WWE Royal Rumble 2017: 3 Reasons the Miz Should Win
By Adam O'Brien
WWE.com
2. The Only Way is Up
The Intercontinental Championship scene has been brought back from the brink as a result of The Miz’s impeccable heel work over the last five months, and the fact that the title has been accentuated by the story, instead of sullied as an accessory.
Miz has taken serious pride in his role as the leading man of the SmackDown Live mid-card, and it’s made for great television to see some of the brand’s top babyfaces in Dolph Ziggler and Dean Ambrose attempt to reap the benefits of that.
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Now that “The Lunatic Fringe” has toppled The Miz to become champion, surely there’s nowhere to go for arguably the best heel on Tuesday nights than up – which means a WWE Championship match is on the horizon.
We’ve seen Miz drop the title before, and it lasted all but a few weeks before he ended up recapturing it. And with plenty of names crowding the main event scene at the moment, the odds of seeing Ambrose back at the top before WrestleMania don’t seem all that likely.
With that in mind, a relatively lengthy reign with the Intercontinental Championship would actually make sense in terms of keeping Dean Ambrose in prime positioning on the SmackDown Live line-up, while also maintaining the prominence of the title now that The Miz is, hopefully, going to be moving on to bigger and better things.
The Royal Rumble match has always been the perfect opportunity for a guy like The Miz to transition into the main event, and given the heaping handful of names who already have a fair shake at a win in the Rumble this year, there’s no reason why The Miz shouldn’t be a leading candidate now that he’s without gold.
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The only reasonable next step to reward the immense work that The Miz has done for SmackDown Live’s mid-card is to put him in a program for the WWE Championship. And given his excellent promo work, there’s no doubt he’d be able to build a story worthy of a big time WrestleMania championship match.