Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
Throughout the history of pro wrestling bookers and promoters have always tried to come up with new, creative and innovative ideas to generate interest in their product. Some ideas have not only succeeded…but flourished. Others were DOA from the get go. Then there are those ideas which initially were innovative but, for various reasons, faded away. Those are the focus of this latest series of posts titled ‘Great Ideas That Didn’t Last’.
In 2014, the character of Damien Sandow was being transitioned from an intellectual gimmick to a gimmick where he would do impersonations each week. He impersonated several individuals including Vince McMahon, Bret Hart, Abraham Lincoln and Magneto from the X Men comics and movies. The impersonations seemed to be a hit with fans who enjoyed this different, yet comedic side of Sandow.
Around the same time, Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizanin was being pushed as an A list celebrity who appeared in several movies and TV shows. His new “movie star” persona saw him have his own assistant and make up artist at ringside (Played by the WWE’s future Sarah Logan). Damien Sandow said that WWE creative approached him and asked him to portray the Miz’s stunt double for a segment. Originally, it wasn’t meant to be a long term gimmick.
Sandow wasn’t given any creative direction on how to play Miz’s stunt double, so everything Sandow did was ad libbed. WWE fans took an instant liking to his portrayal of being a stunt double which had him mimic all of the Miz’s movements and gestures. When Sandow returned backstage, Vince McMahon approached Sandow and told him ‘Whatever you’re doing, do more of it next week.’ Sandow was given complete creative freedom with his new gimmick, which was totally against everything that WWE usually did.
Without much direction and with total creative license….Sandow’s stunt double character took off and got over big with fans. Vince was a fan of the work Sandow was doing and gave him and Miz more television time to do their stuff. According to Sandow, he and the Miz never rehearsed anything they did in the ring or at ringside before a show. It was all off the cuff and because of that…Sandow’s popularity grew organically.
He was renamed Damien Mizdow and he and the Miz would eventually capture the world tag team titles. The Miz would hold both tag title belts while Mizdow held a toy pair of the belts. The team would hold the championships for just a couple of months. The Miz was then becoming jealous of Mizdow’s popularity and dissension began to form between the two. This may have been art imitating life, because behind the scenes, it was rumored that some people may have started getting in Vince’s ear about Mizdow’s big push.
The Miz Mizdow partnership finally exploded at Wrestlemania 31 when Mizdow eliminated the Miz in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. Mizdow was red hot following Wrestlemania, but the feud between him and the Miz was poorly done with Mizdow losing the rights to the Miz brand after Summer Rae (Miz’s co star in the Marine 4 movie) interfered costing Mizdow the match. Just like that, his gimmick was killed off and Mizdow was once again a man without an identity.
He returned to being called Damien Sandow and eventually morphed into a parody of The Macho Man Randy Savage named ‘Macho Mandow.’ It never had the same reaction as Mizdow had and eventually that gimmick was killed off and WWE had nothing for him. He would be released from the company soon after. A wrestler who became popular on his own and became one of WWE’s hottest stars…”had nothing” to do and was released.
The 5th Horsemen
That was a great bit, which was probably due to them being able to improv it.