“I Thought It Was Never Going to Happen”—The Miz Makes a Brutally Honest Confession About His WWE Journey
For a WWE Superstar who has lasted more than two decades, headlined WrestleMania, and silenced nearly every critic, The Miz’s latest confession might surprise fans the most.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, the former WWE Champion admitted that for most of his wrestling career, he genuinely believed it might never work out at all.
According to The Miz, that doubt started almost immediately.
From the moment he took his first bump while training at UPW, reality hit hard. He questioned whether his body — or his resolve — could survive the grind of professional wrestling. What followed were years of frustration, rejection, and uncertainty as he desperately tried to get noticed by WWE, Japan, or anyone willing to give him a real shot.
Those early years weren’t glamorous. While fans today see a polished main-event star, Miz recalls bouncing between two completely different worlds. On one hand, he was speaking at college events because of his Real World fame, cutting promos as “The Miz” in front of thousands of students. On the other, he was wrestling in near-empty venues, back alleys, and tiny shows for $20 — or sometimes no pay at all.
The contrast was jarring. One night, he’d have a massive audience hanging on his every word. The next, he’d be performing in front of barely 20 people, just hoping to improve and survive.
Yet, in hindsight, those moments shaped him.
Miz now believes that juggling public speaking with underground wrestling crowds quietly prepared him for the pressure cooker of WWE. Every rejection, every unpaid match, and every awkward early performance helped sharpen the skills that would later define his career.
Two decades later, The Miz stands as one of WWE’s most durable and underestimated success stories — but even now, he admits the fear of failure was always there.
And maybe that’s exactly what kept him going.
