I dunno. What's Mercedes Varnado doing in the Impact Zone?

I FUCKING WISH !!!!

Mia Yim seems elated to be over there. Her point : "It's nice to feel like I'm respected as a human."

The sad truth is that Sasha Banks will probably come back eventually as damaged goods. But man, I'd LOVE to see her elsewhere. 

Looking forward to watching The Self-Destruction of Sasha Banks on Peacock.

Interesting development in the story now is that it looks like they left around 5pm, not during the show, and WWE seems to have false advertised the six pack challenge match just so they could badmouth them later. Both the match (with no producers/agents listed which is not normal) and the Becky/Adam Pearce segment were listed for the show prior. Seems funny to have a segment already planned to rebook the main event you advertised was happening. 

Good lord, they gotta make sure we know Orton stuck out the pain FOR DA FANS, with the "not like those ungrateful bitches" being left unsaid but assumed.

Becky must've watched Purple Rain before showing up for work based on her outfit. 

I have zero interest in today's episode, truth be told. However, I do enjoy Becky's fashion sense. The true visionary in that relationship.

Man, Seth and Becky's closet must look like a drug trip.

Miz saying the one thing he learned in life was to never trust someone with a neck tattoo got a pop from me.

Man, Asuka is the best worker on the women's side by a long shot. Her being gone made me forget how smooth she is. She's the best promo by miles too. 

Dude is one of the worst wrestlers on national TV today, the idea that he is as good as MJF simply cuz he makes stupid faces is comical. 

I dunno. A lot of that seemed on Cody, too. 

It's okay, Miz had to slow down to show that contrary to popular belief, he also makes mistakes (the bow and arrow is on Cody tbh)

Miz throwing weak kicks, botching the leapfrog - and the rollup at the end - and taking the turnbuckle bump like he was moving through quicksand was absolutely not on Cody

The bow and arrow seemed like a group effort in futility  to me,  but even if you put that one on Cody it wasn't Miz's best night.  He usually is better than that (weak kicks aside) so maybe it was just a bad day at the office.

One reason (not the only one) the bow and arrow was completely botched is that Miz can't bend worth a shit. Many physical and athletic elements are taken for granted or simply ignored (I blame the "lol mOvEZ" people) but guess what, everything that can help matters. In the many things he can't do well, bending is one of them. He's stiff as hell there. It's also difficult to put it on bigger guys, and I do think Cody did flubbed it before anyway. That being said, what followed is pathetic, it's WWE Diva circa 2005 level of incompetence. The guy has been wrestling for 15 years and looks worse than 6 years old rookies here. Sure, he had some good matches with Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins. Yeah, no shit he had. I could probably have a watchable match with them too. Sure, he's fun when he's interacting with his wife, but working with your super hot wife who also happens to have a great personality will do that to ya.

As far as Cody goes, he had it easy thus far working with Seth, who's a workhorse no matter what some people may think. Working with the Miz is not exactly the same as Andrade, Sammy, Darby or big brother, uh ?

BTW, saw a pic of Becky. She needs to do the Gangrel entrance now.

Part of being a good wrestler is being able to effectively work to your physical limitations and being cognizant of your opponent’s. Eyes should not be bigger than your stomach. 

Miz has never been good at bumping or taking an opponent's offense. Recall also the time he completely whiffed on catching an R-Truth dive. I suspect the fact that he can't even remember being in the main event of Wrestlemania due to the concussion he sustained during the match might have made him a bit gun-shy in that regard. Still, there's only so much you can do with someone with such glaring limitations.

Miz is not capable of much, and what he's capable of doesn't look very good anyway. It would be interesting (somewhat) to see if his so called "promo ability" would translate outside of WWE, when you're not fed awful WWE verbiage. Maybe he could ad-lib and talk well. Maybe he would come off totally empty and fake (which he already does in WWE btw, but it suits his character there I guess).

Miz is a classic example of the swinging pendulum of opinion. Miz was terrible to start, and as a result was a bit underrated when he improved (both character work and in-ring). But of course, that got spun into "actually, Miz is great!" when he was merely better than conventional wisdom. The truth is in the middle - he's a serviceable worker with a character that has value, particularly in the modern-day WWE. 

I'm not sure MJF is a ton better than him as a worker on the whole, but MJF certainly has a higher upside and has continued to improve. MJF has a ceiling unless he can demonstrate consistently that he can deliver a main event match, but he also has time to get there (I think he may have a similar trajectory to Jay White in that regard, where it takes him some time to really pull the heel work into the big match without it hindering the overall quality).

Miz can absolutely talk outside a scripted environment. Did we just forget 2016 and Talking Smack were things that existed and how that promo he cut on Bryan still holds up?

I think that what bubba Migs mentioned on the second paragraph is another parallel one can trace between MJF and Miz. Max is still putting things together, he still looks nervous in more high profile matches and occasionally he still goes for the lowest hanging fruit in promos (although he did get SO MUCH BETTER after the Punk feud in that department).

One thing I do think MJF has over Miz - and I say this as someone who's low on him and high on Miz - is that he started very young, essentially a teen. He's 26 now. When Miz was 26, he was basically a rookie, looking like a doofus and being overall pretty bad. Comparatively speaking, it's clear that one is better than the other at that given age. 

 

And yeah, in terms of physicality Miz is pretty much a stiff. No flexibility, no remarkable strength, form, jumping height, speed. I guess him being able to work around that for so long and so well kinda shows he IS very good!

For what it's worth, Joe Rogan once said that Miz was the fittest guy he ever saw on Fear Factor. It just goes to show that the baseline level of athleticism necessary to pro wrestle at a high level is a lot higher than many people think.

Joe Rogan says a lot of things. 

23 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

Miz can absolutely talk outside a scripted environment. Did we just forget 2016 and Talking Smack were things that existed and how that promo he cut on Bryan still holds up?

 

Wasn't that just one promo that relied a lot of using shoot elements and hoping Bryan would sell for it, only to immediately get outshone by Bryan?

Bryan actually walked away and then Miz spat fire.

3 hours ago, MoS said:

Wasn't that just one promo that relied a lot of using shoot elements and hoping Bryan would sell for it, only to immediately get outshone by Bryan?

Not really. Miz had just defended his title against Apollo Crews, who Bryan loved, and then Danielson went on to say that Miz embodied the soft style of wrestling, and called him a coward.

It felt real, but it didn't really rely on shoot shit. It managed to be pretty consistent with their previous history and with their on-screen characters.

 

I miss that show so much. Managed to make people feel so damn real. Renee was perfect in that role, too.