The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Miz Rivalries

More than once in his career, fans have been prepared to write off The Miz. In the early stages of his WWE run, he was widely dismissed as a guy who came from reality TV and didn’t really deserve to be taken seriously as a wrestler. Later, after he was accepted and got over as an upper mid-card player, he got a world title push and even got to walk into WrestleMania the WWE Champion (not to mention that he retained the strap in the main event against John Cena). This was all overkill and the fans widely rejected Miz as undeserving of a spot at that level.

The funny thing about The Miz is that he hangs around. While he did have some lackluster years in between, including his tepid run as a face and his less celebrated work as a heel, the new brand split offered him a huge career boost. As a veteran heel, reunited with Maryse, Miz took over on the mic and largely dominated the Intercontinental Championship scene. After arguably the best all-around year of his career, a move to Monday Night Raw threatened to get him lost in the shuffle, but once he found his footing there, he emerged as a top-tier heel for the red brand as well, whom WWE didn’t push all the way back into the world title picture but who could justifiably find himself back in that conversation were a few key injuries and shifts in creative direction to take place.

So, this column reflects on the often overlooked, underrated career of The Miz. No, he’s not a Daniel-Bryan-level wizard in the ring, but he’s been a rock solid performer in the WWE system for nearly a decade now and deserves to have his work taken seriously as an eventual Hall of Famer and a guy whom a generation of fans may well look back on as their Honky Tonk Man or similar—a guy who drew heat, generated interest, and played his part to near perfection. Here’s a look back at his seven best rivalries, with regard to storyline, match quality, and career progression for one or more of the talents involved. As always, my personal opinion weighs heavily.

#7. R-Truth

In the fall of 2011, a strange dynamic came up. John Cena was on top as the face of the company, while CM Punk was on the cusp of launching his year-plus reign as world champion. The Rock was gearing up for a WrestleMania main event opposite Cena, and The Undertaker and Triple H were waiting in the wings for their WWE returns. Brock Lesnar wasn’t yet back in the equation. Alberto Del Rio was a middling world champ. Randy Orton was planted in his position as a top-of-the-mid-card face and the question came up of who could pose a credible heel threat at the top of the card?

Enter The Awesome Truth.

While the experiment of casting Miz as a main eventer had largely floundered, and positioning R-Truth as a challenger to John Cena—for as reasonable as the matches were—always felt like a mismatch, the team of The Miz and R-Truth emerged as dangerous and surprisingly cool. No, we couldn’t really buy them as challengers to the Cena-Rock super team, but they were a fun enough diversion for the rivals to overcome together, and the aftermath of the angle set up Miz and Truth to feud as more sure-footed upper mid-card acts with a reason to have a beef.

Take a logical enough and high profile set up, add some solid enough three-star in ring action, and factor in the fun of Truth at his most odd-ball opposite The Miz as a straight-laced arrogant heel and you had the recipe for one of the more fun rivalries of The Miz’s career as he transitioned back into the mid-card.

#6. Alex Riley

From the late 1980s to early 1990s, WWE told a compelling story between Ted Dibiase and Virgil, in which The Million Dollar Man professed to not only employ, but own his bodyguard. For years, Virgil was the star’s sidekick and heater, before an angle in which Roddy Piper helped him break out on his own. While the matches to follow were limited by Virgil’s actual in ring skill, they nonetheless marked a memorable rivalry, and Dibiase largely carried the less established star to the best matches of his career.

In an early 2000s reboot, Alex Riley played a rookie with The Miz as his NXT mentor. The two paired up afterwards with Riley as Miz’s suit-clad sidekick through a program with Daniel Bryan and a WrestleMania feud with John Cena. After about a year as a unit, however, Riley got fed up with Miz’s disrespect and struck out on his own.

It was an intriguing program, in part because young Riley was reasonably charismatic and had a good look. Fans didn’t yet know what to really expect from him as a singles performer, and particularly as a face. The results were good as Riley picked up the first win of the rivalry. It was more or less an equal testament to Riley’s skill and Miz’s willingness to put him over that that match and storyline went over well.

Riley would end up getting shunted down the card soon after before slipping off to an NXT broadcast role. It’s widely rumored that political differences with John Cena were to blame. We may never have the full story, but we can recall that brief period of time when he was a star on the rise, and The Miz was so instrumental in getting him there, first as his partner in crime and mentor, then as his opponent.

#5. MVP

While the feud between MVP and The Miz wasn’t the longest and didn’t necessarily produce great matches it was heated, with some especially strong promo work. The first time these two meaningfully collided was in a brief tag team program that saw The Miz and John Morrison relieve MVP and Matt Hardy of the tag titles. They had a more meaningful collision in early 2010 when they had a two match series over the Royal Rumble PPV and Elimination Chamber (in addition to a brawling sub-plot to the Rumble match itself).

I’ll always remember this rivalry best of all for a particularly hot promo segment in which Miz started backstage and worked his way forward into the arena in what resulted in a direct confrontation with Porter. The angle marked one of the first times Miz truly stole the show on the mic, and captured an excellent dynamic with The Miz as an arrogant reigning champion who felt he was superior to MVP, and MVP as the hungrier, grittier star who wanted to put The Miz in his place. The Miz would win both of their high profile singles matches before they rounded out the feud in tag teams again, this time with The Miz having Big Show at his side while MVP teamed up with Mark Henry.

#4. John Morrison

For the top half of this countdown, we arrive at The Miz’s more memorable feuds, starting with this one with John Morrison. Miz vs. Morrison was a new take on an old story—the old tag team partners split up in violent fashion, ended up on opposite sides of the face/heel line, and went to war. A part of what made this rivalry special was the background knowledge of how much each man had done for each other. Teaming with Morrison had lent Miz the credibility of working with a better-accepted in-ring star and gotten more fans to pay attention to his budding skills as a heel orator. Teaming with Miz had revitalized Morrison’s ECW run as it threatened to flatline after he lost the ECW Championship.

The team breakup happened in the immediate aftermath of a draft sending them to separate brands, meaning the resulting feud was a bit of a slow burn. They got the chance to work one another in the fall of 2009, though, first at the brand-war-themed Bragging Rights, then on opposing Survivor Series teams, with Miz coming out the better each time.

From there, the rivalry was ready for prime time as, a year later, Miz won the WWE Championship and Morrison was quickly lined up as his first serious challenger. While I felt at the time (and still do) that the match should have headlined a PPV in the effort to get both men over as main event stars, it focused on TV instead. Their blow of match—quite arguably the best of Miz’s world title reign—happened in a Falls Count Anywhere Match on Raw.

In beating Morrison over and over, Miz did get a bit more over. While he was never fully accepted as a main eventer during his world title run, getting the best of Morrison shored up that he was, at least, ahead of the mid-card. It’s more unfortunate for Morrison that his career momentum seemed to stall out after each job to The Miz. Nonetheless, the matches were good, as was the mic work—in particular the two leaning into their history as a team and openly acknowledging the meta-conversation of them each wanting to be the Shawn Michaels out of the pair, while one would inevitably have to be the Marty Jannetty.

#3. John Cena

A part of me really wanted to rank John Cena higher on this list, and potentially in the number one spot. After all, these guys did have two separate WrestleMania matches, one of them in the main event, not to mention that they had another good feud years before they ever met at ‘Mania.

That first program saw Miz play Chris Jericho to John Cena’s Goldberg. While Cena was well established as the man, The Miz was the up and comer trying to make a name for himself at Cena’s expense in a rivalry that consisted of Miz, with increasingly obnoxious fervor, calling out Cena, only to proclaim victory when Cena wasn’t present in the building or otherwise occupied. This all culminated in the two being booked in a PPV match, which Cena quickly dominated, after which they had a more competitive match (which Cena won again) on Raw.

As much as The Miz and Cena each had considerable mic skills and good chemistry in promos together, that first feud serves as a bit of a microcosm for the Miz-Cena dynamic. The Miz kept working hard and elevating himself higher than anyone would have expected, until he could somewhat reasonably challenge Cena. When the two actually got in the ring, though, The Miz was never in Cena’s league. And repeat. And repeat.

Yes, Miz did pick up what should have been the most important win in their rivalry, as they got the main event spot at WrestleMania 27. Despite winning, this match was in some ways the worst for Miz. Not only did he work much of it concussed, but he was he was treated as an afterthought to the budding rivalry between Cena and the newly returned Rock, and as soon as the next night, all eyes were on the WrestleMania 28 collision between Cena and The Rock, with The Miz emerging as arguably the first and certainly the most decisive lame duck world champ to have retained at WrestleMania.

Their latest program, culminating in a mixed tag match at WrestleMania 33, may have been their best effort together, for properly situating increasingly part-time Cena and promo-centric Miz in a heated war of words, largely built to to push their romantic partners’ reality TV presences. The Miz was a pretty great jerk on the mic in this build, and for a certain demo, the set up for Cena’s proposal to Nikki Bella was nicely done.

#2. Dolph Ziggler

The Miz and Dolph Ziggler shared space on the mid-card treadmill for a time, and it wasn’t so unusual for them to interact with a secondary championship at stake as they each spent years in a similar position with the company. The two got a proper feud in 2016, as WWE lightly elevated the intercontinental Championship through their big time rivalry, featuring heated promos and some of the best matches of either man’s WWE tenure.

While it wouldn’t be their last encounter, the pair reached a peak at No Mercy 2016. On an otherwise largely disappointing and forgettable card, they squared off in a match that saw Miz defend the Intercontinental Championship while Ziggler vowed to retire if he lost. Given that Ziggler seemed to have already peaked as a WWE performer and wasn’t getting any younger, plus the way WWE built up to the match in taking the stipulation seriously and bringing back his old Spirit Squad running buddies for a short bit, plenty of fans were ready to believe that Ziggler was finishing up at least his WWE career. Instead, Ziggler picked up one of the biggest and best wins of his career in a match that many agree should have main evented the show.

Miz would end up winning the title back and in terms of kayfabe quite arguably won the rivalry. That Ziggler won the biggest single match of the feud, though, marked a rare occasion when WWE’s controversial 50-50 style booking actually seemed to have worked in getting over both stars at a higher level.

#1. Daniel Bryan

A lot of fans balked when WWE set up its first season of the pseudo-reality NXT series, featuring rookies paired with mentors as they fought their way toward spots on the main roster. While the concept itself seemed fun and some of the talents were immediately appealing, hardcore fans were especially resistant to Daniel Bryan—one of the most technically proficient independent wrestlers in the world—being mentored by The Miz who still had a credibility problem.

It turned out that WWE knew exactly what it was doing as Miz’s pure sports entertainment style and Bryan’s pure pro wrestling aesthetic created brilliant friction and complemented each other for an entertainingly tense relationship through that first season, and a big reason why that first season was that format of NXT’s most successful. Little did we know how well that dynamic would carry on when the feud reignited in late summer 2010. The Miz played the role of drama queen, holding out on whether he’d join John Cena’s team standing up against The Nexus invasion, only to have his would-be spot on the squad filled by a returning Bryan instead. The whole dynamic nicely set up Miz to sabotage Bryan later in the match, and give way to the two of them feuding properly over the US Championship in the weeks to follow. Not only were those matches good, but Bryan winning the title got him over, while also freeing up Miz to cash-in his Money in the Bank opportunity and graduate to the main event.

All of the above would qualify this feud for the top three on this countdown. It’s their mic work on Talking Smack that pushes the rivalry all the way to the number one spot. In what could have been an utterly forgettable kayfabe talk show, Bryan, and particularly Miz pushed the boundaries in cutting worked shoot promos on each other, culminating in a deeply uncomfortable segment with Miz blasting Bryan for letting down his fans by not being able to wrestle anymore. The promo might have seemed like a waste had Bryan, indeed, never actually returned to the ring. Now that he’s back, though, and WWE is continually teasing, and likely building to their next showdown, all signs suggest this rivalry has at least one big-time match left to happen.

Who would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.