The Miz has discussed what Vince McMahon’s initial assessment of him was during their first sit-down meeting together in WWE.
Miz came to WWE after catapulting to fame as an early reality TV star. Starring in MTV’s The Real World in 2001, he went on to star in several spin-off series of the original show.
The Miz’s WWE journey began in 2004 when he took part in the fourth season of WWE’s own reality series Tough Enough. Although Miz did not win the series, he had done enough to earn a developmental contract with WWE.
Speaking on his WWE 24 special, The Miz revealed that WWE Chairman Vince McMahon had a very specific role for him in mind.
Miz explained:
“So then I get a call from John Laurinaitis, who’s the head of Talent Relations, and he goes ‘Miz, Vince would like to see you’. Like oh my God, this is my first sit-down with Vince McMahon, so I knock on the door, ‘come in!’, ‘err, yes sir!’. I go in, I sit down, he goes ‘I see you as the Ryan Seacrest of WWE.’”
“When you want to be a WWE Superstar, that is not what you want to hear. You want to hear like ‘I see you as the next Rock, as my next WWE Superstar, my main eventer, my money guy, this is the guy that’s going to put asses in seats’. That’s the kind of thing you want from Vince McMahon, not ‘we see you as the host’. And a couple of months later they said they wanted to make me the host, of the Diva Search.”
Miz did debut on WWE television in June 2006 as the host of SmackDown. One month later he would host the Diva Search competition.
Fortunately for The Miz he then began to compete more seriously in the ring, going on to have one of the most decorated careers in WWE history.
During the documentary Miz also touches on his ability to make a poor first impression and how that caused him all sorts of issues in WWE.
Credit: WWE 24 available via Peacock or the WWE Network