My greatest fear is to write a really shitty, embarrassing, pompous review on an important match, and I am doing it. And I confront it. I acknowledge, I will tell you right straight from… the most sincere depths of my heart, the review will not be good.
This was for John Cena’s WWE Title, and so much more that feels impossible to put into words, even nine years later.
As a sports fan who grew up Chicago and then moved to Michigan, I am not used to cheering for a winning team. I’ve gotten on bandwagons and supported really fun teams and/or players, but your team is your team. To give them up entirely feels deeply wrong and shameful. To choose another team other than the one in front of you doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. It takes something like the complete ineptitude of the Chicago Bulls to make me even consider it, and even then, there’s a part of me that still loves them. So, I gave up the Bulls, but I gave them up for the Pistons, because the Pistons are always on TV. It wasn’t a thing I planned, but somewhere in 2018, I stopped denying it and accepted it. I went to a university in the MAC. They went unbeaten one year until the Cotton Bowl, but that was one year, and that exuberant psychopath PJ Fleck bailed for a Big Ten program probably somewhere around the fourth quarter. It is what it is. The Chicago Bears are the Chicago Bears. If my other option wasn’t the Detroit Lions, had I moved to Minnesota after college instead of back where my parents lived, I might be a Vikings fan. But I’d still be a Bears fan deep down, because the most Midwestern thing you can do is to begin doing something that sucks and just keep doing it forever, because it’s what people in the family have done for generations. You make a decision, you pick something, and stick with it. I know what I’m in for, generally, and I’m pretty much okay with it because I have this match (and later, the 2016 World Series). I experienced this thing in person, and it was bigger than a professional wrestling match.
So many wrestling matches fall short for me, because they’re reduced to the purely mechanical. I’m well aware that I have a bad brain and that I’m rarely able to emotionally invest in one wrestler in a match, let alone two or more, let alone whatever story it is that they’re trying to tell. This does not have that problem. It never comes close to having that problem. I can only speak for myself, but so much of the wrestling I enjoy is something I enjoy because, if it can’t get me to that sort of place, I can at least enjoy really hard strikes, cool moves, and fancy holds on some kind of visceral or sensory level. This match does not have that problem. Very few matches ever have made it as easy for me to become connected to them as this match. It is incredibly easy to root against an avatar for everything Vince McMahon believes. It’s even easier to cheer for someone so obviously doing the right thing. All I’ve ever wanted, really, is to cheer for something that isn’t fucking embarrassing, and ideally, to root against something.
It’s impossible to discuss this without removing that and feels daunting to discuss this in any sort of analytical way at all, but if I’m going to heap accolades onto a match like I’m going to do to this, it’s sort of unavoidable. But first, yes, this is an emotional pick. It’s an emotional match. I watch so much wrestling without emotional attachment, and it’s not this sort of thing I do to be objective or anything, but because nothing ever grabs me in quite that way. Nothing has ever grabbed onto me in the ways that this match grabbed onto me.
I really doubt I would have watched wrestling at all after a certain point in late 2004 if not for CM Punk. Samoa Joe and Low Ki and AJ Styles and these other wrestlers of a time and place hold their share of that too, but the truth is that I’ve never latched onto a wrestler as a fan like I did to CM Punk, with the sole exception of Steve Austin when I was eight years old. Is 2004/2005 CM Punk all that cool as an adult? No. Of course not. Nothing you loved as a fifteen year old is going to be cool when you’re over like twenty five. Fifteen year olds suck. But he was my guy and he stayed my guy, because you pick something or someone, and you stick with it. A shit talking son of a drunk from Chicago who overcame a total lack of athletic ability through some combination of guts and brains? You could not design a wrestler better suited for me to latch onto at the time, unless the same guy also made Battletoads jokes and loved and/or represented sadboy indie rock (hello 2006-8 Jimmy Jacobs in this respect). I understand the way teenagers felt about the Von Erichs in 1982, because I was a teenage independent wrestling fan in Chicago in the mid 2000s. I understand the way people in Texas Stadium felt in 1984, because to a lot of us, this is Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich. The initial shithead work that captivated me gave way to him being this guy who cared more about little things than most other wrestlers ever, who was constantly evolving, and who was just so magnetic, even early in this WWE run, forced into a midcard workrate Tope-Suicida-into-the-commercial babyface role. The best wrestlers always grow and evolve, the best things to watch are things that grow with you, and if you’re lucky enough, you can catch a guy at the right point and experience the entire thing. It’s why Bryan Danielson is the best wrestler of all time, because we’ve gotten to see all of that on film, and because it hasn’t ever stopped. Ninety five or so days out of one hundred, if you asked me who my all time favorite wrestler is though (do not confuse this with greatest), it would be CM Punk.
I had never hated John Cena though. I don’t know why. I probably should have, all things considering. But when his push got a little too annoying, I simply just stopped watching it. When I came back — because CM Punk had made it to main roster television — John Cena was great finally. Even before that, I was at WrestleMania 22, and people deciding to cheer fucking Triple H over him weirded me out. One of the first times I realized that some of you are fucking perverts. I wasn’t watching then, but I liked John. Don’t blame guys for their booking, you know? He tried hard, and had a way about him. The booking of him at times never really bothered me. John Cena surviving a DDT on the concrete and running through the two or three Nexus members left wasn’t ever something I had a problem with. The Nexus sucked, and John ruled. The math was easy. A lot of John’s opponents sucked, but even if they didn’t, I wasn’t ever able to summon the sort of vitriol that a lot of the people I watched wrestling with seemed to have. Of course, then he came into Chicago with the WWE Championship and tried to keep CM Punk from finally winning it, while also trying to uphold the dignity of the WWE. There could not be two more disgusting goals to have. On this night, I hated John Cena.
So, I had to be there. Non negotiable. If I had moved to a coast instead of simply four hours over, I would have been there. It helped that my favorite cousin, RIP in peace, was getting married on July 23rd. I was already going home for the first time since I had moved to Michigan in 2009. I took an Amtrak (no crying or fighting this time) and came home a week early to see this match and put myself up in a hotel with all of that student tutor money ($5000~ a semester in financial aid reimbursement! Give a twenty one year old who had never had over $200 in the bank before $5000 suddenly and see what happens!). I told my family I came early to see old friends, and that I could help with setting everything up for the wedding if they needed help. These were lies. I did those things. I did see old friends. I ordered far too much room service, went to my hometown, and hung out in a gazebo for the last time. It was nice. The next week, I went to the wedding site early and helped out, because I might as well, right? I helped build a chuppah and then an even bigger tent for the rain, set up chairs, met people whose names I don’t recall anymore, and set up chairs. It was a beautiful ceremony. I still have the suit somewhere. My snitch uncle shit his pants and fell asleep. We took down the wedding in pouring rain. But I came to see this match.
I’ve yet to experience anything like it. The crowd is infamous, but there’s no real justice that can be done to it. All due respect to the people in Calgary Saddledome at IYH: Canadian Stampede or the people in the Miyagi Sports Center on May 25th, 1992. With all bias admitted, this was the best wrestling crowd for a single match in the history of wrestling. Equal parts college football rivalry game and political protest. It felt like what I imagine participating in a coup d’etat would feel like.
As rewarding as this was as a live experience, it’s an even better match on film.
The most obvious thing is that, on film, you can see the Second City Saints in the front row. There’s a moment before the bell, when John Cena is holding the ring, and Punk stands by Colt Cabana and Ice Steel. It’s the smallest thing, but it communicates everything about the match. Not simply that CM Punk is the indie guy who made good, who finally broke through and made it to this match, but this clear dividing line. John Cena holds the ring. CM Punk is on the outside looking in. Behind him, there’s a dividing line. Certain people, certain wrestlers, aren’t allowed over that line. But CM Punk is standing with them all the same, fighting this good fight for the people who can’t themselves.
On film, there’s these little touches that you don’t get that come across when the camera gets close up. The live experience through the first five minutes or so was about this growing anticipation for something to break loose, classical title match wrestling that starts slow but establishes themes and gets you where you need to go. On film, it’s already this monumental struggle. Cena is stronger and calmer, but he isn’t better and it’s all he can do to try and muscle Punk around. They’re always grabbing at each other and trying to get out of things, Cena to get the match where he needs it to go but without falling into any trap by rushing in, and Punk to do what Punk does. Headlocks, baby.
The monumental struggle continues. They’re perfect against each other. They are made to be held in contrast with each other. Unlike famous rivals of each man, these two are especially natural foes because of how little they have in common. Everything about them isn’t just different, but almost the complete opposite of the other. In the same way that Randy Orton’s blase approach to matches makes him the perfect man to wrestle Christian, John Cena’s mastery of a sort of broad strokes WWE Main Event style makes him the perfect opponent for CM Punk, being both a master of the dramatic and a guy who does more with little touches than most other wrestlers ever. CM Punk both has the sorts of immediately ready counters and uses the sort of rare offense that lets you know that this is the biggest match of his life. In this way, their encounters earlier in the year are helpful and provide some context, because these are not the things that they did in those matches. John Cena is caught off guard by how ready Punk is, again fighting through solely through heart and wit, but unflappable. He uses his own offense that Punk won’t see coming, like an Emerald Frosion???? The commentary here is all over the place, between this willful denial of the fans explicitly siding with CM Punk against the WWE, accusing everyone of being brainwashed, all of that, but there’s an especially great moment where they note the pressure on Cena too, as he’s more serious, cautious, and cagey in this than he’s been in a match in a long time. He’s never mean about it, by now used to the intricacies of working to a crowd’s negative reaction without betraying who he is as a character, but he’s also very emphatic about the point he’s trying to prove.
There are a few moments in the middle that people point to here, where things don’t go entirely smoothly. I understand holding small things against a match, believe me, but in this case, they only enhance the match for me. This is about CM Punk trying to fight the WWE’s ideal of a perfect wrestler, trying to kill Superman, but not being naturally gifted in those ways. So when he’s a little short on a Crossbody and Cena’s leg is briefly damaged or when Punk tries to flip out of the FU like other more athletic wrestlers, only to fall short, it’s less a hindrance to the match than it is this really charming set of accidents that only enhance what they’re already doing. John Cena is stronger and more experienced in this position, and CM Punk might not be the guy he thinks he is.
At some point, this match shifts in that direction, and stops being this clash of titans, before becoming something even more interesting. Cena wears Punk down, he dominates him, and CM Punk is decidedly the underdog of the two. If you have any kind of memory, it’s something of a callback to the segment the previous week on Raw (“you are the New York Yankees”). It’s something new for John Cena in this role, finally leaning completely into being The Man. No fifty-fifty like against other fan favorites in their environment, to preserve what he’s doing. John Cena is John Cena. This is not going to turn around, nobody here is going to respect him for a clean and fair win, so they may as well. If you’re going to do something, really do something. Again, John Cena is John Cena. There are lines he won’t step over, but he’s domineering here in a new way that emphasizes Punk’s grit and heart, left totally without any plans and having to fight by himself, and he fucking DOES IT. Very subtly, the match shifted and it’s now creating a proper WWE Babyface out of CM Punk, but in a more sympathetic way than usual. For usual, he’s had plans and schemes and been lost when out of his comfort zone. The way to turn that is exactly what happens here. He fails, and he’s left to rely on toughness alone, and he goes and actually does it. They’re smart enough about it that the match never shouts at you about what it’s doing, but by the last few minutes, CM Punk is on John Cena’s level. Maybe an equal, maybe not, but there’s room now to have that discussion where there wasn’t a day ago. They go into their big run, but Punk comes at it from a place of total desperation. Nothing he does seems to work and he’s always the one trying to scrappily fight out of an FU or barely kicking out of one. And yet, he keeps doing it.
Eventually, John’s mask slips and it’s the most rewarding thing in the world. More than any move’s execution or promo cutting someone shitty down to size, this is the best work of John Cena’s career. The way he masks his surprise before hyping himself up, only to still not be able to do it on a second FU, before then laughing in disbelief — it may be the best facial work that any Ace figure has ever done anywhere. Combine it with a perfect elevation of Punk over the course of the match, and there’s a real argument to be had over who the best wrestler in this match actually is. CM Punk is a force of nature, of course, but this is as much John’s night as it is Punk. While Punk humanizes himself to become a genuine top babyface over the course of the match, the finish of the match allows John Cena to completely define who he is in a way that they’ve struggled before and since this match to get as completely right as they do here.
When CM Punk finally hits the GTS and Cena flops outside, Vince McMahon and Johnny Ace come to ringside. Cena capitalizes on the distraction he’s unaware of and puts on the STF. Vince demands Laurinitis rings the bell, echoing history that we all know about. Except that John Cena is a better man than Shawn Michaels, and doesn’t let it happen. Right and wrong exist, and it isn’t worth winning one match if he has to compromise his character to do it. He punches #BigJohnny out, says a man is going to win this fight, and makes sure Vince knows he means it. John then walks back in, only to be hoisted up into a second Go To Sleep, hit cleanly this time, and CM Punk wins the WWE Championship.
The criticism here is that CM Punk needed a distraction to do it, but this conveniently leaves out Cena also benefiting from the same distraction moments before, and then obviously ignores the impact of what John Cena did. On the level of pure character, it elevates John Cena beyond simply being a WWE system babyface. So often, they’ll do this crummy thing where a face gets dirty and does something wrong, in the service of some greater good just to thwart a heel. It’s not always bad. Shades of grey, and all of that. John Cena is better than that though. In this time of great crisis, where other people have completely folded, John Cena stood his ground at great personal and professional cost. Doing the right thing mattered more than winning. It’s the single greatest act of heroism in the history of professional wrestling, made all the more impressive by taking place in a match that he doesn’t even win. I won’t disrespect Ricky Steamboat or El Generico by making some sort of a claim, but after this match, John Cena is at worst, the second greatest babyface character in the history of the WWE.
We can argue over whether or not this is the best wrestling match of the decade. I cannot be objective about this match, and that’s fine. There are a few contenders, matches that if someone threw out there as the best or greatest match of the 2010s, I wouldn’t be so mad. Referring to the thing as something more than that though, this is The Match of the Decade. It’s impacted everything so much that functionally, this is the first wrestling match of the 2010s. They’ve tried time and time again to grab lightning in a bottle again, but it can’t be done. John Cena has tried time and time again to strike this same perfect balance that he achieves here, and he hasn’t done it. There’s a direct line through his career from this to the PWG Jawn run and every other match he had against former independent all-stars. Almost every major babyface act of the next nine years, with the exceptions of a handful of all-timers with enough confidence to do something else, have been influenced by CM Punk going into this match and moving forward. Beyond just influence, this is the best night in the careers of two all time greats, where both elevate themselves to that status at the same time. This is, very possibly, the best thing the WWE has ever done, and a rare situation where they got everything 100% correct on every level. I’m always willing to be won over, but I’m pretty sure it’s the best match of the year. I’m pretty sure it’s the best match of the decade. It’s one of the only matches that I would ever consider as the definitive best wrestling match that I’ve ever seen. There is no justice that can be done to this match. Not really.
Everyone knows what happens next. CM Punk leaves through the crowd with the WWE Title. It doesn’t last. They really want to push Alberto Del Rio. Then somehow Triple H and Kevin Nash get involved. CM Punk becomes the WWE Champion, holds it for 434 days, but it’s not all that it could be. Eventually, he leaves, and is right to do so. It doesn’t spoil the match, just because these things don’t last. CM Punk didn’t become The Man, John Cena backslid here and there into being a bully again due to some bad writing in 2012, but it doesn’t erase this. They got something entirely correct, and hit on something real out there in the world (it is entirely a coincidence that Occupy Wall Street began two months after this match, to the day, but it isn’t nothing either), even if they did try to push it back down and hide it after the fact. It’s enough. They got it perfect for one night, and some things are too big to stay underneath the surface.
This is the most important match of the decade because it lets those things out into the open for the first time.
It isn’t just that this one authority figure is bad, it’s that the entire thing is bad. It’s a rigged game, and you’re not allowed to win it if you’re not supposed to. CM Punk is a hero because he knew it was rigged, called it out, and still won, before history proved him more and more correct. John Cena becomes a hero in the moment because he finally saw how things really worked, and refused to have a part in it anymore. They’ll try and make John Laurinitis the bad guy because CM Punk called him out by name when he sat down on the stage three weeks before, and they’ll try and shift it to Triple H and Stephanie, but the enemy isn’t individual, it’s this entire monolith, and people know it. It’s a cat you can’t put back in the bag, no matter how hard you try to get it in there, or try and build a new bag around the cat, or ultimately try and pretend the cat was always supposed to get out of the bag. All the efforts to do otherwise only make it worse the next time.
WWE will try for the next nine years and counting to repeat this, only in a way that they can control entirely, with people of their choosing. It’s never worked quite the same, because them dictating the terms is antithetical to the entire point. It did work once, but only on accident, and only through the sheer force of will of the greatest professional wrestler of all time. That’s what it takes to come close to matching this. And they keep trying it. Like Austin and McMahon, it’s never going to work again in the same way. Nobody will ever again be in the position CM Punk was in here. Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority is a better feud and, to me, the best feud in the history of the company. But at no point did he have the edge Punk did, and at no point could this hit in quite the same way, because it had already happened. It was an incredible wrestling angle. This felt, in the moment, like something a little heavier.
It’s an incredibly heavy match, all things considered.
And I have absolutely considered all things about this.
It’s powerful and weighty and real in a way that very few WWE or WWF matches can be. This is what wrestling should be at its absolute best. It’s a match to aspire towards. It’s more than a match, it’s a moment. It becomes a moment because of how much it has to say, and because of how well it manages to say all of these different things.
This is an an underdog story. It’s about outsiders and the value of hard work. It’s about a scumbag making good in his hometown. It’s about a scoundrel drawing a line, because you have to draw a line somewhere, and saying what is and isn’t acceptable. It’s about a dynasty being humbled for its overconfidence. It’s about the evil of corporations, the power of the little man, and a sort of deeply American individualism. It’s a clash of ideologies, where one side is won over by the end, and has to make a choice between himself and the greater good. It’s about right and wrong, and upholding the division between the two no matter what.
The best wrestling matches are about more than wrestling. They use wrestling to communicate something else, to teach some kind of a lesson or tell some kind of a story.
This match is about pretty much everything.
And it may be the very best wrestling match I’ve ever seen.
*****
HANDWERK 