CM Punk; WWE Has Me Hooked Again (2011 Official Pro Wrestling Thread)

[brettac1]

They just don't have many (any?) guys as good as Punk. He's a great worker, great on the stick, over with the fans, has good psychology in his matches, etc. Pretty close to the total package. Too bad he doesn't drink beer. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[patrickgpe]

yeah they tried him running 2 heel stables, i'd like to see him do something else.

[And That]

The Punk/Cena Money in the Bank PPV title match was great. Too many screwups to be *****, but a solid **** match nonetheless.

I agree with this. The power bomb botch was pretty bad. Entertaining on the whole, though, and one of Cena's best matches.

[brettac1]

I thought it was 5 stars when you add in the ending of the broadcast with him leaving with the belt. And Punk deserves credit, it's really hard to have a good match with Cena involved.

[BrewCrewForever]

The Punk/Cena match at MITB would have been even better if Jim Ross was calling it instead of that dope Michael Cole. So glad Ross is back on Raw.

[brettac1]

I might be crazy, but I enjoyed heel Cole, but then when he got into the vague not really a heel but not rooting for the face character, it was weak. They need to make King a heel again, too. He sucks otherwise. He's a born heel. One would think if he's back with JR, he will become one, since when they tried the JR heel turn back in the day it fell on it's face... the glory days of Fake Diesel and Fake Razor.

[BrewCrewForever]

I would like to see Cole on Smackdown with Booker and JR and King as the two man team on Raw.

 

Punk was great tonight, loved his interaction with HHH at the start of Raw. Really liked the mixed crowd reaction, lots of face pops for Punk but lots of heel heat as well. Should be a good rematch at Summerslam.

[brettac1]

Watching Raw for the first time since MITB, and it really irritates me that they need to keep burying Swagger. They've already booked the IC and US belts into oblivion, so I guess why not keep ruining the guys who run in those circles? I have thought they could make Swagger into a Mr. Perfect type of character, but it's quite late for that now.

[PrinceEatMeat]

Yeah they definitely blew their chance with Swagger. That's for sure. But that's happened tons of times over the years, so it doesn't surprise me. Shelton Benjamin was a HUGE miss also. He could've been great.

[brettac1]

Little bits I saw of Benjamin, he was pretty impressive.

 

Miz kicking Mysterio's face off was awesome, pardon the pun.

[thablingster]

I'm actually enjoying watching wrestling again, which I haven't been able to say in a while. I'm a WWE Attitude Era junkie, so most of the recent stuff has paled in comparison up to now.

 

Punk has come a long way and they've come a long way in building his credibility. The way they let him poke jabs at things that have happened recently (e.g.: firings, poor booking, etc.) is quite entertaining. Cena even got into the act of making fun of himself tonight, which was pretty funny.

 

I also like that it seems like they're building a stable of somewhat capable guys (Del Rio, Miz, Kofi, Rey, Truth) who are the B-Tier guys instead of having 3 or 4 headliners and a bunch of scrubs like they did for years upon years. R-Truth's gimmick amuses me because it's so weird and random. Sometimes it is fun to talk about "Lil' Jimmy" or how someone is "gon' get got."

 

For some reason they still feel like pushing Zigler over Swagger. They're really kind of the same guy. I'm still waiting for Morrison to get his huge push as well. The problem for years is that they brought in these guys who had great physiques and either were terribly green in the ring (see: Batista) or green on the mic (also... Batista. Plus Koslov, etc.) and they pushed them to the moon. The guys who were great in the ring (Christian, Benjamin, etc.) never really got pushed as hard, but they carried some of those other guys. It's nice to see that there are more well rounded matches now.

[PrinceEatMeat]

Man that contract signing segment tonight was pure gold. Loved every minute of it. Love worked shoot promos. Makes it so much more real. Great stuff.

[patrickgpe]

i agree, when punk just went off on the fired wrestlers on friday, nobody really knew if that was scripted or not.

[And That]

That segment to close Raw was pretty great. My favorite thing about it was Punk's Curb Your Enthusiasm reference when he kept calling Johnny Ace "Funk Man."

[TracyThom]

Man that contract signing segment tonight was pure gold. Loved every minute of it. Love worked shoot promos. Makes it so much more real. Great stuff.

 

Vince Russo's worked shoots are one of the many reasons that killed WCW. (See Hogan/Jarrett/Russo Bash at the Beach 2000) We aren't to the point of the ringside commentators saying, "This wasn't in the script" but we are creeping that direction. I have no problem with Punk bringing up the firings, but they shouldn't be talking about workrates and heel personas.

[BrewCrewForever]

The Punk/Cena contract signing was the best one of those I have seen. Usually they are pretty lame, not the one last night. Both guys did well, especially Punk, he is so darn good. I also loved when Miz totally beat the hell out of Rey, not a Mysterio fan so I took pleasure in that. I like Swagger and Ziggler but they seem to be not doing much either guy right now. Ziggler is the US Champ and he has no cred as a champ it seems.

 

Oh and Toby, I too loved Punk referencing The Funk man. Curb is a favorite of mine.

[brettac1]

Punk mentioned workrate? That's pretty sweet, to me.

 

Worked shoots are great when they guy doing the shoot is good and can tell the story. One of the worst things nowadays is that they script out the entire promos for guys instead of letting them find their voice. Before, they would tell a guy like Austin, Rock, etc. what they wanted the promo to accomplish and let them work it out. It's so much more authentic that way.

[thablingster]

Cena mentioned workrate, and how maybe he should work on having more than the "five moves of doom" which made me bust out laughing because people on the internet always talk about Cena's "five moves of doom."

 

It looks like The Miz may have found his SummerSlam opponent. This is pretty funny.

 

[brettac1]

He's definitely right on that.

 

At the same time, the "you can't wrestle" chant can be kind of annoying when they direct it towards him. Khali or whatever, obviously, but Cena is better than that. I think he sucks pretty bad, but not THAT bad.

[PrinceEatMeat]

The Miz owns that kid in that video. The kid was horrible in my opinion.

[chadomac]

This thread has gotten me to download a few RAW's and the Money in the Bank PPV. I was a fan as a kid (80's/90's) until around the year 2000ish, but lost interest. I have a question... what's with all the belts? It's kind of ridiculous. There's at least 3 belts that seem like they would be the best belt... is there a ranking of them that everyone is aware of or do they just leave that a gray area? The Cena/CM Punk belt, Christian has a belt, and then The Miz has a belt if I remember correctly. How do those rank and why are there 3 "top" belts? I know they inherited the US Title from WCW I guess, but it seems excessive and dilluting to the various champions.

[Raw Biz]

This thread has gotten me to download a few RAW's and the Money in the Bank PPV. I was a fan as a kid (80's/90's) until around the year 2000ish, but lost interest. I have a question... what's with all the belts? It's kind of ridiculous. There's at least 3 belts that seem like they would be the best belt... is there a ranking of them that everyone is aware of or do they just leave that a gray area? The Cena/CM Punk belt, Christian has a belt, and then The Miz has a belt if I remember correctly. How do those rank and why are there 3 "top" belts? I know they inherited the US Title from WCW I guess, but it seems excessive and dilluting to the various champions.

The Miz doesn't have a belt now. He was the WWE Champion until Cena beat him a few months ago. Because there are two shows (Raw and Smackdown), there are belts for each brand. Raw has the WWE Championship (CM Punk/Cena) and the US Championship (Dolph Ziggler). Smackdown has the World Heavyweight Championship (Christian) and the Intercontinental Championship (Cody Rhodes). Both the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships are the "top" belts for each brand.

The history of the belts makes it even more confusing. The WWE Championship is a combination of the old WWF Championship and WCW World Heavyweight Championship (represented by the Big Gold Belt). The titles were unified after the acquisition of WCW. The World Heavyweight Championship was then created in 2002 and took over the Big Gold Belt design to give each brand its own title. Basically all the WWE cares about now are the two "top" belts. I think it sucks because the Intercontinental Championship used to actually mean something (and so did the US to a lesser extent). And they hardly even mention the Tag Team Championship (of which there is one after the WWE and World Tag Team Championships were unified).

As good as WWE has been in recent months, I still think they have a long way to go to get back to pre-2000 levels. First I would put more emphasis on the tag teams. Second, I would push the "younger" talent more (or not bury them after initial pushes like happened with Swagger, Morrison, etc.). Third, I would stop cycling out the same champions over and over again (Cena, Orton, Mysterio, Edge before retirement, HHH/Undertaker prior to this year). Finally, I would scrap the whole PG thing. I'm not saying it needs to be Attitude Era 2.0 but at least TV-14. TV PG insults all the intelligent adult fans IMO. I think TV-14 could give both kids and adults a great product to enjoy.

[BrewCrewForever]

I would like to see them go away with the World Heavyweight title on Smackdown and just have one world title, the WWE title. Then have the champ be on both shows like when they first started the brand split. I do like the idea of each show having a mid-card title though US title on Raw and IC Title on Smackdown.

 

rawbecht, with what you said about more emphasis on the tag teams, I read online somewhere that Triple H agrees with that and wants to make that division strong again. The WWE is supposed to be signing some good tag teams and bringing some up from FCW. Would be nice to see good tag team wrestling again, it has been sorely missed.

 

Seeing that Summerslam recall last week to the 91' IC title match with Hart and Mr. Perfect made me remember how much the IC title used to mean. Hope it can mean something again one day, same with the US title.

[patrickgpe]

i wish they would just get rid of the brands, the whole thing was always stupid to me. re-emphasize the tag team titles, simply have the wwe championship, IC, and bring back the hardcore belt.

[PrinceEatMeat]

i wish they would just get rid of the brands, the whole thing was always stupid to me. re-emphasize the tag team titles, simply have the wwe championship, IC, and bring back the hardcore belt.

The Hardcore Title is pointless as long as WWE stays PG. It used to be great during the Attitude Era though. The 24-hour rule was awesome, especially with Crash Holly as the champ.