Hey, WWE, We Need To Have A Conversation About Carmelo Hayes (And The Miz)

Earlier this weekend, Carmelo Hayes teamed with The Miz on Friday Night SmackDown and picked up his first win on a flagship WWE show since April. That’s right. He hasn’t won a match that wasn’t taped for the second tier Main Event show since he won The Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal during ‘Mania week. That’s almost four months, but nonetheless, there’s reason for optimism here. Let’s have a Carmelo Hayes conversation.

Attention WWE, Triple H, Bruce Prichard, Ed Koskey, Road Dogg, everyone else in the writers room, now is the time to push Carmelo Hayes, and The Miz is the perfect person to push him alongside. The crowd was very into Friday’s tag team match between those two and Fraxiom, and more importantly, they really popped for the finish in which Hayes dominated but The Miz stole the glory at the last minute. There is all the potential for a good program, and there’s every indication it will get over if WWE gives it consistent airtime.

Before we get into how this should play out, let’s back up real quick. Heading into WrestleMania season, it finally felt like it was going to be Carmelo Hayes’ moment. The NXT call-up was getting big singles matches against the likes of Cody Rhodes, Damian Priest and Braun Strowman, and while he was losing, he was looking good and building a positive reputation with the crowd. Then, we started getting backstage segments with The Miz, and it felt like we were going to get a fun mentor/ mentee program where the veteran selfishly used the start-up to try and rebuild his own career.

Or maybe their shaky friendship, which at first seemed toxic, would turn into a healthy dynamic that would see them accomplish great things. That certainly seemed like it was on the table when The Miz helped Hayes win The Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal. Unfortunately, the program was seemingly cancelled before it ever really got off the ground. The Miz accidentally screwed Hayes over during a match a few weeks later. Then, in real life, he left WWE for a few months to go film the reboot of American Gladiators, which he’s hosting, and Hayes kind of just floundered without him, sometimes going weeks without appearing on television.

Well, The Miz is back. This program seems to be restarting, and everyone involved should be stoked about the crowd reaction. Yes, it helped a bit that SmackDown was in Hayes’ hometown of Boston, but it also helped that everyone played their roles perfectly. The faces and little moments of character development between The Miz and Hayes were very well done, and the timing on the former stealing the win from the ladder was perfect. Fans are ready to watch this play out, and WWE has already advertised a match between the two and Motor City Machine Guns next week.

I can’t imagine how hard it is to be in WWE creative. There are a ton of fantastic performers who are worthy of pushes, and there is simply not enough television time (especially with SmackDown cutting back to 2 hours) to push them all. In my opinion, however, the writers need to make time for Carmelo Hayes. He’s one of the best in-ring performers on the entire roster, and while he hasn’t seemed as charismatic since getting the call-up from NXT, we know that charisma is there. He’s capable of so much, which is why he’s already shared the ring with so many main event guys, but for whatever reason, nothing has really popped yet (apart from that fun best of 7 mid-card series he did with Andrade).

The Miz knows what he’s doing, and he has a long history of making these unexpected partnerships work. There’s a reason why he’s one of the most successful tag team wrestlers ever and has had reigns with so many different people. He knows how to maximize his segments, and he knows how to get the crowd engaged in whatever he’s doing. You can already feel the crowd energy growing around this, and with Hayes’ in-ring talent, there’s the potential for them to put on terrific matches together every week.

I don’t know what the long-term play from the writers is here. There’s a path where Hayes quickly gets frustrated with The Miz and turns on him, leading to a short feud between the two. That’s probably the easier way, but I would like to see this play out over a much longer period of time. Tag team partners turning on each other and feuding is always more interesting when they’ve had a lot of success together, and the two of them can add a really fun new dynamic to SmackDown’s banger tag division, which doesn’t really have a duo with their energy.

So, here’s my pitch. Let this cook for awhile. Let Melo Don’t Miz start stacking some wins, and let them take the tag team titles off The Wyatt Sicks. Let them build some real momentum. They don’t need to be together for two years. At some point, we all know The Miz is going to betray Hayes or start treating him poorly, and they’ll have a feud to blow off all their animosity.

I'm not saying Hayes has WrestleMania main event potential like Bron Breakker, but it's easy to imagine a future in which he's a core part of what WWE is doing. WWE needs to be more proactive to help him get there, and The Miz is the right guy to pair him with. The first step is getting this tag team over. Then the next step is to use their inevitable feud to launch Hayes as a solo guy. Let’s let these two go to work and get there.