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THE BEST professional wrestling matches are the result of amazing athletics, but a bout’s dramatic framing is built on the mic, not in the ring.
Superstars such as The Rock, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair could get an audience hot for a match simply by hurling insults and challenges to their competitors. This is why they’re called “promos” in wrestling parlance: great mic skills equal ticket sales.
In today’s WWE, the greatest talkers are CM Punk, Chris Jericho and The Miz, and all three will likely be in Baltimore on Sunday for the “Extreme Rules” pay per view. (At press time, The Miz and other Superstars on WWE’s “Raw” show were just leaving the U.K. after being stranded there due to volcanic ash. Punk and Jericho made it back to the U.S. and are confirmed for “Extreme Rules” matches, but the Miz’s appearance has not yet been announced.)
Jericho plays an erudite heel who belittles the crowd and opponents with whithering wit; Punk plays a mad-messiah type who delivers edgy sermons praising the straight-edge lifestyle; and The Miz plays a smart-aleck narcissist with copious comedic one-liners — which the man born Mike Mizanin said he usually spouts “off the top of my head.”
“If you believe it, everyone else will believe it,” he said over a London phone. “If you don’t believe, or if you’re trying to think of something to say … you’re not going to come off that great. Sometimes I’ll cut a promo and have no idea what I just said.”
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ARTS & EVENTS
Fightin’ Words: WWE Superstar the Miz Is Awesome on the Mic
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The Miz, courtesy WWE
» RELATED ARTICLE: “Slam Poetry: Wrestling Experts From PW Torch & Wrestling Observer Talk Legendary Promos & the Miz”
THE BEST professional wrestling matches are the result of amazing athletics, but a bout’s dramatic framing is built on the mic, not in the ring.
Superstars such as The Rock, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair could get an audience hot for a match simply by hurling insults and challenges to their competitors. This is why they’re called “promos” in wrestling parlance: great mic skills equal ticket sales.
In today’s WWE, the greatest talkers are CM Punk, Chris Jericho and The Miz, and all three will likely be in Baltimore on Sunday for the “Extreme Rules” pay per view. (At press time, The Miz and other Superstars on WWE’s “Raw” show were just leaving the U.K. after being stranded there due to volcanic ash. Punk and Jericho made it back to the U.S. and are confirmed for “Extreme Rules” matches, but the Miz’s appearance has not yet been announced.)
Jericho plays an erudite heel who belittles the crowd and opponents with whithering wit; Punk plays a mad-messiah type who delivers edgy sermons praising the straight-edge lifestyle; and The Miz plays a smart-aleck narcissist with copious comedic one-liners — which the man born Mike Mizanin said he usually spouts “off the top of my head.”
“If you believe it, everyone else will believe it,” he said over a London phone. “If you don’t believe, or if you’re trying to think of something to say … you’re not going to come off that great. Sometimes I’ll cut a promo and have no idea what I just said.”
But for all his natural skill, Miz works hard, too, which is why he’s been rewarded with three title belts: He’s the WWE United States Champion and the Unified WWE Tag Team Champion with The Big Show.
“I go to improv classes, I have an acting coach,” Miz said. “I do a lot of things to prepare because we’re in front of a live audience … anything can happen, and it does happen. I think me over-training, if you will, has led to me doing great things in the ring with the mic because I am prepared and I know exactly what I have to do. I can eat anyone up anytime I want.”
The Miz’s in-ring presentation has also improved by leaps and moonsaults over the past year, from simple things such as changing his capris and fedora for traditional wrestler tights, to having better timing in his brawl-heavy matches.
“When I’m not doing improv or acting classes, I am on the road Friday, Saturday and Sunday doing live events,” Miz said. “Every time I’m in that ring, I’m improving, I’m working on it — I working to be the best there possibly is. … I think I’ve improved 100 percent, but if you think I’m stopping there’s no chance of it. I will keep on improving, and keep on improving, until I’m No. 1. And then when I am No. 1, I’m still keep improving so nobody even takes my spot.”
Miz first came into the public eye not in the squared circle but on 2001′s “The Real World: Back to New York,” and in 2004 he was a finalist on the forth season of “Tough Enough,” a competition-based reality show to find new WWE talent. But his reality-world background caused Miz some locker-room problems in his early WWE days.
“I was not allowed in there [for six months] because I ate a piece of chicken and a little, tiny speck of a piece fell on someone’s bag,” Miz said. “I had to eat, change, shower, use the restroom outside and in the corridors and stuff like that. It was kind of embarrassing and very demeaning, but I knew exactly what they were trying to do: They were trying to get me to quit since I was an outsider. But I’m not a person who quits.”
On the Jan. 11 “Raw,” Miz addressed the locker-room hazing with real intensity in a widely praised promo. The serious nature of his rant helped give his character the sort of gravitas that’s needed to be a believable and respected champion, not just a mid-card comedy act who spouts japes and then screams his catchphrase, “I’m the Miz — and I’m aweseome!”
“I think Miz is rocketing to the top,” said Wade Keller of PWTorch.com. “He’s quick-witted. … I think he’s growing into one of the top promo guys in the industry, and I think that he is opening some eyes.”
“He is a throwback to the old days where he talks and you want to see someone come out and shut him up,” said Bryan Alvarez of WrestlingObserver.com. “He’s very smooth on the mic, very poised, and he comes off as someone extremely unlikeable.”
But it’s not just the editors of leading wrestling publications who are high on the Miz — so is the Miz: “I am an irreplaceable talent in the WWE.”
OUTTAKES:
THE MIZ HAS spastic wiggly caterpillar eyebrows, and he can turn his handsome face into a guppy-like pout that reeks of smarmy satisfaction. It’s the perfect look for a heel, equal parts charisma and repulsion. Chris Jericho has the similar ability to be both appealing and reviled at the same time.
“To be compared to Chris Jericho, who has done amazing things in this business, is an honor,” Miz said. “I think it’s great. But I don’t like to be compared to anyone because I like to be myself. I like people to look at me as me and not say, ‘Oh, he’s a mini Jericho, or a Jericho lite.’ I’d rather be my own character, do my own thing.”
Another similarity to Jericho, however, is the Miz’s willingness to talk to virtually anyone in the media and always deliver the goods. Like Jericho, who’s frequently on TV shows not related to wrestling and fronts the hard-rock band Fozzy, Miz has the ability to be a crossover star in pop culture.
“I’m probably one of the only Superstars who literally goes, ‘You guys need to put me on more media. You need to put me on more stuff, to give me more interviews because I will be awesome.’ Today I did a show called ‘Blue Peter’ — it’s a kids’ show and it’s huge here in the U.K. It’s like Mister Rogers. Could you imagine going on “Mister Rogers”? Being in “The [Neighborhood] of Make-Believe”? That would be amazing.
“I always ask to do more media than everybody else because the more I do the more people know about me and the more people want to watch me — and not John Cena.”
Despite his supposed outsider status in the biz, The Miz has followed wrestling his whole life.
“I was huge fan of WWE growing up. Watching The Rockers, Ultimate Warrior, Andre the Giant — they were like heroes to me.”
But aside from The Rockers’ Shawn Michaels, none of those wrestlers was known for his mic skills.
“The first time ever seeing a great talker was The Rock,” Miz said. “It took a while [for him to develop], but a great talker like The Rock — he was just incredible. Every time he was on the show, you wanted to see exactly what he was going to do — which is what I try to do, but I don’t try to do it like The Rock. I don’t want to be like anybody else. … I want just want to be the No. 1 Miz.”
On July 27, 2009, at a “Raw” telecast from Verizon Center in D.C., the Cleveland-raised Miz came out and insulted the Wizards organization and put over LeBron James. Then he ripped on Washington Redskins players Mike Sellers, Jason Campbell, Rocky McIntosh and Stephon Heyer directly to their near-ringside faces.
Then in a “Raw” broadcast from Baltimore on November 30 he pretty much told the show’s guest host, Mini-Me (Vern Troyer), that he’d treat him like a football. “I told him I would kick him through the uprights,” Miz said. “That was one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. … Just to be there and realize how small Mini Me really is — and then be able to just tell him anything you want and not get in trouble for it? It’s fantastic!”
If the Miz is booked on “Extreme Rules,” his likely match will be him and the Big Show defending their Unified Team Championship against The Hart Dynasty, with whom they had been feuding before the “Raw” team was stranded in Europe. In fact, the Miz beat the Hart Dynasty’s David Hart Smith, with the stipulation being that if he won then Bret Hart had to declare ShowMiz the greatest tag team of all time. But the Icelandic volcano delayed the Miz’s satisfaction.
“Bret Hart has to say that I and Big Show are the greatest tag team of all time — and I can’t wait,” Miz said. “I might even make him go on his knees and do it.”
