The Miz Plays Homage

The Miz was, in a word, awesome in his Piper tribute
Photo Credit: WWE.com

The Miz, like Brandon Stroud put it in Best and Worst this week, is not so much a wrestling fan who got to make it big, but a dude who sat in front of the television every Saturday and Sunday morning for Superstars and LiveWire and all those recap shows, and then live every Monday night for RAW. It's the upbringing that informs his nose-up-the-ass devotion to the front office at times, but it also shines through at moments like Monday night, when he was asked to do a version of his wrestler-run talk show when the originator had just passed. The video can be found after the jump:

In a way, Miz's tribute to Roddy Piper highlighted the difference between WWE now and the company even as early as the first part of last decade. Everything has to be drenched in uniformity. Miz TV has aesthetic differences from the other talk shows since Abraham Washington's show was taken from the top of the stage. The old Piper's Pit and other shows like the Heartbreak Hotel and the Barber Shop had set pieces away from the ring that felt different from each other in layout. Giving Miz TV his own set and perhaps making a new, innovative layout isn't exactly the kind of thing that would save WWE, but rather is symptomatic of one of its major problems.

Honoring the most prominent mold-breaker of a superstar while stripping away any kind of unpredictability and edge from the show is an interesting juxtaposition. It'd be hard to say if Piper had more of a role in the company that things might have been different, but he came back whenever WWE needed him, and the company pushed him away any time he had an idea that rocked the boat. Corporatism and wrestling don't necessarily mix together, but that's what made Piper so great. He raised hell all while figuring out how to get Vince McMahon to pay him good money to do so.