A week from this Sunday at Wrestlemania 25 World Tag Team Champions The Miz and John Morrison will face WWE Tag Team Champions Carlito and Primo Colon, title for title, champions vs. champions. You may be planning a beer run or a quick phone call during that match. Don’t do it. While there’s no question that today’s main event stars like John Cena, The Undertaker and Randy Orton are compelling but you have to look on the undercard to find someone truly Mizmerizing.
As anyone who’s watched The Dirt Sheet on WWE.com knows The Miz and John Morrison are two of the WWE’s most underutilized talents. Their vicious critiques of wrestlers’ backstage personalities, WWE legends, celebrities and politicians are laugh out loud, bray like a donkey funny. Their parodies and impersonations are spot on. Inside the ring they routinely use their unique offense to carry dramatic and well structured matches. The Tag Team Unification match may not sell the pay-per-view but it may make you happy you did.
Earlier this afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with The Miz. We discussed why his team doesn’t have a name (and I offered a suggestion.) We talked about his origins as a ring announcer and backstage interviewer, where the character of The Miz came from, how building a reality television persona differs from building a wrestling persona and where The Dirt Sheet fits into the on screen story. And of course we talked a lot about Wrestlemania 25. To hear the full interview listen to our streaming audio podcast. A few of the highlights are below.
On the Origins of The Dirt Sheet
It’s funny. John and I – we drive a lot from city to city doing shows. We were having great matches but we knew that people had to know what our characters were like. People had to know who we were as wrestlers as well as people. And we thought the only way we could get that across was to get some sort of show on Dot Com. So we asked “Can we do this show on Dot Com?” And people were like “Sure, no problem.” So we started doing it and in the beginning a lot of people were like, “Oh, it’s stupid. It’s this. It’s that.” Then it just kind of picked up to where it’s getting views and people are watching it. It’s helped out so much because people now know exactly who The Miz and John Morrison are. We’re two completely different characters but as a unit we’re unstoppable… Even though sometimes we’ll have great matches on TV people can’t get to know you’re character because it’s just a match. People can know how you are in the ring but outside the ring how is he? So now people know exactly what we’re like.
On the Difference Between Building a Persona on Reality Television and in the WWE
I think it was actually the same. It just sort of falls into you. It’s really kind of the same. It’s just a bigger person than yourself. You know? Being on a reality show they do a lot of editing. They do a lot of random stuff. But in wrestling you only get one take. You only get one try. You kind of start falling into that character. On the Real World they stereotyped me as the frat boy – the stereotypical, All American frat boy. Now in wrestling it’s kind of fallen into that phase where I’m the chick magnet. I’m a person that’s gonna say what I want to do, and do what I want to do and make fun of everyone on the Dirt Sheet, and that’s what I’m gonna do. It’s kind of just me being me.
On Wrestlemania 25
I think our goal is like everyone else’s goal at Wrestlemania. I mean, this is our Super Bowl. This is the time to bring up all the stops. We’re looking to steal the show. We want to have the best match, walk away with the unified tag team championship and actually have people remember that match and go, “Man, that was an awesome match.” I think a lot of people are talking about Undertaker/HBK, John Cena vs. Edge vs. Big Show. They’re talking about the main event matches. With the tag team match, they’re talking about it but they’re not hyping it as much as the main event matches. So we want to be the ones who say “You know what? They may not hype it but after they see that match they’re going to [say] that’s the one that they remember.”
Tonight on WWE Friday Night Smackdown The Miz will team up with John Morrison and Nikki Bella in a six person intergender tag team match against Carlito Colon, Primo Colon and Brie Bella. With the WWE making a really strong push this past Monday night on RAW to supercharge the storylines headed into Wrestlemania 25 it should be interesting to see how Smackdown’s storylines escalate as well. Catch our spontanious response to that development and more tomorow morning in our review of the episode. Stay tuned throughout the week for our preview of Wrestlemania 25 and a look at some of the ultimate dream matches submitted by our users. Then on Wrestlemania weekend we’ll be reporting live from Houston with all of the latest developments. We hope to see you there.
-Henry Jenkins, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(© 2009 World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Guest Columnist, BuddyTV
