How Awesome Could He Be?

If there’s one bright spot in the WWE over the course of the past year, I can’t help but think it might be the most unlikely star on the roster The Miz.  The mouth, the arrogance, and the perseverance has propelled The Miz character from a joke of a co-host from the Diva Search Competition to a mid card champion!

If you don’t know the history of Mike Mizanin, you have to go back to the first time he made an appearance on camera, and it wasn’t for WWE.  Think back to 2001, the cocky, brash, then twenty-one year old appeared on the hit MTV show, The Real World and multiple versions of it’s spin off shows revolved around crazy competitions.  This is when we got our first look at The Miz!  He essentially turned up the attitude up to eleven on the amplifier and showed the world that he’s all about competition and making a spectacle of himself.  He eventually started training to be a professional wrestler, and got noticed by the WWE.  He was one of the “lucky” participants in the $1,000,000 Tough Enough competition, and even though he fell short of winning the show’s title of champion, he was signed to a WWE Developmental contract and began wrestling in Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW).

After going through all of the non-wrestling gigs with WWE on Smackdown, hosting the Diva Search and a short lived talk segment poking fun at MTV, The Miz was added to the ECW roster as a singles wrestler and had a really awkward feud with Balls Mahoney over Kelly Kelly‘s affection, and control over her contract with the dance group Extreme Expose.  Miz however hit the jackpot when WWE decided to pair him up with the equally as arrogant, John Morrison to form one of the better tag teams in recent memory.  They played off each other so well that they even got their own WWE.com segment called The Dirt Sheet where they made fun of anyone and everyone in the world of wrestling and, considering both of their character’s back stories, the world of Hollywood.

Now The Miz is at a turning point in his career.  The tag team with Morrison was broken off and they competed against each other to see who would be the man to go on to greatness and who would fall into oblivion using The Rockers, a tag team from the early 90s with partners Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty, as their measuring stick…  The Miz to my surprise actually won!  This moment was when my eyes were really opened to The Miz’s potential.  He’s now the United States Champion, and as of Monday, he’s one half of the Unified Tag Team Champions along with his partner the Big Show.  He’s currently the most decorated wrestler in the mainstream having two titles.  Can anything stop The Miz right now?  The only thing that comes to my mind would be the Miz himself.

Take a good look at the short feud he had with John Cena.  On the entertainment front the rivalry was fantastic.  For almost a month, The Miz called out Cena and never once did he have to get into the ring with him.  Then once the rivalry boiled over and eventually made it into a ring, it showed that even though The Miz has come a long way, his in ring skills are still not completely top notch.  Potentially, I can see The Miz one day being a top heel on WWE programming because of how he tends to get under people’s skin, but your mouth can only get you so far.  You see there are people like me who enjoy watching wrestling not just for the entertainment segments, but for the actual wrestling.  Sometimes I have to just shake my head watching him in the ring, but I’ll give him some credit because he has improved since joining the company.

So what happens next for the man who’s self-proclaimed as a chick magnet?  Well, from the looks of it, much of the same.  He’s gone as far as he can go right now as a mid card wrestler.  He’s gained notoriety in the wrestling business, paid his dues along the way, and he’s earned respect, not just from the boys in the back, but from a lot of fans!  Once that group of fans has grown to the entire WWE Universe, that will be the day The Miz gets a push for one of the big belts.  It probably won’t be in the next year or two, but honest to God, I think The Miz is a future main event superstar… REALLY… because he’s The Miz, and he’s AWESOME!!!