Last year, rumors spread like wildfire over the major changes to the WrestleMania 33 match card. Originally, John Cena was suppose to face The Undertaker at the grandest stage of them all, and rumors had it that The Miz was to defend (and lose) to a debuting Shinsuke Nakamura as well.
John Cena has made it known that he wanted to face Taker and now The Miz comments on how he wasn’t thrilled to about the match at first either:
"I didn't want to do it at first. I just didn't know if it would be good. When I go out there, I set out to do something memorable. Something great. And when I first heard the pitch of 'Hey, do you want to imitate them?,' I was like, "I don't know. I don't know if it'll be great. I don't know if it'll be good.' I kinda turned it down."
"Then I was driving with my wife and I was thinking about it and i was like, 'Maybe this could be good,' and I started doing how I would do John Cena and I just escalated it and Maryse just started dying laughing. If Maryse laughs at something, then it's funny because she doesn't laugh at anything. So I was like, 'Hmm, this is something. And then I started thinking of ideas on what it would be and I was like, 'alright we got something here.'"
However, The Miz changed his tuned once the build to feud began:
"It became fun. When my wife started doing Nikki, I was like, 'Oh my God, this is gonna be really good.' A lot of the stuff we were doing wasn't even written. We were just going off the cuff. And the way the editors did it, with the music, how it was shot, how it was filmed, everything clicked and it all worked out. When people first heard the match was John Cena and Nikki Bella vs. The Miz and Maryse, people couldn't stand it. They were like, 'John Cena should be going up against The Undertaker. The Miz should be going against A.J. Styles.' Everyone was upset, but then cut to three weeks later and everyone's talking about this match. Cut to WrestleMania, it's one of the matches everyone's looking forward to seeing."