WWE Rumor Mill: Major heel set to turn babyface

What’s the story?

With several big turns having recently taken place in WWE, the aftermath of this week’s SmackDown taping seemed to be testing the waters for one of the Blue Brand’s biggest bad guys to make a surprising babyface turn.

In case you didn't know…

In the past month alone, WWE has seen some major changes. Most notably, Dean Ambrose turned heel on Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan turned heel by cheating to win the WWE Championship from AJ Styles, Becky Lynch was misjudgingly turned heel before promptly being allowed to be a badass babyface, Nia Jax joined up with Tamina to join the Dark Side, and now Charlotte Flair has kind of turned heel.

With all of these new bad guys and bad gals, that opens up a space on the other side of the fence. The Miz is a former WWE Champion; one who headlined a WrestleMania as he defeated John Cena to retain the gold. As fans gained an appreciation for Mike Mizanin, The Miz would eventually turn babyface towards the end of 2012.

Unfortunately, The Miz as a babyface just simply didn’t work. Ric Flair gave him the Figure Four - which proved pointless - and even though that babyface run saw a couple of title runs, fans were soon well aware that he worked far, far better as a nefarious bad guy.

In the last year or more, The Miz has again managed to position himself as an A-list talent, a top star, and one of the most hated men in the business. More importantly in an industry where it's getting increasingly hard to get properly booed, The Miz has managed to do that on a weekly basis. However, that may soon be about to change.

The heart of the matter

As ever, this week’s SmackDown Live taping saw a dark match take place after the TV portion was done and dusted. And it’s there that we saw the waters being tested for a Miz babyface run.

For those not in attendance for the SmackDown taping, this first came to light on the PWTorch’s post-SmackDown show.

The Torch output itself is so often must-listen, and this time out we heard Wade Keller speaking a correspondent who was in the crowd for SmackDown. This correspondent went on to explain how the dark match saw Daniel Bryan going up against his longtime nemesis, The Miz.

What was most interesting about this is that The Miz took on the babyface role, engaging with the crowd, hitting several babyface spots, and then being given the task of sending the fans home happy.

By that, we don’t mean that The Miz got the fist-pumping win, but more that he was literally given the job of taking the mic and wishing the watching audience a safe trip home. To put that into perspective, that’s been a job that has always been reserved for the biggest babyface on the show, such as John Cena, CM Punk, Roman Reigns, and, ironically, Daniel Bryan.

The hometown boy (by the way of (all places) Ohio) was cheered so hard. Not even Rey was cheered that hard, and this was @mikethemiz being cheered in a dark match. Thanks for this, best GM ever, @RealPaigeWWE! #SDLive pic.twitter.com/ATlkA2BIHT

— Hector (@edgehaedjr) November 21, 2018

What's next?

Right now, Daniel Bryan is set to defend his WWE Championship against AJ Styles at the TLC PPV, but after that you have to question what's up next for the newly-turned Bryan.

On the babyface side of things, Bryan's options are Rey Mysterio, Jeff Hardy, or possibly Rusev. Rey’s feud with Randy Orton has only just got going, a feud with Jeff doesn’t seem all that interesting, and the WWE has seemingly once again put Rusev on the backburner.

How do you resolve this conundrum? Why, once Bryan and Styles get finished with their feud, surely a full babyface turn for The Miz makes perfect sense. Whether that happens, mind, we’ll have to wait and see.