CM Punk vs. Ryback, WWE Raw (1/7/2013)

This was a TLC match for Punk’s WWE Title.

It’s also the last WWE Title match on free television for close to two years and eight months. It’s hard to credit Punk with that entirely, it’s a shift back towards trying to make title mean something by trying to force people to pay to see it on the line, but it’s just as much a result of taking it off of a workhorse type and then it not going back on one until Seth Rollins’ godawful reign in 2015. Not all workhorses are good, you know.

The match isn’t great.

It’s Ryback. He can’t really do more than five things and unlike other greats you can say that about, it’s not like he was especially good at any of those five things. CM Punk, fresh off a leg injury, puts on another relatively lunatic bumping performance. Ryback almost murders him twice within the span of five minutes yet again, once by bending a ladder by throwing him into it weird and then with a real hasty throw over the top through a table, where Punk clearly fucks up his hip coming down. The Shield interferes, and Punk climbs the ladder to win.

Nothing all that great, but another great Punk performance trying to make due. Worth noting that Ryback is the only guy with which he wasn’t ever able to have a great match during this run. Truly and entirely worthless outside of the Panera Bread story and horny posts online.

Later on in the show following this miracle, CM Punk will continue the run of a lifetime by delivering some of the most delightfully and uncomfortably real talk about the WWE in the history of WWE television, before joining the very rare group (Austin, Cena, maybe Jericho?) of guys to successfully own The Rock in public. I don’t review promos, because that seems like a lot, but it’s one of the best pieces of microphone work all decade and the sort of thing everybody should see.

CM Punk vs. John Cena, WWE Night of Champions 2012 (9/16/2012)

This was for Punk’s WWE Title.

Since we last spoke about this entire story, the WWE brought in Bret Hart to try and get Punk over as a heel, but since he spent his segment lying and saying things like Jerry Lawler never ran from a fight and Shawn Michaels stood for something but CM Punk doesn’t, it didn’t really work out. John Cena then recapped the booking of the WWE Title for the last ten months, as if it was CM Punk’s fault he didn’t get to be in pay per view main events with it and claimed that he lied to the people when he wanted to change and like he was some kind of fraud because he paid tribute to Bret Hart recently with his gear and because he stood up for himself. I’m recapping this because, to this day, it’s some of the most infuriating stuff the WWE’s ever put out there and I’d like you all to be as mad about it as I am whenever someone mentions it to me, or I have to watch it in a video package.

The thing though is that in spite of the terrible writing — and it is so bad that, at one point, I claimed that John Cena was secretly a heel from the summer of 2012 through SummerSlam 2013 because it made more sense than the actual booking of his character as an intended babyface — John Cena is such a likable guy that the match still works in spite of all of that.

This often falls under the radar, and the biggest reason for that, besides having a non-finish, is that it simply can’t live up to Money in the Bank. And that’s alright. That’s not a knock against the match. It feels very silly to me to penalize a match simply because it isn’t quite as good as a match that I’m not sure isn’t the defining pro wrestling match of an entire decade and very possibly the best match of all time.

While it can’t quite live up to that, this is such an incredibly interesting match. What people talk about when they talk about this match outside of the finish is the great little touch of CM Punk wearing a navy and pinstripe attire for a match in Cena’s hometown of Boston, but that’s deeper than simple heat getting. CM Punk put more thought into gear than many people put into their most important matches. At SummerSlam, the Bret Hart tribute gear wasn’t just a thing he thought was cool. Bret Hart had a reputation at one point as Mr. SummerSlam, it was a statement both on being the underappreciated workhorse of the company as well as being habitually screwed over. Frustrated wasn’t the god damned word for it, and all of that. Here, yes, it’s about telling Boston to eat shit. It’s always a worthwhile pursuit to tell America’s worst city to eat one. But also, “you are the New York Yankees” is something that immediately comes to mind. Tacitly, it’s Punk now saying that he is The Man.

To their credit, the match reflects that entirely in the first half.

Money in the Bank, and SummerSlam 2011 to some extent, saw CM Punk working as the underdog. He was largely working from underneath and with a sense of desperation, trying to say that he deserves this and belongs here. It’s the difference between fighting to get something and then fighting to keep it. Here, he puts on one of the more effective heel top guy performances in the history of the WWE. Don’t talk about Hunter and Foley to me, because Punk comes at this not in the sense of big bumping and insecurity, but complete and total confidence.

Punk is prepared for every single thing John Cena does for almost all of this match. He has a counter for everything, and this time, he’s incredibly confident about it. He’s an absolute shitheel yet again, and even if the build up hasn’t been all that good, CM Punk practically moves heaven and earth to put people against him. He’s despicable enough here that if you don’t want to see him eat shit after the first five minutes of this match, there’s not a match in the world that you’d root for CM Punk to lose (hi! hello! yes, you rang?). Beyond that, it all looks so good. He’s mean as hell, it’s all just completely airtight, and he forces John to step ENTIRELY out of his wheelhouse in order simply to have a chance in the match.

And when I say “step ENTIRELY out of his wheelhouse”, I don’t mean some PWG Jawn bullshit. I mean to do something rare and absolutely goddamned wild. I mean a John Cena tope suicida.

That goddamned happened.

From there, they go into the big epic run. Nothing all that wrong with it, but it simply isn’t as interesting to me as what came before it. That isn’t a slight on the performance of either man or this match, so much as it is the style.  They do well enough with it though. There’s probably near a hundred WWE matches in the last eight years and counting since this happened that are like this and are a thousand times worse. It’s not entirely just because of how good these two are constructing matches like this, it’s also because how much this seems to matter and how much they seem to care.

The most interesting thing to me, and the most memorable, is how until the end, this emphasizes the need to do different things against each other. They can land their big finishes, but otherwise, a bunch of counters. Most importantly, they’re new counters. In addition to new counters, they have to change the usual way they do things. After constantly having his showboating before the Five Knuckle Shuffle met with a takeover or kick from the ground, Cena simply runs off and hits a regular ass fist drop. It’s just a fist drop, Ted DiBiase did a million of ’em, but when you never see something, it’s incredibly important.

Each man kicks out of two finishers each. It’s A Lot, but there’s a parity to it that I really appreciate. They go back to some older things like Punk’s crooked Moonsault that don’t quite work or even connect, or in the case of John Cena, something new that he’s never done before and doesn’t quite know how to pull off correctly. He stops Punk on the ropes, and manages to German Suplex him off of the top rope. It’s enough to pin CM Punk, it’s enough to pin anybody, but John Cena is playing with magicks he doesn’t quite understand and he hasn’t tried to do a bridge in a million years. Cena’s shoulders are down too, and the champion keeps his title on a draw. One of the all time great CM Punk performances, and the only real glimpse we ever got of him as WWE’s top dog against a worthy babyface challenger. It’s as much a great match and an example of one of the great rivalries of all time as it is a glimpse into what could have been.

You leave this match feeling like, yes, this is obviously the WrestleMania main event. CM Punk got a little bit lucky, John Cena got a little bit sloppy, and there is absolutely no reason for this not to wrap itself up six months later in the main event of the biggest show of the year.

Of course, there will always be a reason.

It doesn’t diminish the match. The ending fit in well enough with the way the match unfolded and the larger scheme of things that it doesn’t bother me all that much, but this is the first part of a story that never quite got the ending it deserved.

****

CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan, WWE Over the Limit 2012 (5/20/2012)

This was for Punk’s WWE Title.

It’s the ultimate victory lap for 2000s independent wrestling, and as such, is maybe the second or third most admirable WWE match of 2012. It’s not a perfect match, as there’s still a WWE sheen to it all that prevents them from going all the way with the sort of match they clearly want to have, but it’s such a nice thing to see. Matches are rarely endearing so much as wrestlers are, but this is a match to put a smile on your face.

They take this victory lap by having a quintessential 2000s independent wrestling style epic. Double limbwork, lots of cool shit, a few real nice callbacks, and then in an unfortunate hallmark of the style and era, a finish that is maybe not so ideal. Beyond just the nobility of the attempt itself, the best thing about this match is how little excess you’ll find within it. After their television matches earlier in the year, they approach this not entirely as the fanwank dream match, but as two people who already know each other. They feign a few kicks here and there, but within a few minutes, they’ve already grabbed onto something and achieved some sense of focus. Bryan is the only guy in the company who’s a better kicker than Punk, so Punk takes that away from him. It’s the sort of psychology you get in in almost every bad junior heavyweight match, but it turns out that when it happens to the greatest wrestler of all time and he’s willing to sell it like it matters, it feels like it matters. Wild.

It’s a longer control segment than you might usually get from a babyface in a WWE Title match, but it completely works. This match is about wrestling, and while Daniel Bryan is the greatest of all time, it stands to reason that the guy calling himself the best in the world would be in a position like this. Commentary — largely Booker T, the only good commentator in the WWE at this point — frames it appropriately too, talking up how Bryan is more technically proficient and talented, but that CM Punk has plans. If he doesn’t enter the match with a clear idea of what he wants to do, he makes a judgment within the first minute, and I find that just cool as hell. It’s one thing when everything makes sense, that’s great, but the next level is when you can watch a match and see the way a wrestler thinks at play. It’s not only that you can see how things change or what the plan is, but it’s that the match explains to you — if you care to listen — why a thing is happening and why it’s happening at the moment it is. Another example for the “Punk is Bret Hart” folder.

Punk’s more aggressive here than he’s been as WWE Champion so far. I’m not trying to sell you the idea that his coming heel turn was something planned out this far back or that it’s some victory for long term booking, but it’s a nice touch that seems to tie in with where things eventually go. Someone who went through art school that I think very highly of said to me once that original intent matters, but it’s not everything. Given how Punk will, in the months following his turn, discuss the disrespect he’s been paid by not main eventing these pay per views now that there’s no longer the Cena/Rock or Cena/Brock argument against the WWE Title main eventing, it doesn’t feel insane to me to suggest that some repressed aggression comes out in this match, with how mean he is when attacking this weakness in his most talented challenger yet.

Bryan is able to create his own advantage though and targets some hurt ribs from the prior week’s television. Bryan manages to get even nastier than Punk, all while never forgetting the knee. Punk goes to it here and there to escape holds or to block things, but matches Bryan’s level of long-term selling and then some with his response to damage to the ribs. The difference in how each man approaches their attack is also very interesting to me. Bryan is able to land his kicks eventually, but not without difficulty and never in a way that doesn’t cause him to need a second or two to recover from. In comparison, Bryan uses the ribs as a way to open CM Punk up for what he actually wants to do, and begins working more on the neck once he’s beaten down some. Beyond just being a really cool thing to see, it’s a great look at how a babyface and a heel respectively can approach limbwork. The hero comes at things from the most straightforward and logical way. The heel uses an advantage as a back door into what he really wants to do, being smarter and more devious.

Eventually, they have to make concessions to what this match is and more importantly, to the logo on the screen during all of that. They go into trading some moves, and it’s still great. They don’t forget about the things that came before it, and do some very neat stuff. Punk gets to do a modified Nigel McGuinness style top rope clothesline, but because he does it with a springboard first, it feels like as much a modification of his own offense as it does Bryan plugging someone into that spot, as he’s done with people in WWE in the past. Punk pays his own tribute with a Super Dragon style Curb Stomp. They do their best to avoid a lot of pitfalls of a WWE branded epic by never blowing major finishes, and by keeping things pretty smart, even when they threaten to get a little stupid.

Bryan’s back door work pays off and he’s eventually able to get Punk into the Yes Lock. Punk can’t escape like he was able to before, but he’s still just a little bit smarter than Daniel Bryan is. He’s able to roll him backwards on his shoulders and he gets the pinfall for the win, just before tapping out himself. They try to sell some controversy like the Kurt Angle vs. Undertaker match in the summer of 2002, but the timing simply does not line up. CM Punk is one of the great politicians of his time and may well have tapped out just half a second late on purpose, it’s impossible to say. The result is that the controversy spoken of clearly does not exist at all, and it’s one more time where a WWE commentary narrative doesn’t seem to actually match up with the thing we just saw happen inside of the ring.

Every so often, the WWE slips up and allows a long term and dynastic title reign from someone who doesn’t quite fit the mold. The #1b, if you will. Randy Savage held the WWF Title for a year. Bret Hart somehow wound up being the Ace of the company for like four or five years. CM Punk’s title reign is our generation’s version of that. With those reigns tends to come a match or series that feels like the person in question getting to say that, hey, this is what wrestling can be. Savage vs. Bret on a SNME in late 1987 came before then, but it’s a Savage classic as a babyface and feels that way. The best of the Randy Savage vs. Ted DiBiase matches feel like that. You have something like Bret/Owen or Bret/Bulldog II that feel like Bret trying to bring the WWF up to speed with how the rest of the world is moving. Daniel Bryan will have chances later to have a handful of WWE matches better than this, but for CM Punk, it feels like his version of that statement. This is what wrestling can be. This is what we can be doing and can be watching. Tight, violent wrestling that both hits you in that monkey brain spot when you just hear someone hitting someone else really hard, but also while making all of the sense in the world, and that which rewards you for paying attention. It’s not a perfect match, but it is a perfect expression of the sort of wrestling that these guys believed in, and how best to fit it into a WWE ring.

Like many of the great trailblazers, Punk never gets to reach the promised land where this sort of a thing is what they began aiming for constantly after 2015 or so. Bryan’s had a handful of matches better than this. I can’t quite call it a match that changes anything, but as time’s arrow moves forward, it’s very hard to look back at this match and not see the influence with which it and maybe more accurately, these two wrestlers, have had on so many things that have followed. The shame is less that this match paved a way for people and more that it paved a way for people who failed to learn any of the lessons that this match had to offer.

Nexus tag aside, this is the best Bret Hart match of the 2010s.

****

 

 

CM Punk vs. Chris Jericho, WWE Extreme Rules 2012 (4/29/2012)

This was a Chicago Street Fight for Punk’s WWE Title.

I’ve complained the last several times about Punk’s title matches on television or pay per view feeling handcuffed in one way or another, but this was not a match that was handcuffed at all. They got the green light with just about everything but heavy blood, and the result is the best Chris Jericho singles match of the 2010s.

Once again, CM Punk is better than virtually every other full time WWE wrestler in the last fifteen years or so at making me believe that he actually hates someone and wants to hurt them. He’s not the greatest striker ever, but he feels genuinely pissed and mad in a way that few other wrestlers have since 2003-5 angry Eddie Guerrero. He beats the hell out of Jericho, cares more about hurting him than winning, and repeatedly almost loses because of it.

Chris Jericho is very clearly the lesser guy in this, but he’s fine. There’s a thousand worse Chris Jericho performances in the 2010s than here. He walks a line perfectly between being a fucking stooge and being able to beat CM Punk. He doesn’t ever feel better than him, but it does constantly feel like he’s just on the edge of Punk slipping up and being able to steal one because of the rules. He’s mean in his cut offs, mean on offense with the weapons to help him out, and it’s one of the greatest ever Chris Jericho heel performances. Is this helped by the fact that he’s up against perhaps my favorite wrestler of all time? Yes. Of course. I never felt anything but disdain for Shawn Michaels in those matches, I’d never boo Chris Jericho against him. In the Mysterio matches, Jericho focuses more on great work than being truly despicable. Here though, he strikes that perfect balance for once. I’m not sure he’s a top ten (or top twenty five) Punk opponent, but he’s a perfect foil in this specific moment.

They’re allowed the big WWE setpieces for once, and SHOCKINGLY, it feels like a much bigger deal as a result. A major table spot (as one can see through the attached image), lots of chairs, a fire extinguisher, etc. It works not just because of these big moments, but because of how airtight all the set ups are. There’s always the best possible reason for these guys to be in these positions. The greatest example is how, following Punk ramming the edge of a chair into Jericho’s stomach, he’s tired and tries it again, but Jericho is able to counter it into a chair assisted Codebreaker. I don’t feel very good about favorably comparing 2012 Chris Jericho to 2012 Kevin Steen, but it’s a spot Steen uses with some regularity and it never looks good. It looked incredible here because of how they got into it. There’s another clever little spot where Punk sets the corner chair up like he did to Mark Henry thirteen days prior, only for Jericho to see him coming a mile away.

This ends as it always should have. This ends how almost every match like this should. The heel crumbles under the weight of his own machinations, eats shit in front of the world, and pays for all of his crimes. Jericho attempts to humiliate Punk by stealing the Go to Sleep, only for Punk to block it. He sends Jericho into the exposed steel buckle that he himself revealed earlier in the match in a classic old school Jericho trick, and then hits the actual Go to Sleep for the clear and definitive win.

In a just world, this is Chris Jericho’s last match. In the world we live in, this is at the end of Chris Jericho as a genuine main eventer of any consequence. He was a shithead who couldn’t let go of it when his time passed, lost at WrestleMania, became a much bigger shithead, and paid the price for it. Far from the greatest feud of all time, it’s at least something clear and direct. A fitting end for someone who was always at least a little bit of a fraud.

Nothing ever actually ends in wrestling, so it’s not actually the end, but it’s quite the great match to end a near top guy run on. It’d likely be remembered much more fondly if one of the great WWE matches of all time didn’t headline this very show.

Of course, the real proof of the greatness of this match is how badly it’s felt that every post-WWE Chris Jericho brawl has wanted to be this match, and how badly all of them have failed.

***1/4

 

CM Punk vs. Mark Henry, WWE Raw (4/16/2012)

This was a rematch for Punk’s WWE Title, now with no disqualifications or count outs.

It works! It works for all of the same reasons the match two weeks prior was so good. Which is fitting, because they sure are not allowed the bells and whistles that the match might suggest. In fact, save for the finish and maybe thirty seconds in the middle, you might never know this was any sort of a unique match. Why’s that? Well, John Cena had his own Extreme Rules match later in the night against the vaunted and feared Lord Tensai, and needed every shortcut he can get. The cool thing about WWE is that everything is so stiffly regimented and plotted out that they make it very easy to tell you who they care about and who they’ll throw into the wilderness, so to speak.

In the wilderness, the WWE Champion who opens the show instead must do without, save for a singular steel chair.

Fortunately, someone as smart as CM Punk can build something that both works as a whole match and doesn’t feel totally out of place as a ersatz No Holds Barred Match in spite of only being allowed the one prop. Like his spiritual forefather close to twenty years earlier, CM Punk is not a best in the world level guy because of incredible strength in any one area, but because he’s smarter than almost everybody else, and can accomplish things like this, even while so embarrassingly hamstrung by the company that he, in theory, represents.

So, what this can’t have in shortcuts, it has in pure old-style roughness. Punk is more aggressive than he was two weeks beforehand, having learned about trying to outlast Henry, and instead just going for it. He’s diving around, he’s using the environment outside in fun ways, and hitting as hard as possible. Punk’s not a dude with a reputation as a great striker, almost entirely because of those less-than-ideal high kicks, but he’s hammering on the big guy with the elbows here, adding a badly needed sense of urgency to everything. That’s the sort of thing that carries this. Mark cuts off Punk real easily whenever he gets an opening, and Punk feels increasingly worn ragged and desperate as the match goes on. When a match is allowed no larger details, it has to make use of smaller ones, and few wrestlers of the era have done as much with small details as Punk. As it goes on, he wears out Mark more and more, he goes to the knees, and eventually sends him back reeling with a high kick. Clear progression from the first meeting, when he couldn’t handle him nearly so well.

Mark Henry himself is good again. This isn’t about him so much. It’s Punk overcoming the odds in story and out of story, but Mark’s a great brick wall. He withholds enough early on and withheld enough in the first match that moments in this one mean a little more. They built him up again as a monster, so it feels like a reasonably big victory when Punk’s able to survive him and this time, when he’s able to win. I won’t call it a great Mark Henry performance, but it’s the last great Mark Henry match of this big run, and he doesn’t let anyone down in it.

In the end, Mark again throws Punk off the bulldog, only for Punk to maneuver in front of a chair in the corner. He’s able to lead Mark into an ill fated charge into it before upgrading the old Cactus Jack chair elbow to come off the top now, and that gets the win.

Look, this isn’t going to blow you away. Their first match was better than this, and that probably also won’t blow you away. But whereas that last TNA match I watched felt like a fake storefront in a museum version of a JCP or WCW match, this felt closer to the real thing. Pared down, desperate, a scientific face overcoming a big man through gritty application of technique, etc. It’s an alternate ending to the Steamboat/Vader mini feud in 1993. It’s not what it could be, but I love what it is. It’s an old school match not because it aims to be or aims to recapture any of those hallmarks, but simply because it’s simple and direct, and that’s so often something you don’t get in this environment.

I’m not so insane as to say Punk was hung out to dry or set up to fail or anything so nefarious. That’s far meaner to Mark Henry than he deserves, because he was good in this. HOWEVER, this is yet another example of how as the WWE Champion, he was repeatedly dropped into environments where he could have easily not delivered and nobody would have been surprised. It was a simple match, they didn’t get to go into your standardized motions for a Great Match. Punk wasn’t allowed any of the crutches that WWE’s golden children or special projects always are when a match simply MUST succeed, but wound up actually accomplishing something in spite of it. Time and time and time again.

Nobody is doing more with less in 2012 than CM Punk, and this is as perfect of an example as you’ll get.

***

CM Punk vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE in Sopot, Poland (4/12/2012)

This was for Punk’s WWE Title.

It’s the second of two fancams of these two in the spring of 2012, this one in front of a foreign crowd and only contested under the one fall.

Aside from not having the heartwarming Mid Atlantic tribute spots, this isn’t much different. That’s a good thing. Again, this isn’t quite a match up that immediately clicks, but they have a lot of the same ideas and Punk is particularly good at helping a guy like Ziggler have more connective tissue between big bits and to tie together all the things he can do in a way that few other Ziggler opponents (save Bryan, Orton, and Mysterio maybe) have ever been able to.

Ziggler stalls a little more here and they do a few different things in a different order, but the core is the same. Simple neck work, a lot of hope spots from Punk to preserve the hierarchical difference while still always letting Ziggler cut it off, then great back and forth. Ziggler again suffers for overreliance on one specific move, and this time it’s the Fameasser. He hits it a few times to counter the Go to Sleep in different ways, but he’s ultimately punished for it.

There are improvements here though too, as I thought they got to show off a little more in the back half before any nonsense happened (of course there was nonsense!). Feels just a little closer to the ideal version of this than the previous three matches. It’s the last one of these I can find, so it’s as close as they get, but it’s better than nothing. As for the bullshit, David Otunga was in the place of Chris Jericho as the interfering heel now, and all that amounted to was a cheap shot to Punk from the apron to set up the Zig Zag. One little spot, it’s impossible to get mad at, and I’m a dude who fucking loves to be mad. Ziggler can’t beat Punk with that though, because it’s not a move any genuine top guy is going to go down to unless there’s more before it. Ziggler tries the Fameasser again and now gets caught into the Go to Sleep for the win.

Another fun little match via fancam. These are always a neat look at the sorts of matches these guys can have more of their own volition, and this is no different. A pairing that never quite got to become what I believe it could have, but this and the 3/25 match show that they had a lot more to offer than their highest profile match showed.

***1/4

CM Punk vs. Mark Henry, WWE Raw (4/2/2012)

This was for Punk’s WWE Title.

A day after a grueling match at WrestleMania, CM Punk is put back in another title match after making fun of sole authority figure #BigJohnny, and we get a really delightful underdog match. The 2012 version of Vader vs. Steamboat on free TV, down to a non finish.

Like so many of these “only ever on free TV” pairings, this doesn’t quite feel like the best they can do. In this case also, it’s because this is the first match of a two match television series, and it goes to a fuck finish to enable that second match. So, “not the best they can do” in this case means that it’s a conscious choice on behalf of booking (yet again) to not allow them to get there, because they’re not allowed to really produce a match that’s as good as possible. What they produce is a pretty uncut ten to fifteen minutes, working a classic formula to near perfection. What we do get though is pretty great. Mark Henry is as effective of a brick wall kind of big man as there’s been in the WWE since Andre the Giant. He feels, against a blue collar babyface like Punk, like a force of nature. Punk has to fight to get anything in and he’s constantly cut off when he does the logical thing and goes to the air. Henry targets the bad back, but not actively or all that aggressively, and Punk isn’t crippled as a result, but he’s sore as hell. He’s forced to get in close and just fight it out, and it makes him come off tougher when he can start to move and push around Mark Henry by the end.

Punk’s selling of the back injury is fine enough. It’s again a sort of Bret Hart style of selling. He’s hurt, he always lets you know he’s hurting, but he’s gutting it out in a really admirable sort of way. Again, working class hero. Anyone who’s had a job with any sort of labor can relate to selling like this. Don’t fucking roll around and cry about it. Get up and do your best. We’re all sore, man. Next to Bret Hart and maybe late career Eddie Guerrero, Punk’s as good at that as anyone else I’ve ever seen.

Naturally, it cuts off right when they start to get going. Henry throws Punk off the bulldog right outside in a real gruesome sort of a bump, and is too hurt to get back inside. Mark Henry wins by count out. Not top babyface booking for the WWE, so hey man, you can get mad about that if you want. I get it. But also, it’s much more human and relatable, and makes you want to actually see the rematch. It’s not hard to build up Mark Henry as a credible threat, but this match did a great job of building up Mark Henry as a credible challenger again.

Old school in all the best ways. Real quality sort of 1980s WWF style house show program first match. Obviously, I wish they had a thousand of them, but the two we get are good enough, and feel different from a lot of other WWE stuff at the time, which feels like all you can ask for sometimes. Would not be out of place at all as the main event of an episode of 1993 WCW Saturday Night, which is one of the nicest things I can say about a match.

***1/4

 

CM Punk vs. Chris Jericho, WWE WrestleMania XXVII (4/1/2012)

This was for Punk’s WWE Title.

In spite of a last second addition that if Punk was to be disqualified, he would lose the title, this was pretty good! The rare post-2009 Chris Jericho match that I would even call great, even as a borderline three boy. Jericho’s right at the point before his body totally gives out, and it’s enough for a guy like CM Punk to still be able to get something out of him.

How does that happen?

Mostly they club and smack the shit out of each other and Punk bumps for two or three. Simple stuff. Punk mauls him at the start and then takes a rare actual suplex off the apron instead of the far more common coward’s version. Jericho sort of works the back, which is to say that whatever work there is happens on accident, as Chris Jericho realized after his first comeback that he all he has to put effort into is sweet finishing runs and fans will still like his matches. He’s not wrong, few people have ever gone broke betting against wrestling fans being so easily taken in, but it’s always frustrating. Punk sells it about as well as it deserves. A Bret Hart style sell through pure body language here and there, but moving on in general.

To be fair, the finishing run is a sweet one. Their 2008-2009 television match finishing runs were probably better than this in terms of crispness and fluidity, but this has a lot to offer for physicality. To their credit most of all, these guys have wrestled A LOT before, and this is all pretty fresh stuff using Punk’s main eventer offense and Jericho being able to do less physically. Finish itself is a smart one for the story, Jericho moaning about Punk ripping off BEST IN THE WORLD from him and delusionally thinking he ever laid actual claim to that. They fight over their holds, the Walls of Jericho and Anaconda Vice, and it’s far far far less clunky than it sounds. It’s a little clunky, but in a way that makes sense, in a sort of “not all wrestling should be clean” type of way. Punk has counters and ways out that Jericho doesn’t, he can both hammer his way out with boots and hammerfists and escape easier, outwrestling him in the plainest terms possible.

Punk leans forward more while holding the Anaconda Vice so that Jericho’s short little knees can’t reach him anymore, and Jericho is forced to tap out.

This was branded a disappointment at the time by those who labored under the delusion that Chris Jericho was still a good and/or interesting professional wrestler, but I always found it to be surprisingly good given that he clearly wasn’t. Also surprisingly good given the limitations of the match and how they very clearly were not allowed to have a full and proper epic, with the sorts of shortcuts a Jericho match might need otherwise to succeed, which they’d have in the rematch. Not quite a miracle, but it’s quietly another really impressive Punk performance to get something like this out of a tired old hack like 2012 Chris Jericho. Worth reevaluating, even if it’s not going to blow anybody away. Given everything working against it, this is literally as good as it possibly could be.

***

 

CM Punk vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE in Charlotte, NC (3/25/2012)

This was a two of three falls match for Punk’s WWE Title, courtesy of a potato quality 2012 fancam.

This is real shakily held and features an insane man trying to call every single move that happens and every twist and turn the match makes. That’s sort of the thing with most fancams. A regular person doesn’t attend a wrestling show and record it. That’s the trade off for getting them, because they are always so much fun. Twenty first century WWE fancams are especially fun, because as the shows become more and more overproduced and planned down to the minute, it’s the only time you get to see some of these guys break free of that. This is along those same lines, and it blows away the match they had on pay per view two months before. I first saw this around when it went up on youtube and it blew me away at the time. It doesn’t quite live up to that now, but it’s a very very easy match to watch and like.

Being in Charlotte and being huge nerds, they try for something a little more Mid Atlantic flavored. A lot of heel stooging early on from show off Ziggler, him eating shit, then a long and drawn out control segment on Punk’s ribs (genuinely really great stuff, some of the best and most measured work of Ziggler’s entire career). The Ricky Steamboat style hope spot where Punk tries a splash on the mat after fighting off a hold, only for the heel to get knees up. Ziggler using a double fake out by undoing the turnbuckle to distract the ref so he can bring a chair in, then using the chair to distract the ref so he can throw Punk rib first into the exposed middle buckle to take the first fall. Classic classic bits, even down to Punk using the Figure Four to win the middle fall.

They eventually go into their own things and it’s good. It’s not half as interesting as the more drawn out basic section of the first two-thirds of the match’s runtime, but these are good wrestlers with decent chemistry. Nothing they’re doing is new, but it’s all very nice to see with a solid foundation behind it. Even in the WWE though, nobody can ever truly escape The Bullshit. Chris Jericho gets thrown into this to interfere, leading to being easily fought off and having no real impact outside of dragging this down just a level. It’s less stupid and drawn out than the special referee business at the Royal Rumble, but the result is the same, with Punk handling the nonsense and then fairly easily hitting the Go to Sleep on Ziggler for the win.

Still not all it can be. There’s another fancam in April that I have hope for, but this continues to go down as one of the great lost match ups resulting from WWE’s entire nature. Throwing away match ups, not allowing them to reach full bloom, bogging them down with this or that when they finally are allowed on a bigger stage. This is probably the best it gets, and even here, there’s some very silly stuff at the end that puts a damper on what they were doing, not allowing this to reach a full maturity before its conclusion.

In spite of all that, this was a really fun change of pace and any time that happens in this company, it’s the sort of thing you hold onto.

***1/4

CM Punk vs. Dolph Ziggler, WWE Royal Rumble 2012 (1/29/2012)

This was for Punk’s WWE Championship, with John Laurinaitis aka Mr. Excitement aka #bigjohnny outside as the enforcer.

It’s not the best they can do.

The stipulation sort of gives that away. It’s this pall over the entire thing, like you know this can never end until some shit happens, because this match is designed to have some shit happen in it. To that end, the shit that does happen both isn’t especially interesting or well done and it also goes nowhere because Punk/Johnny Ace is pretty much dropped after this anyways before he’s redirected onto Cena after Mania so he can be used on a Real Star or whatever bullshit. So, it’s a match that’s largely just stepped on when it makes it to pay per view for very stupid reasons and in an incredibly clumsy way.

I’m not telling you to go watch this. Watch that 2011 Raw match. We’ll get to a fancam or two of this pairing in the spring too.

The reason I hunted those down though is the reason that this is still REALLY good. This pairing just works. It’s a fun pairing. Ziggler doesn’t quite mesh with Punk like he meshes with Randy Orton or Daniel Bryan, but there’s no other top guy match up for Ziggler that’s clicked like this does. The start is a little rougher, but they always move forward with a lot of confidence. It’s always been one of the best things about CM Punk to me, the total confidence with which he moves in the ring, always going somewhere. Ziggler’s control is a lot of fun. They strike a great balance between Ziggler having a better feeling for Punk now and how to control him, but still always feeling like Punk is just a little bit better. Improvement, but still maintaining a sense of hierarchy. It’s full of small little things that I liked, such as the improvement on the accidental Powerbomb spot from November. The highlight is this sense that every time I felt like something looked too easily set up or that someone was getting caught waiting around for a move, they wound up countering it or avoiding it. Lots of small little touches like that that really impress me.

Of course, then there is The Booking.

The original referee is knocked down and Punk has Ziggler beat three different times with the Anaconda Vice, a roll up, and the Go to Sleep. They tease a thing, as Punk can’t prove Johnny is trying to fuck him, but everyone innately knows that he is. Ziggler briefly comes back but fucks up in trying the Fameasser again after it’s been countered twice already. Punk catapults him to the buckles and simply hits the GTS again for the win.

Not only does this go nowhere, but it winds up making Ziggler look inept after a quality build up and the match itself (pre-Booking) doing a lot to make him look at least competitive with Punk.

Still though, there’s something here between these two. To repeat myself, the fact that this is their highest profile meeting speaks to a much greater sickness within the company as a whole.

three boy