The Miz recently spoke with FOX News while promoting the upcoming season of MTV’s The Challenge: Champs vs Stars. The Miz is the host of the new season that kicks off tomorrow night; you can read a few excerpts (transcription credit: Bill Pritchard / Wrestlezone.com) below:
The Miz comments on how The Real World helped him later in life:
I was just a young kid from Parma, Ohio and I went to college at Miami University of Ohio. I remember watching The Real World 9, New Orleans, and I remember seeing a commercial come up that goes ‘do you want to be in The Real World’ and in my head I go ‘YES’… [the commercial says] well go try out, and I’m like ‘Yes’.
So I tried out for The Real World and I actually made it, and The Real World back then was one of the only reality shows out there. Now every place has some sort of reality show but that was the one, and 60,000 people used to try out for The Real World, and people would line up, and I remember people saying ‘you’re not going to make it, what’s going to stand you out from 60,000 people?’ And I was like, ‘I’m still going to try out and I’m going to make it.’
The Real World made me realize I could do anything that I wanted with my life. I remember going back to my Dad’s house in my bedroom that I grew up in, and looking in a mirror and asking myself what I wanted to do with my life. I’ll never forget looking at an action figure of The Rock that my Real World cast mates got me, and thinking ‘I’m going to be a WWE Superstar.’
The Miz reveals the craziest challenge he’s been a part of:
The craziest thing I’ve ever been apart of, and I don’t think they’ll ever do it again because it’s nuts, it was on the Gauntlet a long time ago, I’d say it was in 2003, and they allowed me to fly a plane. Granted, I was Maverick and the guy behind me was Iceman who lifted it off, but then I literally had a control that went [motioning] up and over, up and over. The object was to put the guy in a little [on-screen] box, and that’s when you know your aim is on target and you could shoot them down. So, that was the object and he goes ‘OK, the controls are yours’, and by the way, when you go back too far or over too far, you can stall out the plane. And it happened, it happened. So imagine how scary this is … we had to wake up at 4 in the morning to learn to fly a plane by noon. I slept through that whole ‘education’ on how to fly a plane. The only thing I heard was ‘pull back, go left.’ That’s all I heard. It was crazy, it was fun, and I don’t think they’ll ever do it on a Challenge ever again.
