5 Best Options to Challenge The Miz for IC Title at WWE No Mercy 2017

The card for WWE No Mercy 2017 is starting to fill up, but one of the matches still yet to be decided on is who will challenge The Miz for the Intercontinental Championship.

This week's edition of Monday Night Raw saw Jeff Hardy's title shot go awry, opening the field up for any number of potential competitors to fill in the blank as the next person in line.

After the abysmal situation surrounding The Miz at SummerSlam, more care needs to be taken to ensure something equally or more damaging doesn't happen again at the next pay-per-view.

This means WWE cannot simply wait until the go-home episode of Raw to announce something the company has put little to no effort into planning—or worse, decide at the last minute a day or so before the event.

When deciding the best course to plot, it's important to remember how limited WWE's options really are at the moment.

Some Superstars are injured, others are already involved in storylines and some of the best possible choices are currently over on SmackDown being wasted, so these conditions aren't ideal.

Still, there are a few decent ways WWE could handle the Intercontinental Championship title picture for No Mercy, so let's take a look at some of those options.

5. Someone out of Left Field

Credit: WWE.com

Seen here, The Miz is quite literally looking to his left in shock and awe.

When in doubt, do something nobody is expecting.

Since The Miz has no clear path laid out in front of him, why not take advantage of that and play up the unpredictability of the title hunt by pulling someone completely random out of nowhere?

This could be someone who participated in the Battle Royal or it can be someone who hasn't been close to the belt in months, if ever.

Nothing ever happened with Goldust's tease for SummerSlam, so perhaps that story can be reignited and twisted into something with the title that The Bizarre One held thrice before in his career.

Elias is becoming a bigger and bigger player on Raw and still hasn't been able to sink his teeth in any feuds, so if he's going to continue to live up to his namesake as The Drifter and float between feuds, a quick program for The Miz's belt could be interesting.

Darren Young is also ready to return to in-ring action, and if he's going to have any momentum behind him, applying it to something of an open challenge akin to AJ Styles and the United States Championship could be a good opportunity to generate similar excitement.

There's also the possibility of bringing someone up from NXT like No Way Jose as a random challenger to the title, if not just to pop the crowd momentarily by introducing someone new into the fold.

Anything that gets the audience invested and curious in a positive way will be a good thing for The Miz, who could easily retain his title and continue his reign toward a more stable feud for TLC and onward.

4. Nobody at All

Credit: WWE.com

The rules in WWE are about as rigid as Silly Putty in that whenever the writers want to get around certain ideas, they keep things flexible or simply ignore what's previously been established.

Something that has been brought up from time to time is the concept that championships must be defended every 30 days or the titleholder faces a possible consequence of being stripped of the belt.

Of course, when it comes to someone like Brock Lesnar, this is never brought up during the multiple months he takes off, but this idea can be utilized in a beneficial way for The Miz when it comes to No Mercy.

Since he just defended it against Jeff Hardy on Raw, The Miz could have a case to make that he doesn't need to have a match on September 24, as that's not past the 30-day mark.

This could even be a storyline wherein he feels so disrespected by the way he was treated at SummerSlam—where the title wasn't even on the line and the champion was on the pre-show in a nearly empty arena—that he refuses to compete as a protest.

Very few characters could get away with such a storyline, but The Miz is one of them, particularly as he could be featured on the card in a Miz TV segment where he can still make an appearance and contribute some way for the event.

There are plenty of bad options WWE could decide for The Miz's challenger, and sometimes it's better not to have something than to be hindered by a bad choice.

3. The Hardy Boyz

Credit: WWE.com

By far the easiest option is for one of The Hardy Boyz to face The Miz at No Mercy, based on their recent interactions.

Admittedly, this is somewhat lazy, as it follows the standard operating procedure of having a challenger get screwed out of a win only to request a rematch.

Maryse's interference could be brought up as the impetus for this feud to continue and for Jeff Hardy to get another shot at the title without having to put much effort into crafting a whole new feud.

Alternatively, WWE could simply have Matt Hardy finagle his way into a title opportunity, piggybacking off his brother's failure but keeping the program within the same couple of people.

It's a rarity in the company's history, but if WWE wants to spice things up, there could even be some kind of a handicap tag team scenario where the title is on the line with both of The Hardy Boyz facing The Miz, Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel to further drive home how much The Miztourage is depended on.

This program with The Hardy Boyz isn't burning like the brightest fire in the professional wrestling industry right now, but it could still keep the crowd's attention for one random event before something better is available for October and the rest of the autumn and winter months.

2. Jason Jordan

Credit: WWE.com

Surprisingly, there hasn't been much—if any—closure to the feud between Jason Jordan and The Miz that started well before SummerSlam.

While The Miz was busying himself with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, Jordan inserted himself into the situation and quickly took over as The Miz's next challenger.

Somehow along the way, The Hardy Boyz got involved and instead of having a title match, Jordan ended up losing to The Miz and his partners on the pre-show of SummerSlam in a six-man tag team bout.

This was followed up with a quick, passing mention in a backstage segment where Jordan said he would eventually get back around to The Miz in the future, which appeared to brush the feud off for now while WWE focused on other stories for the two.

However, what has happened since then?

The Miz has bounced around with Roman Reigns, John Cena, Samoa Joe and The Hardy Boyz with no obvious next step in mind—hence this article's purpose.

Meanwhile, Jordan hasn't started a new feud with anybody and has been having a series of random matches with people like Cena and Finn Balor in losing efforts.

Perhaps it's time for Jordan to get back on the winning side and earn a rightful title opportunity to at least finish what he started, even if he comes up empty-handed.

Having some finality to this feud one way or another will do no harm and only help Jordan's future, while The Miz will remain virtually untouchable, win or lose.

1. Samoa Joe

While it doesn't make much sense right now as far as storylines go, the most interesting option of them all would be to see Samoa Joe take on The Miz at No Mercy.

Something has to come out of their inclusion in the promo between John Cena and Roman Reigns, doesn't it?

Since we know Reigns and Cena will be going at it, that leaves The Miz and Samoa Joe out in the cold as bit players who were there just to lose to the two bigger stars, which is a hard pill to swallow, considering how fantastic they are.

WWE could have easily gone with a distraction feud to stall things between Cena and Reigns, primarily with having The Big Dog fight The Miz while Cena had a match with Joe at No Mercy, but opted not to go in that direction.

Maybe, since that wasn't the plan, there was an idea in mind to have The Miz against Joe for the Intercontinental Championship.

We may never know if that is the case since Joe is currently healing from a knee injury that should be keeping him out of action for up to six weeks, per Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com.

Assuming he is able to return to the ring in time, this would be a match that fans haven't witnessed before and the outcome would be particularly hard to predict, seeing as how The Miz has been on fire but it would be difficult to imagine someone as imposing as Joe taking the loss.

Whether this is the best choice for the entire future of the title would be a gamble, but at least in the sense of doing something refreshing and new, Joe would certainly be the most fun challenger of the bunch.

Who would you like to see The Miz face at No Mercy for the Intercontinental Championship?

Tell us your suggestions and predictions in the comments section below!

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.