Trivia / The Miz

• Breakup Breakout:
  • ZigZagged regarding his Tag Team with John Morrison: after their breakup, Miz surprised everyone by being more successful, winning the WWE Championship, and still being part of a major storyline after losing it. Morrison, on the other hand, tended to get into more backstage politicking than he really should have, such as giving a WWE Legend the cold shoulder at the behest of his girlfriend. Then WWE dropped Miz back to the midcard and Morrison slowly started to become a bigger star outside of WWE than he had been in, most notably earning a triple crown in AAA. Then, Miz went back to main-eventing at Raw and Pay-Per-Views, and also made the Intercontinental Championship relevant once more instead of an albatross on people's necks just as he promised while Morrison earned the Impact World Championship as Johnny Impact. And once Morrison came back into the WWE, they became Tag Team champions and Miz became both Mr. Money in the Bank and WWE World Champion for a day, while Morrison was... just there.
  • He's the breakout of almost every faction he was in. His team with Alex Riley? Riley was released after being dropped down the card. Mizdow? Damien Sandow left WWE and then left wrestling. The Miztourage? By 2021 both Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas were released. WWE Tough Enough Season 4? He's the only one left in the company, with Ryan Reeves leaving on bad terms, Daniel Puder getting out in the most unceremoniously way possible, and the rest being relegated to footnotes.
• Corpsing: Can be seen desperately trying to keep a straight face while his partner John Morrison was doing his bizarre intros on the Dirt Sheet.
• Creator Backlash: Expressed exasperation at the break-up with Damien Sandow and how badly it was handled.
• Paying Their Dues: Miz got hit with this hard, arguably harder than most others in the locker room. Along with being bullied backstage by JBL and kicked out from the locker room by Chris Benoit for more than 6 months just for accidentally dripping chicken crumbs that Miz ate on his bag (following Benoit's Un-person, this was changed to a referee's bag on WWE's request)^note In fact, Miz doesn't return to the locker room until The Undertaker, a noted Papa Wolf and A Father to His Men for the WWE crew, saw him changing clothes in the hallway and rescinded Miz's locker room ban after finding out who is the person who kicked Miz out of the locker room (The Wrestler's Court rules at the time says that only those who punish the person can rescind the punishment. Since Benoit's dead, Taker decides that he should be one who rescind the ban. It helps that he's the leader of the Court, and whatever he says is the final word at the Court), he was also ribbed on live television on commentary and by Triple H and Shawn Michaels. This is noteworthy because this ended up becoming fundamental to the story of his title run. In hindsight, this is quite surreal considering Miz has spent quite a lot of years on the main roster and is considered one of the veterans.
• Promoted Fanboy: As illustrated in The Real World, Miz was a massive wrestling fanboy with his dream being to break into the company. That dedication paid off.
• Reality Subtext: The entire Miz/Bryan exchange on Talking Smack is fairly representative of many smarks' criticism of how stock the main-event matches are, particularly during weekly TV, with Bryan representing the smarks/IWC, who want to see more variety and more high-impact spots and Miz representing the view likely shared by many WWE higher-ups, who don't believe that the "indy" style can necessarily be wrestled day in, day out on a WWE schedule without serious repercussions to the body. ^note To put it succinctly, Bryan contends that he can't respect Miz as champion because Miz wrestles like he's "afraid to get hit." Miz goes off on a rant in response, saying (among other things), that the style Bryan respects so little is what's allowed him to last as long as he has in WWE without major injuries and without being forced into retirement like Bryan has been. Of course, Miz in this debate of "wrestle longer" versus DB's "wrestle better" is painted as the obvious villain, which may or may not indicate a degree of progress/self-awareness on WWE's part of this issue.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Miz and Morrison wouldn't have become tag team champions when they did if it wasn't for then-current champion Matt Hardy's bursting appendix. The rest is history, ladies and gentlemen.
  • It stands to reason that Miz's onscreen Hollywood prima donna heel gimmick is only enhanced by the fact that Miz actually has a fairly lengthy acting resume on both the big and the small screen.
• Romance on the Set: Is married to former WWE Diva Maryse.
• What Could Have Been: Before R-Truth got busted and sent on a "Wellness vacation", Awesome Truth was set to win the tag titles from Air Boom following "Survivor Series."

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