Every time I see The Miz go out there and get his ass kicked in short order, a little part of me dies on the inside. Yeah, I am an unabashed Miz fan, so of course I want to see him look awesome as much as he can.
Obviously, he has to look “weak” from time to time. I realize this and know that everyone has to look weak on occasion, but that’s not why I’m sad when I see him flail out there with no story as the people who wail on him end up getting puffed up in the process. No, I’m disappointed more because WWE blew a big opportunity with him and R-Truth and their short-lived but really energetic and hot tag team The Awesome Truth.
[adinserter block=”2″]It started out as two guys disgruntled with their position in the company. They were shunted into a feud with the Tag Team Champions that lasted one pay-per-view cycle before moving onto harassing Triple H. They were fired within another month, then rehired after holding the company hostage at Hell in a Cell. Then, they turned to harassing John Cena, so much that he had to employ The Rock to help rid the WWE of this menace. Then, right after Survivor Series, after they were unsuccessful in their attempt to beat Cena and Rocky, Miz kicked Truth to the curb because of his Wellness violation.
Looking at the things that happened within the Awesome Truth’s story arc, yeah, there was a complete tale told there. However, most people will agree that it was totally compressed. That’s about a year of storyline material they ran through in 4 months. The big problem though isn’t that this storyline was ran through so quickly though. It’s that EVERY story nowadays seems like it gets rushed through. It has been since I started back watching wrestling in 2008.
Why does WWE assume its entire crowd is addled with ADD? That is the only explanation for how fast they rip through stories, and it really makes the quality of the show suffer. It’s not like they have bad ideas for stories. It’s just the execution is so sloppy, and it means that fewer and fewer guys are becoming memorable to crowds.
So, how can they do better? The first thing is to draw things out longer. They shouldn’t be afraid to let stories percolate over months rather than weeks. They also shouldn’t be afraid to take weeks off from their stories, to have one main event story be the focus one week and then have one of their famous recaps go the next week to remind everyone what happened while another main event story takes center stage.
[adinserter block=”1″]Again, these are things that have been said by plenty of people smarter than I over the last couple of years. It’s not anything new. So why does WWE continue to try and rush through things like they have to cram so much storyline material into their show-year? It’s ludicrous.
Obviously, the story might’ve been interrupted by Truth’s Wellness violation anyway, but still, the principle is the same. WWE has problems with keeping a greater audience than their baseline interested. They should look into maybe telling more engrossing stories in order to keep people watching past when The Rock leaves the TV screen.
Tom Holzerman is a lifelong wrestling fan and connoisseur of all things Chikara Pro, among other feds. When he’s not writing for the Camel Clutch Blog, you can find him on his own blog, The Wrestling Blog.
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