Calinger: McMahon screws C.M. Punk, WWE fans by pushing muscleheads
By J.W. CALINGER
ISL Correspondent
Call C.M. Punk what you will, but even when people despise him and wish he were gone, they usually have to admit he has a point. Arguably, his having a point is what makes people despise him and wish he were gone. Punk has the uncanny ability to take ideas that many are thinking but few are willing to express and voice them in a way that sells tickets and T-shirts. This gives Vince McMahon the ability to put him into the kind of angles McMahon dearly loves, the ones where people boo the heel mercilessly even though the bad guy is, at least partially, in the right.
Punk just finished his latest term as WWE Champion, the longest reign in over 20 years. Once again, he lost the belt, and once again, he and his fans, including me, have to settle for knowing he is absolutely right. Three weeks ago, on Raw, Punk dropped a pipe bomb that, as with his previous ones, probably included a lot of what he, many of his co-workers in the back, and many of us fans have been thinking for years. His match with The Rock Sunday night, and most of the events leading up to that match in the last six months, made his case.
In the latter half of Punk’s title reign, McMahon did everything he could to push Punk as the ultimate heel. In and of itself, this isn’t anything new. Punk has done his best work either as a heel or as an anti-hero. He took what I thought was a tired and unlikely angle, a group of rookies trying to take over the locker room, and he made The Nexus strong and convincing. Before that, he took the Straight Edge Society and did such an outstanding impression of a crazy cult leader that he was creepy – keep in mind, of course, that in that angle, he was partially in the right; as a man who drinks occasionally and smokes, I say a man who does neither at least has the right to think he’s better than I am.
This latest heel persona, though, was a completely different animal. McMahon did everything he could to tell the audience, You WILL boo this man. He’s gone with the flow before – The Rock and Steve Austin spent significant time as heels before McMahon realized the audience just was going to cheer for them and turned them face or anti-hero – but with Punk, McMahon didn’t give up.
McMahon turned Punk into a chronic complainer who spent too much time talking about not receiving enough respect. He had Punk verbally abuse Jerry Lawler, speaking badly about Lawler even while The King was recovering from a heart attack he had on air. Punk took on Paul Heyman, a known slimeball in the kayfabe universe or the real one, and he started having The Shield, a group of up-and-comers dressed as a police SWAT team, bail him out of every jam. I’m surprised McMahon didn’t tell Punk to yell at breast cancer patients wearing John Cena’s pink T-shirts at ringside. Punk’s work wasn’t nearly as good either; he went from beating Alberto Del Rio, John Cena, and Daniel Bryan cleanly to taking bumps from Goldberg Jr., also known as Ryback, until The Shield interfered on his behalf.
Meanwhile, McMahon wanted to continue to set up his dream match at WrestleMania, John Cena vs The Rock. Certainly, a title belt had to come into play. And so, Sunday night, Punk dropped the belt to a part-time worker who spends most of his time acting in movies or giving interviews from the comfort of his Miami home – as The Miz so aptly put it on a T-shirt, I bring it via satellite!, in order to give McMahon the juice-head vs. juice-head match he habitually pushes on the WWE Universe.
I can understand Punk having to drop the belt. He had a longer title reign, the announcers noted, than anyone else in the history of Raw. He was allowed to hold onto the best while he recovered from a legitimate injury. In one way, McMahon did show him some respect by keeping him as champion, even if it was partially because putting the belt on someone else for two months wouldn’t have been any better for the storylines.
That said, McMahon showed legitimate disrespect to Punk when he planned Punk’s loss to The Rock. He made Punk look bad, and not in the cool sense. Everything about that match was contrived to make The Rock look like more of a hero, in a match in which he already was a heavy popular favorite. The Rock was attacked three on one while the lights were out. He already had won the belt via a Vince McMahon ruling, but bravely refused to win that way, and he had McMahon re-start the match. Then he crawled into the ring and pinned Punk after a spinebuster and a People’s Elbow, the most overrated move of the 90s except for Scotty 2 Hotty’s Worm. Punk wasn’t pinned with a Rock Bottom, and he wasn’t allowed to execute a GTS on Dwayne Johnson’s handsome visage, unless he did it while I was talking to my buddies about how something was wrong with the match.
Even the moments before the match were over the top. I expected the usual Rock promo in which he apparently rolls an eight-sided die and spouts the corresponding catch phrase (1 = Roody poo, 2 = Stick it up , 3 = Millions (and millions), and so on). Instead, I heard him invoking his mother’s recovery as a motivational aid, complete with the obligatory cut to Mrs. Johnson cheering in the audience. I can understand exploiting cancer when the purpose was to raise money for a good cause and generate positive publicity for a franchise that is derided in some circles for being sexist and misogynistic, but this was ridiculous. The Rock talked about never giving up, apparently after watching John Cena put on his T-shirt in the locker room. Again, a clear popular favorite STILL had to do one more thing to gain the favor of the crowd, and make C.M. Punk look like – well, a punk.
Punk seriously is receiving a lack of respect – and, as he indicated three weeks ago, he isn’t the only one. Daniel Bryan put on what I’d consider the Match of the Year with Punk back in May, and he’s not only one of the most gifted technical workers in the company, but he had enough charisma to make both Yes! Yes! Yes! and No! No! No! into popular chants in a matter of weeks. What happened to him over the last 12 months? He had to lose to Sheamus, a popular musclehead, in less than 20 seconds at the last WrestleMania, and he’s spent the last few months locked in a comedic angle with Kane in which he’s been in anger management classes, and has won and defended the WWE Tag Team Championship in an accidental and dysfunctional manner.
If what Punk says is anything to go by – and I don’t see any reason for him to lie about this – Tyson Kidd is a workhorse, but I don’t see him in any good matches. Zack Ryder, after McMahon threw him and us a bone by putting the U.S. title on him, was stuck in a love-triangle storyline with John Cena, and now works mainly as a jobber. Kofi Kingston’s latest accomplishment was using an office chair as a pogo stick to stay in the Rumble; it was impressive, but it wasn’t the same thing as winning a match.
Meanwhile, the muscleheads are reigning supreme again. Cena won the Royal Rumble and will face The Rock in the main event at WrestleMania. Ryback ditched most of his repertoire and personality, and now is receiving the Goldberg Treatment, winning over every opponent in convincing faction with a shoulder block, a clothesline, and a suplex into a human torture rack into a Samoan drop, selling injuries only when triple-teamed by The Shield. The Rock, meanwhile, hasn’t come up with a new move in half a decade, and hasn’t come up with a new catch-phrase since 1999. He essentially wrestles when he feels like it, and he gives the same old promos and the same old matches.
The muscleheads wrestle second-rate matches and give interviews on auto-pilot, and the audience still will worship them and buy their T-shirts. Then, the audience will boo C.M. Punk, laugh at Bryan, and ignore Kidd. C.M. Punk called it exactly right, and for his effort, he’s treated the way the Trojans treated Cassandra when the Greeks left that horse outside the city. The only thing he said that wasn’t actually so was that the fans didn’t count. Fans count – or, to put it more accurately, McMahon counts them. Every Fruity Pebbles T-shirt, every Just Bring It sign, and every voice chanting, Feed! Me! More! is another piece of vindication for McMahon in his own eyes, and another little bit of encouragement for his practice of promoting the handsome bodybuilders over the able.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, those who can’t find Ring of Honor on our TV’s or find TNA no better, have to settle for being right, and hoping C.M. Punk finds another way to be the constant thorn in the side of the pretty and the bulky.
