PHILADELPHIA (AP) -How’s this for a reality show pitch?
Take boyhood wrestling junkie, cast him in “The Real World,” sign him to a World Wrestling Entertainment contract, watch him get ostracized by his peers because he’s a sports entertainment outsider, then – shocking twist time – make him the champion.
From growing up rooting for The Ultimate Warrior to becoming the ultimate reality star, it sounds like feel-good TV.
Mike Mizanin is a lifelong wrestling fan who gets choked up at times thinking about what it means to wear the same belt held by mainstream stars such as Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
His alter ego, “The Miz,” has a different spin.
“If anyone ever says you can’t do something, if anyone ever says you can’t live your dream,” he says, “Believe them! You can’t! It takes an exceptional person to prove everyone wrong and I did just that.
“I’m one in a billion!” the mouthy Miz told the Philadelphia crowd this week at Monday Night RAW.
Hey, The Miz might be right.
His rise from reality show cast member to headlining WWE events as the promotion’s champ is a swerve that not even a TV show producer could have scripted.
When reality stars leave their cushy made-for-TV apartments, are voted off the island or told to pack their bags because they can’t carry a tune, they look teary-eyed into the camera and vow the public hasn’t heard the last of them.
Then they mostly fall back into obscurity.
Not The Miz, and certainly not this week after his WWE championship victory propelled him and Vince McMahon’s sports entertainment empire back into the spotlight.
“Dude! I know! It was on everything!” Mizanin said. “I’m huge. I’m huge.”
Mizanin was once a fixture on MTV’s reality show circuit, flexing his muscles on “The Real World” and entertaining his New York roommates by adopting his wrestling persona, “The Miz.” When he ditched MTV to follow his childhood passion of becoming a pro wrestler, he was questioned by friends and family, and later was hazed and bullied out of the locker room by veteran wrestlers who didn’t want to share space with a TV star. Now, he’s on top of a wrestling organization that draws nearly 5 million viewers each Monday night for RAW.
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