The Miz has struggled to remain relevant on pay-per-view without a championship

One sign that a WWE performer ranks among the most valuable stars in the company is when WWE will make sure to find an important spot for that wrestler on most pay-per-view (PPV) events even when that superstar doesn’t hold a championship.

CM Punk in 2013 exemplified this treatment, as he was placed in high-profile non-championship matches against the likes of Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, Chris Jericho, and assorted Paul Heyman clients. CM Punk was guaranteed to be involved in one of the most important matches of the night without a need for his story to revolve around a championship.

This brings me to the current status of the Miz. The Miz finds himself in an interesting spot now that he is no longer the Intercontinental Champion and doesn’t seem to be in the mix for the WWE Championship either.

I have been tracking data on all WWE PPV events since the start of 2013, and I found some interesting results when looking at the body of work for the Miz in that time. Here is a sortable table containing this data, initially sorted by Championship:

Here is a quick explanation of the table headers:

Match: A listing of the participants in the match or a description of the match

Event: Name of the PPV

Year: The year the PPV took place

Duration: Bell-to-bell match time, in seconds

Championship: Listing of the championship being defended

Type: A listing of any gimmicks or stipulations involved in the match

Meltzer: Dave Meltzer’s star rating for the match

Hour: This indicates what hour of the PPV that the match took place in. A value like 1.5 means the match overlapped Hour 1 and Hour 2.

Result: Did the Miz win or lose the match?

How has the Miz fared on PPV without a championship match?

The Miz has wrestled in 29 total matches across the main cards of all WWE PPVs since the start of 2013. 22 of those matches involved a championship (15 Intercontinental, 3 Tag Team, 2 United States, and 2 WWE Championship).

That leaves 7 matches for Miz that did not involve a championship. 4 of these 7 matches were Royal Rumble matches, and there was also an Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania 30. These are the types of matches that any breathing member of the roster has a chance to be involved in, and don’t give any indication that the Miz is a priority on PPV without a championship.

2 non-title matches remain: Night of Champions 2013 against Fandango, and TLC 2013 against Kofi Kingston. Both of these matches were essentially 8 minutes long and were not important parts of those events. These matches also rank among the lowest of the data set when it comes to Meltzer star ratings.

It’s also worth noting that when the Raw-exclusive PPVs from 2016 are removed from the mix, there are a total of 51 PPVs that Miz could have been a part of in that time. So there have been plenty of times when the Miz wasn’t involved in a championship match and was simply put on the pre-show or just left off the card altogether.

The Miz did wrestle in 6 pre-show matches in this time, not accounted for in the above table. This includes a traditional Survivor Series tag team match in 2015, the Andre Battle Royal at WrestleMania 31, US Title match against Cesaro at Royal Rumble 2013, Intercontinental Championship match against Wade Barrett at WrestleMania 29, a one-on-one match against Cody Rhodes at Extreme Rules 2013, and a one-on-one match against Kofi Kingston at Survivor Series 2013.

The “Hour” column of the table also shows that this month’s Elimination Chamber match was the only time Miz found himself wrestling in the third hour of a PPV, outside of battle royals.

This might not seem like an earth-shattering result. After all, the Miz quickly fell down the card in 2012 after his main event run in 2011, and the Miz benefited in a major way in the second half of 2016 when the brand split forced WWE to shine a PPV spotlight on more stars. This data is more of an indication on how the Miz has generally been positioned on PPV from 2013 through 2016 than it is a comment on where he is positioned right now. Current rumors suggest that the Miz is in a great spot right now because he has a high-profile non-championship mixed tag team match coming his way at WrestleMania 33 against John Cena and Nikki Bella.

That is certainly a strong sign for him on the surface, but keep in mind that the Miz was also used as a foil in a high-profile non-championship tag team match against the Rock and Cena at Survivor Series 2011. That greatly hyped match existed primarily as a platform to show off the “Never before, never again” tag team combination of Cena and Rock rather than giving Miz a permanent nudge up the card. Similarly, this rumored mixed tag team match with Cena and Nikki at WrestleMania 33 could be primarily about celebrating the duo of Cena and Nikki one time in a big PPV spot before Nikki moves towards retirement from the ring.

So I think the more interesting situation to keep an eye on is what happens to Miz in the aftermath of WrestleMania 33. Will WWE just shuffle him right back down into the Intercontinental Championship picture where he typically resides? Or has he now finally reached that permanent upper card spot where WWE will book him in an important match on every single PPV even when championships aren’t the focus of his story?

Do you think the Miz needs a championship storyline to remain relevant on PPV in 2017, Cagesiders?