The rivalry between The Miz and John Cena is still one of the best feuds of both wrestlers’ careers. Their back-and-forth lasted for years, gave many unforgettable promo moments, and even led to a WrestleMania main event.
The rivalry between them was built around competition, respect, and both men fighting to become the top star in WWE. Now, The Miz has revealed that a small side project helped kickstart his famous rivalry with Cena.
The Miz says WWE side project helped propel him to John Cena feud
Speaking on the Almost Athletes podcast, Miz talked about “The Dirt Sheet,” the online WWE show he created with former tag team partner John Morrison. According to Miz, the show became a huge turning point in his career.
“If you really want to go into it, the first show that was on WWE’s YouTube was my tag team partner at the time, John Morrison, and myself created a show called The Dirt Sheet, where we were like, ‘Man, people watch us and they see that we have great matches, but they don’t know who we are. Who’s our character? How can we get behind these guys?,’” Miz said.
Both of them started filming funny segments while traveling between WWE shows. However, not everyone backstage liked what they were doing.
“John and I were just driving from town to town because that’s what we used to do back then. Friday, Saturday, Sunday were live events, non-televised. So, we would just drive time to town, four-hour drives, and we just talk. And me and John created this show called The Dirt Sheet, which was kind of like talk soup, like in a little bit of like, ‘Hey, let’s have a variety show, a little bit of SNL. Let’s make people laugh, but like just make fun of WWE superstars.’ WWE Superstars did not like that too much. Let me tell you, it got us in a lot of trouble,” Miz recalled.
However, WWE management somehow liked the effort they were putting in.
“But the higher-ups were like, ‘Oh, these guys are taking initiative. They’re doing something more than just going on the show and that, and then I go home, and that’s it. We were putting the extra work in to make sure that the fans knew exactly who we are, and that helped us, propelled us to where we were,” Miz said.
Miz believes that the momentum from The Dirt Sheet eventually led to his singles push after he and Morrison split up. Soon after moving to RAW, he started working with John Cena.
“I split with John, went to RAW and started working with John Cena, the poster child of WWE. Now, I didn’t do very well in our first match, but then about a year later, I was in the main event of John Cena beating him and retaining the WWE Championship,” Miz explained.
The feud became one of the most important rivalries of Miz’s career. It kick-started in 2009 when Miz bragged about having a fake “7-0” record against Cena while Cena spent time out injured. Even after Cena returned and shut him down, the rivalry kept growing.
In 2010, Miz cashed in his Money in the Bank contract and became WWE Champion. By WrestleMania 27, he was defending the WWE Championship against Cena in the main event.
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