On Monday's episode of Raw, there was a backstage segment that featured Intercontinental Champion The Miz, Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel. At first, the viewer sees a distraught Dallas fuming over his latest loss to Finn Balor earlier in the night. The over-the-top, goofy heel character is gone. As a former NXT champion, it's only logical for Dallas to crack with how his run on the main roster has gone thus far. Axel, a former Paul Heyman Guy and Intercontinental Champion, does his best to calm Dallas down before The Miz pokes his devious head into frame and makes them an offer they can't refuse — join his entourage. (Or wrestle the catering department backstage, it's their choice.)
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This episode of Raw will be remembered for the premature demise the Enzo and Big Cass partnership, but I'll remember it for that backstage segment between The Miz, Dallas and Axel.
You don't need to go searching for Dallas and Axel's win-loss record on Reddit to know that they have lost a lot matches in their career. The character that worked for Dallas in NXT at Full Sail University didn't work in front of a bigger, far-less-smarky crowd on Raw. CM Punk lasted longer in his first UFC fight than people Bolieved in the former NXT champion. Axel, like Dallas, never found the right character to get fans to appreciate his in-ring work. If you're good enough at your craft to get The Rock to work with you there just has to be something there. WWE's creative team never found it. They never found it for either superstar.
They may have found it with The Miz.
One of the greatest things about The Miz is, no matter what WWE's creative team tries to do with him, will always garner legitimate heat. There is something about his look, personality, whatever, that will always make it impossible for him to work as a babyface, but that's OK. Unlike so many heels and babyfaces in the company right now, The Miz's heel work is consistent, his reactions are consistent and his in-ring work meshes perfectly with his character: a good-looking troll that is just fun to hate.
Putting two floundering, frustrated characters like Dallas and Axel with a heat magnet like The Miz is a good idea, if it's done correctly. And it has — twice — even if WWE's creative team dropped the ball with what The Miz gifted them. Six years ago, The Miz fired Alex Riley after months and months of being his lacky, turned him into a fan-favorite babyface on Raw. (No, really, Alex Riley was *over* in 2011.) A few years later, he handed them a revitalized Damien Sandow who turned on the Hollywood A-Lister at WrestleMania 31 to yet another huge crowd reaction. This has been a theme of The Miz's career: He's so good at being a heel that anyone who partners with such an unlikeable character that they're always better off for it. He's the heel that ironically keeps on giving.
But the Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel characters have to continue to evolve. The anger and seriousness in Dallas's voice in that backstage segment is the start, but it's important that that new side of Dallas and Axel as tag-team partners remains. Like Drew McIntyre in NXT and Jinder Mahal on Smackdown Live, The Social Outcasts era must be forgotten. On the main roster, the serious, authentic characters is what works — leave the goofy, over-the-top stuff at Full Sail with the remains of Adam Roses's party bus. Dallas and Axel have to be more Cesaro & Sheamus, less Singh Brothers. The muscle for The Miz, not the joke.
And there is an opening. Enzo and Big Cass are no more, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson are floundering, Bray Wyatt longer has a family behind him, The Revival have missed time, even Heath Slater and Rhyno are ostensibly on the fritz. Dallas and Axel joining The Miz now is the perfect timing for The Miz's speciality, a Career Renaissance. You don't have to put the Raw tag team titles on them, you don't have to put them in a feud against the Hardy Boyz, but you do have to present them differently. You have to show the WWE Universe that these two above-average wrestlers have partnered with That Guy You Really Hate for the next year.
That's always been enough, and I'd bet on it being enough again because Dallas and Axel have talent. There is something there, and you could see it in that backstage segment.
Just don't call them Baxel.
