The Awesome Era

The referee's three-count ushered in a brand new era in the WWE last night, as The Miz successfully cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on WWE Champion Randy Orton! Enter the Awesome Era, which, in my opinion, is going to be truly awesome. Anyone looking for a picture-perfect example of hard-work personified need look no further than Mike 'The Miz' Mizanin.

I still remember the good ol' days of 2004 (holy crow, I did NOT realize it was so long ago...), in my mother's living room watching the $1,000,000 Tough Enough competition, and telling her to come check out the Big Show slapping the piss out of all these young, green WWE hopefuls. She was disgusted, and got mad at me. But I digress. One of those hopefuls was Mike Mizanin, already rocking his monicker of 'The Miz'. The guy had charisma, that's for sure, but he was definitely not in physical WWE shape, and certainly didn't possess any outstanding professional wrestling ability.

He, along with many others, was man-handled by the 500-pound Big Show, degraded by an irate Kurt Angle, made out with Mae Young (worst of all?), and went through extensive physical exertion only to be runner-up to the walking embarrassment that was Daniel Puder. He was eliminated from the competition, but far from defeated. The saying goes, "if you want something bad enough, you can get it" and The Miz is living proof.

He was eliminated from Tough Enough on December 16, 2004, but had made a lasting impression on the WWE. He worked his tail off under a developmental contract for close to two years, before making his WWE debut on Smackdown! on April 21, 2006. And from there on, we witnessed the non-stop growth of a young man who is without a doubt going to comprise the young talent that will be the future of this business.

For the most part, Tough Enough is completely despised by the men and women in the WWE locker room. Reason being that they all had to work their ass off wrestling on the independant scene in order to catch the eye of the WWE, and these guys are given a golden opportunity to compete against FAR fewer individuals, win a million bucks and be invited into the WWE. That's why despite the opportunity, most of them don't last (see Daniel Puder's appearance in the 2005 Royal Rumble, where he got the shit chopped out of him by Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Hardcore Holly, before being dumped over the side of the ring like a corpse, never to be seen again).

It's the guys that truly want it who will make it in this business, and it was obvious that The Miz wanted this more than anything. I mean, how amazing is it that in 2004 Mike Mizanin lost the Tough Enough competition to Daniel Puder, who didn't last a week in the business, and now, six years later, The Miz is the face of the company: the WWE Champion. I never thought I'd be able to sensibly use the words 'Cinderella' and 'WWE' in the sentence, but it seems appropriate now.

Way to go Mike, you are one of the few (lately) who TRULY deserve to have that belt around your waist, and you've convinced someone who has lost interest in the current product, to tune in once again. The company is in good hands. Scratch that, it's in AWESOME hands.