The Miz reveals how Vince McMahon helped him 'unleash his inner animal'

The Miz is one of the longest-serving stars in the WWE locker room, although his beginnings were not easy. In the podcast No-Contest Wrestling, he shared a little-known anecdote from 2010 that, according to him, marked a before and after in his career. On the same day he cashed in the Money in the Bank briefcase against Randy Orton on RAW and won the WWE Championship for the first time, Vince McMahon had organized a very particular promo class.

The "A-Lister" recalled how McMahon asked the wrestlers to explore their "inner animal" and, to achieve this, they had to improvise promos acting like dogs. Sheamus and Wade Barrett were some of those who participated in that unusual exercise, which caused laughter but also left a mark.

That day we had to bring out our inner animal. I saw Sheamus and Wade Barrett do promos as dogs. And when I got to the match, I was literally channeling an animal: I saw the injury and thought like a predator. When a shark smells blood in the water, it knows what its target is. That helped me get into hunter mode.

Miz explained that the class helped him focus on the opportunity and execute with an aggressive mindset the most important moment of his career up to that point: the successful cash-in of the briefcase against Orton in November 2010.

More than a decade later, that peculiar lesson from McMahon has become part of the story of how The Miz reached the top of WWE, reminding us that even the strangest exercises can make a difference in a wrestler's career.