I mean, folks…
Great article. Acknowledges Punk is a great wrestler, but illustrates that he’s not the voice of the voiceless.
I never saw Punks work outside of AEW, but I’d say Punk was a great wrestler. What I’ve seen of him in AEW hasn’t impressed me.
Yeah, I felt some of his matches against the more athletic similarly sized people werent it for me. It felt like they had to slow down to let him style on them specifically because he’s “Best in the World”
Love that last line.
I wasn’t watching back when Punk was in WWE the first time. I heard about him when I got back into it. A friend who was a huge fan got me to watch the pipe bomb. I understood he was a big deal to a lot of people. He wasn’t really what I expected once he returned to wrestling. It’s been an odd experience.
Yeah there are definitely 2 distinct contingents to me that he hit.
I stopped watching because it was boring and so samey probably around 2010. The pipebomb makes way more sense if you were around for the dead period in the preceding years because he truly did feel like the voice of the voiceless. Of course they didn’t really listen and tried repeatedly to ignore Daniel Bryan years later
More recently, AEW got early success because it was different from WWE and from what I can see now. Some people actually do like a different product/feel and some people really just wanted WWE to be better which it has been since Hhh took over
As another lapsed fan, this kinda sums up my thoughts:
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Everyone hyped up Bryan Danielson and they were absolutely right.
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Everyone hyped up Jon Moxley and they were absolutely right.
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Everyone hyped up Kenny Omega and they were absolutely right.
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Everyone hyped up CM Punk and they were absolutely wrong.
He’s great on the mic, I’ll give him that, but wrestling-wise and even story-wise (that dumbass bit with Ace Steel he did in Chicago was rough) just don’t hit the mark for me.
I remember thinking during that segment that it felt like a Cody and Arn Anderson kind of segment.
Aw, now I miss Arn and his Glock.
IMHO, you have to divide Punk’s AEW run in two: pre-Hangman and post-Hangman. Pre-Hangman, he was having great matches and great angles (the feud with MJF alone was worth every penny he made). Post-Hangman, he was a mess in the ring and constantly trying to piece together his shattered ego outside of it.
It’s amazing how Hangman managed to completely ruin that man with just one promo. It speaks to just how utterly fragile he really is.
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This is me 100% I got back into wrestling with aew, I viewed it as an easy jumping back in point and it was great fun for a while.
The fans after Punk were the worst though, I will die on the hill that on average crowds were filling with more assholes and people trying to get 4 seconds of clout on Twitter rather than actually enjoying what they paid for.
Nice article, sums up my feelings perfectly. Even brings up stuff I forgot about, like the tweet at The Miz.
IMHO, he’s probably done more harm to his legacy these last couple years than he would have if he’d never come back at all.
True. If he never came back, then he’d be one of the biggest what ifs in wrestling history. The one who got away. The one everyone wants to see in dream matches.
He came back, and now he’s just another carny bastard.
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