It’s so damn hard to buy into The Miz as a babyface. For me personally, I have so much trouble detaching him from his best work: the rivalries against Bryan Danielson and Dolph Ziggler. In both instances, one of the key aspects of his character is that he simply is a worse wrestler than his opposition. That’s not even me speaking as a critic, that is an important aspect of the text of his character. He tries less to survive longer, he has to cheat to get by because he’s not as naturally gifted as his contemporaries. In theory, there’s nothing innately wrong about having that be a part of your character. After all, being innately less gifted than your contemporaries is a key feature to many a great wrestling heel.
The problem arises from the fact that in the real world that we occupy, The Miz, as a performer, is just legitimately less talented than everyone else.
That’s really where my problems with this match come from.
First though, the match does a few things right. From the get go, it acknowledges that The Miz, as he is, simply can not beat Gunther. The Intercontinental Champion has been dominant in victory for over a year and has shown such a mastery of the fundamentals of professional wrestling that’s it’s sustained him through this lengthy reign. To address this acknowledged kayfabe divide, the character of The Miz knows that he has to do things that are out of his comfort zone to attempt to get the win. This manifests in a few ways: some new submission attempts early on that commentary notes was inspired by tape study of the likes of Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson, he busts out some more striking based offense to chip away at the champion, and when the opportunity presents itself he goes to working over the champion’s hand. Hell, he even attempts a Skull Crushing Finale from the second rope, a desperation move that ends up costing him in the end.
This is a story that makes sense, The Miz realizing he’s outmatched is searching for new strategies to take on a nigh unstoppable opponent.
Where it all falls apart for both The Miz as a character and as a wrestler though, it’s that he’s just not very good at any of the new strategies he attempts. Everything he attempts that’s out of the wheelhouse can only really be described as serviceable at best. At worst, it’s just kind of outright awful. Those “It Kicks” are the worst offenders. Worth noting that The Miz started using those as a means of mocking Daniel Bryan in the late 2010s, but the thinking behind it was that The Miz was doing it out of spite instead of skill. They look fucking bad, and while Gunther doesn’t entertain them too often, he doesn’t exactly shrug them off either. In this match, at least, they’re presented as at least some sort of sensible strategy and attempt instead of the shameful parody that they were always meant to be.
Then there’s the hand work. Again, the offense itself is mostly fine, but boy is the structuring to get to that point not great. For one, Gunther chopping the ringpost is just a cliche of his matches by now, so much so that other matches make a very big point of how Gunther’s learned from this constant mistake. Utilizing it as a means for Miz to seize control here just feels odd and lazy. On the one hand, it would make sense that The Miz’s best shot at victory would come from Gunther screwing himself over instead of The Miz actually earning anything.
On the other, it feels more indicative of the match’s problem as a whole: The Miz just sort of plugging himself into tropes and moments done by his betters. They are superficial changes, shit thrown at a wall to see what sticks. I understand that that’s the actual story of the match as well, but The Miz is not up to the task of conveying that in a compelling way.
The saving grace of it all is that, The Miz really does eat shit through most of this. The hand work makes some headway, but everything else never really sticks and Gunther proves himself more than capable of surviving The Miz’s cheap attempts at progression. Still, he doesn’t survive it in nearly as domineering a way as feels appropriate. The Miz feels like he gets off easy in comparison, even as he takes a super decisive loss here. Much like Miz’s attempts here, it all just feels like a bit of a half-measure, an attempt at having and eating the cake. They get points for having the right takeaway, but the weirdness of everything else puts a ceiling on all this.
This isn’t the worst thing in the world, since it is still Gunther and it’s rare for him to reach “bad” even at his floor. But I’m not going to sit here and call The Miz a swimmer for dipping his toes in a dozen pools.
Rating: ***
