No Chance – Truly One Nation, Under Punk

Columns

I want everyone to think back for a moment to a few months ago when we first heard the Rock’s music hit. Even sitting at home, I couldn’t help but let out a cry of excitement as I watch the Rock return to the ring and pick up a mic. It was like he had never left as he masterfully cut a promo on WWE golden boy Cena, and the WWE champion at the time, The Miz. After the promo I turned to a buddy I was watching the show with and said something along the lines of “See, this is the kind of mic work I want to see. It’s a shame that nobody in today’s locker room can come close to anything as good as that.” Well, now I can happily say that I was wrong to ever think that, because on Monday night, CM Punk cut a promo that made the Rock on mic look like John Morrison on mic.

Monday night may have been billed as “The return of Shawn Michaels,” but it was CM Punk who owned the whole show. We’ll get to his episode ending promo in a minute, but I want to start with his first appearance on the show. It was nice to see Michaels on the show again, and he seemed to hint that he would be returning, but knowing that he had a new hunting show starting really stopped any thoughts of that happening. Then Punk came out and the fun began. Anything said to Shawn Michaels at the beginning of the show will be lost to history in the wake of Punk’s show ending speech, but honestly, his first promo against Michales was a really great one. Punk has always been great as a heel because he reminds audiences about everything bad that their favorite superstars have ever done. We focus on Shawn Michaels having a lengthy and prosperous career, Punk focuses on the fact that he put that career on the line and lost. The whole segment ended with Michaels taking out the two lesser members of Nexus with a single kick each, but again, the night wasn’t about Nexus. It was about Punk.

At the end of the show, Punk, having caused Cena to loose against R-Truth, sat cross legged to begin what at first appeared to be a “You just wait until when I beat you” kind of promo. But that didn’t happen. Starting with Cena, Punk dissected him and past faces of the company, crediting their fame on their ability to kiss the ass of Vince McMahon. But he didn’t stop there. I watched Punk continue to do and say everything that I never expected to be on WWE TV. I sat slack-jawed on my couch, as I’m sure many of you did. Punk mentioned both Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar, spoke about other wrestling companies, trashed the business side of WWE, said the word wrestler, and was just about to start on the current anti-bullying campaign before he was finally cut off with a silenced microphone and an awkward cut to black.

After the show went off the air the big question seemed to be “was it real?” or “was it a scripted promo?” Some signs seemed to point to the idea that Punk had gone way off book while he still had a microphone and a national audience. For one thing, it still seems hard to believe that Vince would ever knowingly allow Punk to say half the things that were said during his six-minute tirade. And when it was all over, news arose that Punk had been suspended indefinitely, and that his profile on the WWE page had been removed.

However, after taking a step back from the whole thing, it seems fairly clear that the consensus is, the promo was a work. For one thing, as hard as it is to believe that Vince would approve a speech like that, it’s even harder to think that CM Punk wouldn’t have been cut off the second it became clear that he was not sticking to the script. WWE doesn’t seem to be a “let’s see where he goes with this” kind of work environment when it comes to live television. Also, there is the fact that Punk still took the time be a heel character and to single out the WWE universe as something he hated. (Not that it seemed to work, as much of the crowed seemed to cheer through the entire speech). Personally I think that Punk was probably given a rather long leash to air out all his grievances about the company, with the understanding, that he would be cut off the second it seemed like he was about to take it too far. (And I guess that the anti-bullying campaign was that line.)

The question now, for me at least, is what does this mean for Punk’s future at the company? Even at the top of the show, I would read too much into everything that Punk said, trying to figure out if his departure on July 17th would be for real or merely a bit of the storyline. But now the question seems more important. Why would WWE allow all this to be said on air, especially by a guy who was about to leave the company for good? Could it all be just to drive up the buy rates for a single PPV? To me that seems absurd, but it could be the case. I have often said that WWE was a fool for risking the departure of CM Punk. In the past I have had a list of reasons why the company should try and keep Punk however possible, but now I feel like I can point to a single six-minute segment as reason enough. When someone can make The Rock’s return, the second biggest event of the year, that’s someone you don’t want to lose.

I think every now and then, there is a moment in the career of a superstar, that if capitalized upon correctly, can cement an entire future for that star. If I may reference one more Attitude Era superstar, last night was Punk’s “Austin 3:16 moment.” And I want my “One Nation, Under Punk” T-shirt.

Unrelated thought of the column: I guess it’s not as unrelated this week, but I did want to take some time to look at the rest of Monday’s Raw episode. It may be because the past couple of weeks have had two hours of material stretched to fill three hour time slots, but this past week of Raw seemed fairly packed. Even the announcement of Money in the Bank contenders, which I expected to be dragged over an entire episode, was all mentioned in a lump. As if that was all the time that Raw could afford. We got the Sin Cara and Evan Bourne match that we wanted to see last week, and while I wish Bourne had walked off with the victory, it was still a great match to watch. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I was even a bit impressed by the new angry version of Mark Henry throwing Big Show through the cage. That’s right. Mark Henry did something impressive. I don’t expect that to last very long but for one night, it almost reminded me of the first invasion of the original Nexus.

Joel Leonard reviews the latest movies each week for Inside Pulse. You can follow him @joelgleo on Twitter though he's not promising to ever tweet anything from there. Joel also co-hosts the Classy Ring Attire podcast and writes the No Chance column on Inside Pulse as well.