The Miz and John Morrison - The New Edge and Christian?

The Miz defeated John Morrison cleanly in the curtain-jerker to last night's Bragging Rights PPV. The former tag team partners had a nice little three-week build to their match, a lot of that build being predicated on the team's split being like that of the Rockers, that one of them would end up being like Shawn Michaels while the other would be an abject failure like Marty Janetty. It was neat as a heat-generating device, and hey, we got a Janetty appearance on RAW out of it as well. While it was a great way to get the feud hot in such a short time, any comparisons to the real life Rockers might end at Miz's turn on Morrison at the draft. Of course, Miz didn't throw him through a pane-glass window, but yeah.

The better comparison might be to Edge and Christian, the team that arguably had the most talent out of the booming tag scene in the late '90s/early '00s in the WWF. Edge was always pegged for stardom solo, and Christian was always the sidekick, but in 2000, when they actually let Edge and Christian talk instead of just be gothy-looking background characters who wrestled and didn't do much else, Christian began to shine pretty brightly. He showed he was a better talker than Edge and eventually, as they split up and worked more in solo matches, Christian started to look like the better in-ring worker. Still, even as Christian's innate talents seemed to be greater, Edge got the bigger push, and with that push, he used his own considerable talents (Edge really isn't a slouch either on the mic or in the ring) to become one of the WWE's signature talents in the last five years. I attribute this mainly to Edge having the look that Vince McMahon wants in his big names. While Christian did ascend to main event status in TNA, well, main event status in TNA is like winning the Arena League MVP. I.E. it's not all that special. Being short and skinny didn't do Christian any favors when it came to his push.

Still, while he was never top of the heap, Christian was never, ever really forgotten either. He has been in high-profile matches and feuds and he's always been around gold, be it the Intercontinental Championship, the TNA World Championship or even now, the ECW Championship. He's one of the most beloved wrestlers across the Internet and he's always been varying degrees of over wherever he's gone. It's arguable that as he is right now, he's the most over wrestler in the history of the new ECW, and it's only a matter of time before he gets drafted or traded to a bigger brand to team or even feud with a returning Edge.

In that light, Miz and Morrison do seem to have similarities to the Canadian Blondes, mainly in body type. Morrison, like Edge, has that statuesque build to him. He looks like he should be a main eventer, and ever since he stepped foot in the WWE, they were grooming him for that spotlight. He was a multiple-time Tag Champion as Johnny Nitro and even before forming his tag team with Miz, he held the ECW Championship. After the split, as soon as he was transferred over to Smackdown, he was positioned as a face and put into high-profile matches against foes like Chris Jericho and CM Punk. He has to be considered one of the early favorites to win Money in the Bank at WrestleMania.

Miz, on the other hand, doesn't have the build that Morrison does. He's "husky", to use the term Morrison himself used on their Dirt Sheet segment a few weeks ago. He also has that bug-eyed thing going against him in terms of look. However, there's no doubt that Miz can talk circles around Morrison, and while conventional wrestling logic says that Morrison is the better worker, Miz actually has a much better grasp of the WWE main event style. Morrison is more of a spot monkey. That's not a bad thing; Jeff Hardy made spot-fu main event mainstream and somewhat acceptable to most wrestling snobs who got bored of Randy Orton's chinlock-a-go-go style of heel psychology. I think Morrison does it better than Hardy even... a lot better. That being said, that style of wrestling is more conducive to having a clunker than the grounded, grapple-and-strike based matches that Cena, Orton, Triple H, Undertaker and countless others who've made it to the top of the heap specialize in. Miz has proven that he can not only work well in that style with guys proficient in that style, Cena being the primest example, but he can even carry guys to really good matches, as he showed in the match he won the US Title from Kofi Kingston.

Still, it's as if the WWE does have more faith in Miz than what was initially thought after he was buried in his program with John Cena over the summer. He's come back with a US title win as well as a high-profile clean PPV pinfall over Morrison in a company that doesn't hand out clean heel wins to many people. You could even argue that the fact he was even programmed with Cena was a sign of faith from the WWE. Remember that Christian got a very big push at first, but he never really got fast-tracked to face anyone more than his brother or Chris Jericho, both of whom weren't as huge then as they are now. If Christian had never gone to TNA, I think he'd be a main eventer by now, but he saw the writing on the wall with Cena, Batista, Orton and others being groomed for a faster track than he and left for the other company.

That isn't to say that I think the Miz's career path will identically mirror Christian's. I also don't think that Vince McMahon has the same reservations about pushing Miz as he did and reportedly still does about Christian. However, I don't think there's any doubt that Morrison will be the one who gets on the faster track. For all his flaws, they could do much worse than positioning him as a top face quickly.

But however things turn out, I think it's pretty clear that the Rockers-as-a-model for Mizorrison works only in-character. Both John Morrison and The Miz are going to be mainstays on WWE programming for a long time running unless one or both of them fuck up vis-a-vis the Wellness Program (and Morrison already has one strike against him). While Christian hasn't become the star that his "brother" has, there's no doubt that both he and Edge provide the standard by which all tag teams who break up and see both of their members become successful in singles. In the coming years, the Miz and Morrison may just usurp them though.