This was a Title vs. Career match for The Miz’s WWE Intercontinental Title.
In writing about their previous piece, I’d like to think we covered just about everything about this match up and rivalry in 2016 that works. It’s one of the great WWE booking victories of the entire decade, and another late example of the machine working like it’s supposed to. One of those WWE things that you look at and go “yes, this is correct”, no matter what other fair misgivings one might have about something like Ziggler being made out to be a failure despite every effort made to undercut him for the last three years until he stopped even trying to have great matches, as if this is a reward for finally becoming a boring Company Man, the quality of The Miz’s wrestling, things of that nature. On the whole though, it’s just so well done. The act of producing relative gold where none existed before, leveraging the sort of innate feelings most people have about these two wrestlers and have always had and building something that feels real around them, it’s what this ought to be.
The story itself is perfect on virtually every level.
An annoying success who isn’t quite lucky, but benefits from every horrible system that has also constantly undercut a more talented generational peer, and insists on rubbing it in his face. Beyond a situation that just about everyone can relate to on some level, it’s some perfect pro wrestling bullshit, coward heels and underachieving people’s champion babyfaces, interference and cheating, and a classic title chase taken to the perfect sort of a climax for such a thing.
The match itself is not quite so perfect, admittedly.
There are things about this in a structural sense that don’t feel QUITE correct, in really small ways. Wasting an exposed steel buckle spot setting up a mid match nearfall off of Miz’s slingshot Liger Bomb. Having Ziggler need a rope break to survive the Skull Crushing Finale after the hairspray spot that we saw in their last pay-per-view match, which is not really a thing that ought to be done for a coward heel’s finish, on top making the nearfall less impressive for Our Hero. The finish is also a little weird as the referee ejects Maryse and the Spirit Squad for interfering, leading to Miz turning into a superkick for the finish. It’s not a horrible finish, but like with the foot on the ropes, it strikes me as understanding the utility of the spot on a fundamental level. Instead of Our Hero fighting off these odds and overcoming, solving his own problems, it’s an obstacle someone else removes for him, along with a distraction that sets Miz up for the coup de grace.
(Although there is something there, once again accidentally, that kind of sums the entire thing up, the feud and the WWE and people like Ziggler in general. Good enough to do it all along, it only happens for him again once the representative of law and order — i.e. the corporation itself — finally steps in and allows him to do so. It’s not a great finish, but it’s one of those brief little moments where the curtain slips and there’s a real clear message about what all of this is.)
Because of all the obstacles set up, the story told both over the last six months of Miz’s reign and in this series especially, it still feels incredibly good. What they have to get right, they get RIGHT. But it’s hard not to look at this, arguably something this great otherwise is even more liable to be like this than lesser matches, and see all the ways they could have gotten it absolutely perfect.
Speaking of this match in a purely mechanical sense too, of course, it is not exactly perfect. Not that you should have expected precise brilliance from these two. Predictably, that comes almost entirely from one side of this. While it’s a surprisingly tight match and a Miz performance with both a lot of energy and without too many errors, there are still those moments. Sloppy attempts at bigger offense (you can tell me this is a heat getting measure, doing Bryan’s moves poorly, and I am willing to give you that, but it doesn’t apply to everything else), and the occasional moments where he tries to work angry and vicious that never quite seem genuine.
However, he’s better than he’s ever been. Moreso than any match of his to date save perhaps the famous Bryan title switch six years prior, this is the least that The Miz has felt like someone pretending to be a professional wrestler and the most like an actual wrestler. It’s still not a perfect fit, but it’s a better one than he’s ever proven capable of before this point. The work is tight for the most part, and there’s that pep in his step that he never really loses throughout this match. Usually, being a WWE product through and through, you can see gears turning and a switch flips in the back half when it’s Time To Try, all of that. In this match, that switch is on at the start.
Dolph Ziggler is exceptional here, likewise delivering one of his more purely effort filled performances in the better part of two years. He’s such a likeable babyface at this point (a genuinely miserable heel from 2017 on, more of that classic good WWE booking outside of these accidental hot runs), and performs the role with such energy that between that and his opposition, it’s all just very easy. Beyond that, he’s asked to do some heavier leg selling in the back half and knocks it out of the park. There’s some vanity to it at times, never so much that it overpowers the story, only once again hitting that territory in which this match primarily resides, things mostly working out as well as they possibly can.
The match is not perfect, but something about just innately sort of works.
Mechanically, it is the best case scenario, as tight and coherent and great of a match as these two could ever have against each other. The story of it all just happens to be really mostly fucking great too, and ties that all together and elevates it just a whole lot higher.
When I write things about this match like that it was a classic display of age old pro wrestling ideas and the sort of storytelling that the biggest wrestling company in the world/of all time should be capable of, I don’t just mean all the payoffs they barrel over in the back half. Even at the start, when Miz almost immediately takes over because of Ziggler’s overzealousness, there’s something to it. Working smarter and definitely never harder, and wrestling his smartest match ever. When the second half hits and those payoffs start flying, they’re all great. The aforementioned skullduggery from Backlash that falls short now, all these little different fake outs and teases of things that work later on for both men, Ziggler using the Ruff Ryder in a moment of desperation, interference that doesn’t work and leads to a really exceptional second Skull Crushing Finale nearfall this time done correctly, and of course, the finish itself.
Flaws aside, it works for the reasons things like this will always work. Build up a loudmouth coward heel for six months with a title, have him constantly evade justice while talking more and more shit, make someone really chase him, and pull the trigger like they did here. It’s not to say these two didn’t do as great of a job as they could ever do given every possible limitation (it is still weighing on this, I think, that Ziggler genuinely did get beaten into the dirt from Jan. 2015 through August 2016), but it is to say that sometimes there really is a formula and that a well executed standard like this is a great reminder that wrestling is some combination of art and science, and there’s nothing wrong with that being closer to a 50/50 combination sometimes.
Ziggler gets his big win, and even though — like anything positive in the WWE, a heel territory through and through — it’s just for the moment, it is an exceptional little moment.
I don’t know if it’s the sort of a pleasure I ought to feel guilty about or not. I don’t really care. This match whips ass, it’s one of the all around highlights of 2016 even if it might not make a MOTY list cut. More importantly, perhaps the strongest statement yet of how these things, the old classics and standards can still work. While the year is riddled with these sorts of successes, perhaps none of them owes it success to these principals more than this match. A victory for the stuff in pro wrestling that’s always worked and will always work, moreso than almost anything main roster WWE’s done since.
HANDWERK 