Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent Ko-fi contributor Ri Ri. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication or other processes, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.
This was a Loser Leaves WWE Steel Cage Match for Punk’s World Heavyweight Title.
At the end of one of the great WWE feuds ever (fifteen years later, I believe that can be said without controversy) comes to an end that, for the most part, feels right for it. Not that any of their matches together in this time were bad — and the TLC at SummerSlam 2009 is shockingly underrated, I think — but something about this one feels correct. To end such an old style feud, something very very old returns, not simply a cage match of consequence, but one with a stipulation like this. No matter what everyone knows at this point about Jeff’s future, not every single person in the building knows it, and so not only does some drama still exist, but it allows them to have something that feels like, with respect to 2009 WWE being what it is, the best match that CM Punk and a departing Jeff Hardy could have in this promotion, being who they are, at this point in time.
What matters the most I think — and this is a strength of each man at their best — is that this is not a Great Match.
CM Punk is a coward, jumps Jeff Hardy on his way to the ring given that each are still hurt following the previously mentioned TLC match five days earlier, and the match is all good and evil in a way that eventually becomes genuinely crushing in a beautiful kind of real ass old time pro wrestling ass pro wrestling type of way.
It’s not simple to the point that it hurts anything (although yes, this is the WWE in the PG era, of course they could do more than they did and likely have an all-time great match too), but when handled by masters like these two, works in a way that enhances it all. In a classic kind of CM Punk way, seen in cage matches both before and after this, he has a gift for blending a lot of movement and a modern feeling with an older style offensive scarcity and simplicity, which works unbelievably well (as it has all summer) with a Jeff Hardy offense that function much in the same way, impressive without being wasteful, and always seeming harmful to the opposition in a way that makes his tendencies make sense in a way that those of many others would not.
The match itself is wonderfully simple, and one that through virtue of good booking, removes many of the worst aspects of matches like these at the time.
Absent the ability for a genuinely gruesome bloodletting, if not an outright double gusher, this is about as great as a cage match in PG era WWE, let alone many other eras, can be.
With careers on the line, thing like the protagonist in Jeff Hardy opting to go for escape victories now and then make far far far more sense than usual. Likewise, when looked at in a larger sense, the injuries of both Punk and Hardy — both sold incredibly well even before the match ever rings, showing that two beat up wrestlers are having this match — make a lot of WWE cage match tropes make so much more sense than usual.
That’s also, I think, what gives this such a weight, both in a literal physical sense and an emotional one.
Every single thing in this match has consequence. Beyond just that these are two greats who know how a cage match ought to work (let us not forget that Jeff’s first great cage match came while Punk was still working in Charlestown, IN), and who milk everything from every moment through every different type of selling, they are also phenomenal at translating into what they work with now. Things like Punk being slightly elevated on a toughness level, as he was at SummerSlam, work because of the selling and desperation of both, and it’s the ultimate testament to each — just like four years prior, with Punk on the other end (Bryan gets credit for being on opposite ends of Bryan/HHH and Bryan/Orton/Batista and Bryan/Kofi, and Punk ought to get credit for Punk/Rave and this too) — that this never once feels as though that is the goal.
Best of all is the finish.
Coming at the end of a feud that really got moving with an errant eye poke that CM Punk claimed was accidental, with Jeff Hardy holding him back from escaping and winning forever, CM Punk completely and irrevocably removes the artifice. Punk rears back and gets Jeff Hardy in the eye before shoving him back and dropping out of the cage to win.
It’s not just a beautiful full circle finish — something like the 2000s version of how the 1986 Flair/Morton cage match that began based around manhood ended with Flair using a low blow — but also the meanest possible one. Technically legal, coming at the end of another match to prove both his toughness and craftiness while establishing a new top heel (not that it would last more than a month, great company here), but also such an emotional gut punch. Little feels worse than feeling like someone got lucky or should not have won, but being unable to properly say an ything was stolen or what have you, and Punk and Hardy freely offer up that feeling better than most.
Historically speaking, one may want more, and I won’t argue with that. As always though, when looking at something simply as it is, it is so hard for me not to love. Great wrestlers having an important match with real stakes, inflated by the feeling, and aided by all that came before it, resulting in a match that, as it happens, is not only something remarkable, but that after the fact, feels like a genuine heartbreaker.
Forget the incompetence to follow, totally blowing all that this match and story built, because after all, this is the WWE. While in 2009, it had not not entirely earned that reputation that one ought to never trust in long term approaches and ideas, the germs are here. Something truly wonderful happens, and although very little comes of it and within two to three months, it maybe ought to just have never happened, we still lived it.
Sometimes, that’s enough.
Buy the ticket and take the ride.
CM Punk and Jeff Hardy, for the last time, make such a beautiful one.
HANDWERK 