Why The Miz’s WWE Promo on Daniel Bryan Was Right

On Talking Smack, The Miz cut a blistering promo on the SmackDown General Manager Daniel Bryan, which has set the WWE Universe ablaze. But was he wrong? Or were there harsh truths in his words?

Part of The Miz’s shtick is that he revels in the hate that his haters have thrown at him over the course of his career. From the fans who despised him for his MTV Real World background, to even his peers who hazed him early on and considered his main event run at Wrestlemania XXVII a joke, Miz has been on the receiving end of some largely unfair accusations. But through it all, the cream rises to the top and Miz has remained one of WWE’s solid, dependable workhorses for the better part of the last decade plus.

The hatred and animosity towards the former WrestleMania headliner from the fans escalated when he was named to be Daniel Bryan’s ‘pro’, or mentor, in the inaugural season of the original incarnation of NXT in 2010. The fans, many of whom knew of Bryan’s independent career in Ring of Honor as the ‘American Dragon’, thought it was blasphemous that someone like The Miz would be, in essence, teaching Bryan, who was widely regarded to be the quite possibly the best wrestler in the world for a time, the ropes so to speak.

Whether or not it was done by design, to get the fans to be sympathetic towards Bryan or whatever, on paper, it appeared the reality TV star would be mentoring the superior in-ring wrestler with more experience than him. From that starting point on, Miz and Daniel Bryan’s WWE career have been linked, with many a time that Miz would remind Daniel Bryan and the fans that he was responsible for Bryan’s incredible success, in particular, his WWE World Heavyweight Championship title win at Wrestlemania XXX.

Fast forward several years later to 2016, Daniel Bryan has since retired, forced out of action due to an injury, while Miz holds the Intercontinental Championship, the most prestigious of the second tier titles, directly under the coveted WWE Championship. However, in his new role as SmackDown General Manager, Daniel Bryan made it a point to call out Miz on Talking Smack and label him a ‘coward’ and that he wasn’t a fan of his in-ring style because as an independent wrestler, he always felt that WWE’s brand of wrestling was ‘soft’.

Related Story: Daniel Bryan and The Miz Argue on WWE Talking Smack (Video)

This led to Miz to retort with an absolutely ruthless promo in which he ripped into Daniel Bryan like no one had ever done in WWE before. Miz defended his work, citing that because he works ‘safe’, he has never been once injured for six months to a year like Daniel Bryan was in regards to his neck and recurring concussion issues, due in part to the high-risk style that he carried over from ROH and never truly adapted to WWE’s wishes to tone it down.

Overnight, the WWE universe was abuzz about the Miz’s impassioned speech, with many of them surprisingly siding with Miz over the generally beloved Daniel Bryan

Miz also called Daniel Bryan a coward for promising the fans that he would return to action and reclaim the Intercontinental Championship and restore its prestige, both of which he failed to do as a competitor and as general manager in putting value and importance on the title on SmackDown.

When Bryan responded by explaining that he was forced to retire in WWE because the doctors would not medically clear him to compete, Miz lashed back by demanding Bryan quit WWE so that he could return to the bingo halls in the independent scene and do the thing he supposedly loves the most: wrestle. This caused Bryan to walk off set. Overnight, the WWE universe was abuzz about the Miz’s impassioned speech, with many of them surprisingly siding with the Intercontinental Champion over the generally beloved Daniel Bryan.

The irony of it all is that had Daniel Bryan, in theory, wrestled the ‘safe’ style that WWE wanted him to, Bryan would in all likelihood still be wrestling today

Miz was not wrong in what he said about Daniel Bryan. It’s unclear as to whether it was a shoot, or a work, or a worked shoot, or a work that turned into a shoot. If Bryan was trying to light a fire under Miz, it blew up in his face big time. The irony of it all is that had Daniel Bryan, in theory, listened to his NXT pro, and wrestled the ‘safe’ style that Miz does and WWE wanted him to, Bryan would in all likelihood still be wrestling today.

One can argue that Bryan accomplished more in his six years in WWE than Miz did in ten. But in the bigger picture, at the end of the day, Miz is still wrestling day in and day out while Bryan was forced to retire due to injury.

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The Talking Smack promo proved that Miz is perhaps the last true great heel in WWE, maybe in all of pro-wrestling today. He is a consummate pro and has been consistently great at his job of being a heel that people genuinely dislike. This is something that many of the other heels in WWE have a hard time achieving, such as Kevin Owens and AJ Styles. Miz is underappreciated and underrated and undervalued. He’s managed to turn whatever he was given into something solid and good and most importantly, entertaining. Whether it was tag-team run with John Morrison as The Dirt Sheet to his amazing work with Damien Sandow. Miz has come a long way from the main event of Wrestlemania XXVII. On Talking Smack, the A-lister came to play, and there was a price to pay for Daniel Bryan.