Booking to Potential – Booking to Awesomeness
Just in case you didn’t get a chance to check out the new Wrestlezone.com feature Raw Ladder by Chris Cash, by all means check it out. Maybe it’s a bit conceited on my part to assume, but it looks like someone’s been reading, “Booking to Potential”. Now if only I could get someone to read it who could offer me a salary.
*cough cough*
Oh well. It seems that “Booking to Potential” will continue to be a labor of love.
Or at least a labor of boredom while I kill time at my current desk job.
Ok, what are we doing here? Oh right, I’m supposed to talk about the Miz this week.
I’m not gonna lie, I don’t really know where I was going with that. The Miz doesn’t need me to examine what would book him to full potential. Why is that?
Mike Mizanin has decided that whatever he gets book into, he is going to make the most out of it. He has seriously stepped up his in-ring game, his microphone work, and his charisma, and has all the potential to be a top player in the future.
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We all should hate the Miz. And not in the traditional heel-heat sense. We all should honestly hate Mike Mizanin. After a short stint in UPW, he took the “easy-road” by parlaying his previous reality TV career into a spot on the WWE Fastpass program “Tough Enough”. By coming in second, the Miz impressed WWE officials enough to be given a developmental contract.
In case anybody doesn’t know, a developmental contract is the modern replacement of “paying dues” in a territory system. It’s a smaller amount of guaranteed money to be brought up and groomed to be a star of the future as opposed to actually working for it. Think of it like if FOX also had singing schools where they got their “American Idol” contestants.
I can tell you right now that I’m not a wrestler. I’ve never set foot in a wrestling ring. Hornswoggle could most likely put some serious catch and hook moves on me and I would swear he was Stu Hart. But I can tell you that for a lot of the boys in the back who have slept in cars, ate plain cans of tuna for thirty-four meals in a row, required $350 worth of medical attention after getting a $75 payday, and had to dust off and go to their day job the next day, they don’t like this whole developmental system.
Not to talk about myself too much, but I’m a weekend warrior performer. My band isn’t amazing and we’re not the next Zeppelin, but I do know that for what we do, we work pretty hard and so far have made enough money to keep gigging, selling shirts, and making CD’s. If you want to piss off the band mates or any musician for that matter, go ahead and bring up “American Idol” and how much stupid money people make for being glorified karaoke singers.
The Miz was given a one-way, first-class plane ticket to “I hate your guts” ville.
CM Punk had his share of locker room heat when he came in and he had multiple Five Star Wrestling Observer Newsletter matches by that point. He worked the territory system. He didn’t get a one-way, first-class plane ticket. He got a seven-year, back-of-the-bus by the toilet Greyhound ride through hell to make it to the WWE.
So far, the only Tough Enough contestants still active are the Miz, John Morrison, and Dolph Ziggler. Of those three, only Morrison was actually a winner of the competition.
Both Ziggler and Morrison are also seeing their star on the rise, but neither has taken the bull by the horns and commanded their career like the Miz has.
The Big Show, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho are all performers who have enjoyed longevity, drawn money, and earned the respect of their peers. They also have all served as fodder for John Cena. All have done their job of working to make Cena the biggest star in the WWE today.
