Why did The Miz win the Intercontinental title at WrestleMania?

If you watched WWE.com’s WrestleMania 29 pre-show this past Sunday, you would have seen The Miz become the Intercontinental Champion once more, defeating former champion Wade Barrett to regain the title he lost last year. This in itself isn’t that surprising. Miz has been the Intercontinental Champion before, and has held several other singles titles prior to that. What is surprising is why he was given the belt in the first place when, just over twenty-four hours later, Miz dropped the belt back to Barrett in a rematch.

Yes, if you missed RAW last night, you missed Barrett winning the title back from Miz to become a 3-time Intercontinental Champion. Now, my question about the whole situation is, why?

Do not get me wrong; I am happy Barrett is holding the championship once more. I have made it no secret that I am a huge fan of Wade Barrett, while it’s been even less of a secret that I have never once been a fan of Miz. However, I’m also a fan of infrequent title changes and long runs with the belt, rather than playing “hot potato” with championships. So, why did Miz win the belt only to lose it a day later to the guy he beat?

Wrestling promotions have done this in the past, and I’ve never understood it. If you’re going to do a title change, fine, but what is the point of having the new champion drop the belt the next day, especially to the guy he just beat for it? It renders the entire initial title switch completely meaningless. In this case, I guess you could say it would be so that Miz had his WrestleMania moment for the year, but even then, this really holds no weight. Generally speaking, most fans who order the pay-per-views don’t watch the pre-show, so only a fraction of the people who saw WrestleMania 29 (not counting those in attendance) actually saw Miz win the title.

You can’t use the “testing the waters” excuse either, as Miz has been champion before, so they’ve already been tested. There really is no logical reason for this. The fact is, Miz has been a dud ever since turning face last year, and has also been on somewhat of a PPV losing streak the entire time. WWE seems to have lost a lot of faith in a guy they once put the WWE title on, so why did they decide to throw him a bone this time, only to rip it right back out of his mouth?