The Lunatic Fringe is in his 2nd reign as the Intercontinental Champion and has been enjoying a good past few months as of late, considering his championship wins.
However, his reign as the Intercontinental Champion has been rather stale, and here are a few reasons why he should drop the belt as soon as possible:
#1 The Miz’s relevance as the Intercontinental Champion
The Miz has had 4 title reigns as The Intercontinental Champion from 2012-2015, but none of these reigns have had as deep an impact on his career as his 5th reign. He started off on Talking Smack! by responding to GM Daniel Bryan’s remarks on his in-ring style, claiming it as being soft and weak.
Also read: WWE Rumours: Officials concerned over Dean Ambrose as the Intercontinental Champion
Then, The Miz started mocking Daniel Bryan in the ring, during his matches, in his promos and he didn’t back down from making it a bit too personal with Bryan and Ziggler either. In his matches, he raised the bar for what a heel champion should be like.
With that, he brought a lot of attention to the title, something that Ambrose hasn’t been able to achieve in his two reigns as Champion.
#2 Dean’s WWE title chase is still fresh
Dean Ambrose had been chasing AJ Styles to regain the WWE title just a few weeks back and that is very fresh in the memory of the WWE Universe. In that time, he almost brought back that sense of lunacy that had made him such a fan favourite in the first place.
So, to suddenly have him become the Intercontinental Champion heading into Royal Rumble without having to put in much of an effort to beat The Miz who had been the champion well over 180 days, not only belittles his credibility as a top superstar but also diminishes the value of the Intercontinental Championship.
Moreover, Ambrose just hasn’t been able to peak like The Miz has, both in the ring and on the mic.
#3 The Foundation of the feud
The whole foundation of this feud was built around The Miz insulting Renee Young; Dean Ambrose’s real-life girlfriend, publicly.
It isn’t all that surprising since the Smackdown Live creative team has never been shy of using the real life circumstances of their superstars to add new angles to a storyline and here, the whole foundation was based on The Miz commenting on Dean’s off-screen personal life.
So, it is perplexing to see that the creative team hasn’t had Renee get more involved in the storyline and what’s more intriguing is the fact that they quickly added the Intercontinental Title into the mix and had Ambrose win without much of an issue.
#4 Who’s being benefitted from the feud?
It’s really confusing to know who is being benefitted from this feud.The Miz has been brilliant as a top heel with the belt around his shoulder but dropping it to Ambrose all of a sudden without much of a build-up hurts his credibility as a top heel while trying to reach the top of the mountain.
On the other side, Ambrose has always looked his best while chasing after the championships and displaying the full depth of his “Lunatic Fringe” persona. So, to have him win the title almost just like that puts a dent on his career moving forward.
And, in the Dolph Ziggler-Miz feud, they had so much animosity between themselves, the WWE even brought back the Spirit Squad; something that the WWE doesn’t do too often.
It’s clear that WWE would like to forget about Ambrose’s career in CZW but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t work other angles on Ambrose to make the rivalry seem more personal.
While Ambrose has been good inside the ring, his mic work hasn’t reached the potential of The Miz in this feud so The Miz has had to do a lot of the work on the mic to carry this feud forward.
Also, both these superstars are former WWE Champions. The Miz has been in the WWE for 10 years and Ambrose has also been in the WWE for nearly 5 years and it’s easy to say that both of them are well-established superstars.
The Miz’s title reign was going to be a huge launching pad for him to get back into the WWE Championship scene; which could’ve done wonders for what has been a very good WWE career, but they instead have him feuding with and dropping the belt to Dean Ambrose; which basically doesn’t make much sense.
Generally, superstars win the secondary titles first and then go on to the main event scene but Ambrose was already in the main event scene and to have him come back to the secondary title really add up.
So it can’t be made certain as to who is getting the benefit from this feud.
Looking through this angle, this feud has been rather stale and has been lacking direction to the extent that it’s unclear if Ambrose should be champion after Royal Rumble. But, what could make sense is to have The Miz win the title back and continue his pursuit of being the top heel.
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