Smackdown Live - 3.19.19 (Kofi Kingston vs. The Gauntlet)

[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by ClockShot Has it been 13 years? Another reminder we're getting old.

Also, another reminder of all the years spent by the company spinning wheels while they focus on Cena or putting over Attitude Era or earlier stars in perpetuity.

I remember once upon a time, there were a few "nothing" matches between Dolph Ziggler and Kofi Kingston. I still consider them fucking great, and they're things that got lost in the shuffle to time. And that's a shame.

With proper effort and maintainence over some of the last several years, those two should be main event legends by now in a "who was the better multi-time champion to tear the goddamn house down" match in the spot on Mania where Bats and Hunter are now. Instead, one guy is "on hiatus", and the other is just now getting a main event push.

I say that to say Miz has been there through all that, and it's easy to forget about him, too. Say what you want, but he worked out as a talent way better overall than he ever should have. And it is very simple to overlook the fact that he was brought in pretty much because of his reality TV crossover appeal and has been around through a lot of pushes, depushes, hirings, firings, "firings", and forced retirements of people both more and less talented than he is, and done okay for himself in the long run. And Miz has done so in spite of working for a company continually trying to charge headlong into finding a new Hogan/Austin/Rock, while simultaneously more or less saying without saying (or sometimes actually saying) that nobody will ever be as good as they were.