probably remember watching The Miz when he started regularly appearing on WWE TV in 2006 as the host of Smackdown. I wasn’t watching the WWE during that part of The Miz’s WWE career but I can understand why some people are upset. I remember being a little bit upset when Jeff Hardy won the WWE Championship for the first time in 2008 because I remember when Jeff Hardy was Matt Hardy’s tag team partner in 1999. During 1999 and also 2000, Jeff Hardy was very similar to Evan Bourne so can you imagine Evan Bourne being the WWE Champion in the future? But I remembered that Jeff Hardy was a very good performer in 1999 and 2000 so it didn’t bother me too much. It is much harder to go from a former Smackdown host to the number one wrestler in the world. I guess it would be like if current Smackdown announcer Josh Mathews won the WWE Championship within the next five years. If Josh Mathews ever won the WWE Champion, I might never be able to take his title reign seriously because I would remember that he was a former announcer. Fortunately for me, my first image of The Miz was when he was John Morrison’s tag team partner. I don’t remember much of The Miz’s stint as Morrison’s tag team partner. The Miz was on ECW and I didn’t watch ECW at all back in 2008. The only time I saw The Miz was when he and John Morrison had a brief feud with DX in 2008.

When I first saw The Miz, I didn’t think much of him and I thought the WWE made a big mistake on April 13, 2009 when they drafted The Miz to RAW instead of John Morrison. When The Miz and John Morrison broke up, everyone including me assumed that John Morrison would become Shawn Michaels and The Miz would become the next Marty Jannetty. I had no idea how The Miz would be used on RAW. I assumed that he would make very few RAW appearances and when he would appear on RAW, he would be used as a jobber. I didn’t know much about him at the time so I was interested in seeing how he would be used. To my surprise, The Miz made a big impact on RAW right away. On April 27, 2009, The Miz appeared on RAW for the first time since being drafted from ECW. That night, The Miz challenged John Cena to a match on RAW. Cena was unable to compete that night because he was thrown into a spotlight by the Big Show at Backlash which had just happened the night before that episode of RAW. Cena was not medically cleared to compete yet so the match did not happen. However, The Miz claimed that since Cena did not show up, the match was a forfeit and The Miz declared himself the winner. I thought this was an interesting way for The Miz to get involved on RAW. The interesting thing was that The Miz would challenge Cena at every RAW and would continue to declare himself the winner when Cena didn’t show up. John Cena was medically cleared on Judgment Day on May 17, 2009 but he had a match with the Big Show that night. So instead of challenging Cena, The Miz called out Chicago Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano who was at Judgment Day that night. Miz said that Soriano would be Cena’s replacement but then The Miz pretended to get a phone call from Cubs manager Lou Piniella and said that Lou didn’t want Soriano to get injured in a match. The Miz then declared himself the winner and that made him 4-0 against John Cena. That Judgment Day segment is very special to me because I attended that event. The Miz hadn’t been on RAW for a month yet but he got a very good heel reaction from the crowd and I thought his mic skills were very good. The whole Cena vs. Miz storyline was really good and it was so good that it led to a PPV match between The Miz and John Cena at The Bash on June 28, 2009. The Miz was squashed by Cena in less than six minutes that night and after that I assumed The Miz’s little push was over. I was a little bit disappointed because I was really impressed with The Miz. Feuding with the top face of the company is an easy way to get attention and with that feud over, I assumed The Miz would quietly disappear. Soon after that, I remember reading a rumor on the internet that The Miz was considering leaving the WWE to pursue a reality TV career. Then on August 3, 2009, RAW Guest Host Jeremy Piven announced that The Miz would face John Cena in a lumberjack match on RAW and if The Miz lost, Miz would be banned from Summerslam, the Staples Center, and RAW. The Miz ended up losing that match so I assumed that The Miz was gone for good so he could become a reality TV star again. The next week, the Calgary Kid, who was wearing a mask, defeated Eugene in a Contract on a Pole match. The winner was guaranteed a WWE contract and after the match, the Calgary Kid removed his mask and he was really The Miz! So just like that The Miz was back. I was happy to see that The Miz was staying in the WWE but I still had no idea where his career was going. However, he was finding interesting ways to stay relevant so I was optimistic that The Miz could continue being somewhat successful on RAW. The next week on RAW, I got my answer because The Miz cut a promo saying that he was going after the WWE United States Championship. The Miz would have several opportunities over the next two months to win the U.S. Championship but he always failed to win the title. That all changed on October 5, 2009. RAW was in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania that night. Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was the Guest Host and it felt like an ordinary episode of RAW. During that RAW, The Miz confronted Roethlisberger and demanded a U.S. Title match against Kofi Kingston. Roethlisberger agreed to the match but said that if he lost, The Miz would have to say, “I’m The Miz and I’m awful” after the match. After I heard Big Ben say that, I assumed The Miz was losing for sure just so he would be forced to utter that quote after the match. Even though I knew The Miz was going to once again fail to win the title, I watched the match anyway. During the match, Kofi hit The Miz with his Trouble in Paradise finisher and I assumed the match was over. However, The Miz fell out of the ring which prevented Kofi from being able to pin The Miz right away. Right after that, I started getting really interested in the match. I thought to myself, “Could The Miz really win?” I still wasn’t sure because at the time, Kofi had held the title for 126 days. It wasn’t a super long title reign but long enough for him to be seen as a legit champion. I knew Kofi would have to lose the title eventually but I thought someone like MVP would win the title. Kofi Kingston was winning a lot of matches at the time and I did not think someone like The Miz would beat him especially on free TV. However, I was wrong. The Miz found a way to hit Kofi with the Skull Crushing Finale and became the new United States Champion.

 After becoming the United States Champion, The Miz started getting a huge push. He held the U.S. Championship for 224 days. In addition to being the U.S. Champion, The Miz became one-half of the Unified Tag Team Champions when he and the Big Show won the titles on RAW on February 8, 2010. On March 28, 2010, The Miz had his first ever televised WrestleMania match. The Miz and Big Show, known as ShoMiz, defeated John Morrison and R-Truth that night to retain the Unified Tag Team Championships.  ShoMiz would lose the titles on April 26, 2010. The Miz then lost his U.S. Championship after losing to Bret Hart on May 17, 2010 but regained it only 28 days later. I have respect for Bret Hart and I understand why the WWE wanted to reward him in some way but I hated that Bret won the U.S. Championship back then and I still hate it today. I’m sure The Miz was honored to drop the title to a WWE Hall of Famer but I was angry. The Miz was one of the fastest rising stars in the WWE at the time and I thought it was dumb that the WWE took away The Miz’s momentum just so they could add one final chapter to the history of Bret Hart. Luckily, The Miz is so awesome that dropping the title to Bret didn’t ruin his push but if he had not dropped the title, he would have held the U.S. Championship uninterrupted for 349 days. That is just 16 days short of a year and it would have been the longest U.S. Championship reign since the WWE acquired the title in March 2001. However, The Miz later won something that was much more important than the United States Championship. On July 18, 2010, The Miz became Mr. Money in the Bank after winning the RAW Money in the Bank match. With the Money in the Bank briefcase which contained a contract for a WWE Championship match in his possession, I knew The Miz was less than a year away from being the WWE Champion.  The Miz would later drop the United States Championship to Daniel Bryan on September 19, 2010 at Night of Champions. Like I said, it is too bad that The Miz had that 28 day period without the title because I think Daniel Bryan’s win would have looked even more impressive if The Miz held the title for 349 days uninterrupted instead of 97 days. I was at that event and in my opinion The Miz wrestled the best match of his WWE career that night. Losing the U.S. Championship was not a bad moment in his career. It was a good moment because after that night, The Miz began to forget about the U.S. Championship and started focusing on the WWE Championship. On the same night that The Miz lost his U.S. Title, Randy Orton became the WWE Champion. On November 22, 2010, Orton’s title reign ended. After a match between Orton and Wade Barrett, The Miz cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase, defeated Orton, and became the WWE Champion. I was happy for The Miz when that happened. He had worked so hard and was so impressive that I knew he would become the WWE Champion at some point but I was still shocked to see that The Miz had actually won the WWE Championship. The Miz had gone from a wrestler I barely knew to WWE Champion in less than two years. Winning the WWE Championship was a huge accomplishment but The Miz later accomplished something that was just as important. On April 3, 2011, The Miz was in the main event of WrestleMania 27 when he faced John Cena with his WWE Championship on the line. Just two years before then, I was wondering how he would be able to make regular appearances on RAW and somehow The Miz ended up being in the main event match at WrestleMania which is the match that every WWE Superstar dreams about being in. Not only was The Miz in the main event, he walked into the match as the WWE Champion and successfully retained his title. It was rare to see a heel win the main event of WrestleMania and it was Cena’s first ever loss at WrestleMania in a singles match. The Miz lost the WWE Championship to John Cena at Extreme Rules on May 1, 2011. The Miz held the title for 160 days which is longer than any of The Rock’s seven WWE Championship reigns.

People are claiming that The Miz is currently in a slump. I agree that The Miz is not as important as he was just a few months ago but The Miz is continuing to be relevant like he has in the past. The Miz has not won a PPV match since WrestleMania 27 but he is still one of the top WWE Superstars on RAW. On June 13, 2011, The Miz was involved in a segment featuring “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and then appeared on Piper’s Pit with Rowdy Roddy Piper on the same night on RAW. How many Superstars on the WWE roster can say that they got to cut a promo with Stone Cold and Piper on the same night? Then on July 25, 2011, the same day it was revealed that The Miz was number one on the PWI 500, The Miz was in a WWE Championship match with Rey Mysterio on RAW. The Miz lost that match but it proved that The Miz is still relevant in the WWE.

Like I have said, I just started watching the WWE again in 2008 so I missed the development of some future WWE Hall of Famers like John Cena, Randy Orton, and Edge. When I stopped watching the WWE in 2002, Cena hadn’t debuted yet, Orton was so new in the WWE that I don’t even remember his debut, and Edge was still a few years after from becoming a WWE Championship contender. I missed their journeys to greatness so I am glad I got to witness The Miz’s awesome journey to the top. The Miz may be in a slump right now but he has found ways to stay relevant in the past and he will continue to stay relevant in the future. The Miz is only 30 years old right now and he is definitely still in his prime. I do believe that The Miz will regain the WWE Championship again someday and he should end up having many WWE World Championship reigns. I’m not sure if The Miz will reach the WWE Hall of Fame when his WWE career is over but so far The Miz has been good at proving me wrong.