A True Cult of Personality

CM Punk’s return to WWE very well may be the biggest story of 2023, and anyone who has thoughts about pro wrestling has some to say about it. To do that in this space, Tanya of the Suplexes and Shea Butter Podcast has once again lent us her talents. You can find her at @TheWitchMilitia on Twitter. Check out her previous work on The Bloodline Saga: (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, and Part 5 here.

Let me start by saying that I am a fan of Phillip Jack Brooks, more widely known in entertainment as CM Punk. I first became familiar with the man as a casual fan in the late 2000s when he won the Money In the Bank match at WrestleMania 24, being a semi regular watcher at the time. I did not become a fan, however, until much later during his Straight Edge Society run.

My initial thoughts on Punk were that he was spectacularly average in the ring. Not that impressive physically but good enough to tell the story in the ring that needed to be told. What always stood out about him to me were two things: One, he was very handsome in an understated, approachable way and two, his skills on the microphone stood head and shoulders above nearly all of his contemporaries.

Punk’s biggest asset is his gift of gab. The tone of his voice, the cadence in which he speaks, and the words he chooses are all top tier. He could have made a fabulous politician with the skills in which he is able to move large crowds of people with his words. Getting people to shave their heads for him during the SES era never seemed far fetched for this reason. Having masses of wrestling fans in the palm of his hand seemed like child’s play to him, like it just came naturally.

The Summer of Punk in 2011 is when I realized that Punk was a con artist, one of the best the wrestling business has ever seen, on the level of the Flairs, Rhodes, and Hogans of the World. Some of you familiar with my writing are already aware that I feel this way about Punk. But you may not realize that I mean this with the utmost respect for the man. Wrestling itself is a con, one where the mark, the fans, are aware of the con. That was not always the case and, when it wasn’t, guys like Flair, Rhodes, and Hogan had folks eating from the palm of their hands, shelling out untold sums of money for the con. They made you believe that the guy you see on TV was that guy in real life.

MOST modern wrestlers biggest struggle is getting fans to believe this premise. Punk will never have this issue. The fans buy into Punk a hundred percent. No matter what role he plays. No matter what he says. The crowd believes him. That’s very hard to do. Not everybody has that.

Here is the issue with Punk: he is not that different from other wrestler as far as motivations go. He had been , for years, positioned as “the voice of the voiceless”, a rebel. Someone who “organically” got over with the crowd and that management only begrudgingly pushed. But this is not true by several accounts.

Punk was Paul Heyman’s personal project when he ran the WWE version of ECW. He would pass out signs for Punk to the crowd and hired plants to cheer for him. After Benoit committed double murder-suicide, it was Punk who was made champion and sent to do media to rehab the image of the company and wrestlers as a whole. Punk and Vince McMahon used to text each other on their personal phones. Punk was able to, in an environment where storylines were heavily scripted, write his own storylines and promos. The main issue seemed to be that there was always someone MORE important than Punk, not that he wasn’t important at all.

Let me be clear: I do not fault Punk for walking out of WWE in 2014. He was burnt out and sick. He needed that time off. But he had every intention of returning. He never wanted to leave WWE. They fired him. On his wedding day. I can understand holding resentments towards the company for that.

What I do not like nor respect is, when things are not going Punk’s way, he behaves bratty and seems to take his frustrations out on people who do not deserve his vitriol. The Miz getting a WrestleMania main event. Roman Reigns getting a main event push. The 2022 All Out media scrum. Those are just three examples of Punk using that mouth piece to “air people out” when it was not called for and makes him seem, in my opinion, grossly unprofessional and selfish.

Before my thoughts on “Brawl Out”, let’s discuss the elephant in the room. I am a huge Roman Reigns fan who endured every second of his backlash as a main event face. I do not blame Punk for fans turning on Roman. I think that would have happened anyway because Roman was miscast in his role. What Punk did do was make a meme out of it. It was fuel to the fire. He made it comfortable and cool for OTHER WRESTLERS to shade Roman to pander to the toxic segment of fans. As Roman himself put it, he made Roman’s job harder. And he was still shading Roman as recent as 2020. But I am used to wrestlers being professionally jealous of my fave now so it’s no big deal. As far as I am concerned, that podcast with Colt Cabana is water under the bridge. 

Speaking of Colt Cabana, I think he was used as a scapegoat by the Elite to attack Punk. It is my belief that the EVPs thought Punk had come to AEW to play All Elite Friends and help them be the top guys. And they got the wind knocked out of their sails when they realized that, no, Punk came to be THE GUY and finally be the main priority of a promotion and was not interested in whatever agenda they had going. And I do not blame Punk. It was the only thing that had eluded him in WWE. Being the true number one.

While I do feel like Punk was right to be upset with the games being played with him as far as the “leaks” to wrestling media are concerned, I still think his actions at the scrum, sitting next to his clearly uncomfortable boss, were unprofessional and would have been better handled privately. He claimed to work with children but what he did was not mature either. And, where I’m from, if you say “If you don’t like it, come see me.” Thems fighting words, baby.

My opinion of AEW is totally biased. I do not think they are being run in a professional manner whatsoever and Tony Khan is clearly out of his depth with handling a professional wrestling locker room. I also think this is how Punk grew to feel working there and that is why he behaved the way he did. Punk is someone who will push the limit of what he can do but only when he feels justified. I don’t necessarily think his actions alone caused his dismissal from AEW. However, if he still wanted to be there, he would be. He would have reacted at the scrum, and later Wembly Stadium, differently.

Which brings me to Punk’s return to WWE. I realize a lot of people do not know that Punk was in talks to return to WWE before going to AEW but talks fell through. Knowing this, I am not that surprised that he returned. And, to be honest, I do not care if he is sincere about “changing”. The man is good TV no matter where he works. I feel like WWE wrestlers aren’t scared to take a punch so I am not concerned about him fighting. The man at one point considered his entire career a failure because he never got to main event WrestleMania. In my head, I feel like WWE guaranteed him the last match on night 1 of WM 40 as a part of his deal. And as a fan, I want to see him get his main event.

If he wants to actually main event in the true main event slot, he will have to face Roman, who survived the backlash and finally found his own voice as a wrestler after doing Vince’s vision for so long. Those two men could not be more opposite but they share Heyman in common. I know Punk stated he did not come back to make friends but the WWE locker room he walked out of is vastly different than the one he returns to and Roman was a huge part of that. They never have to like each other but I am hoping they can work together to craft a story that blur the lines and brings out all the emotions both Punk and Reigns fans have had toward each other over the years. Because what was the point of all this if we never get a feud??? What are doing this for anyway?

In conclusion, while I do think Punk can be a hypocrite and an asshole, I also buy into him being the best in the World because he says so. And he has more than proven it by how much interest he was able to hold over an industry he walked away from for years. Go back and watch his AEW debut OR his WWE return and tell me I am lying. You cannot. Punk is a lot of things, some good, some bad, but one thing he will never be is boring. Hell, he has me tuning into RAW again. Very few people can get me to do that. So I am willing to ride this return until the wheels fall off. Or Punk gets fired again. Whichever comes first!