Let’s talk for a minute about how WWE’s Monday Night Raw ended last night (June 27, 2011). At the end, CM Punk came out and with his archnemesis John Cena lying injured in the ring, Punk proceeded to walk to the top of the aisle, sit down and cut one of the most scathing “worked shoots” to ever air on a professional wrestling program. During this promo piece, Punk broke a lot of taboos against the company and the industry as a whole. He broke kayfabe (or the “fourth wall” as he put it during the monologue) by recognizing other promotions and wrestlers outside the WWE. He called out backstage and corporate names, as opposed to wrestlers and workers. And towards the end, as he went off against his own boss, Vince McMahon, his microphone was finally cut off and the camera went dark, ending the show.
A little background: Punk is a heel and is apparently on his way out of the company. In doing so, he has been set up for a title match against champion John Cena at the next PPV, and in a repeat of an angle Punk created in ROH (Ring of Honor, one of the promotions he name-checked last night), he is threatening to take the WWE belt with him if he wins it.
The reaction to Punk’s speech has been phenomenal. His old friend Colt Cabana even trended on Twitter shortly after being mentioned by Punk during the rant. And I’ll be honest: Even as someone who backed away from following the business about ten years ago (the “InVasion” crap killed it for me), I found the moment to be very gratifying in many ways.
But…that’s just what it was: A moment.
We’ve been down this road before. Does anyone else remember when commentator Joey Styles pulled a very similar stunt during a broadcast? Ultimately, it was part of the lead-in to the relaunched ECW brand, which stumbled the minute it started. Or before that, Paul Heyman’s impassioned speech against McMahon at the height of the Invasion? Sure, it’s been done before, and honestly better (by Heyman). But again, looking at the whole picture, it was just one very cool and very surreal moment. Less than six minutes of a 2+ hour show, and a show that comprises only about a third of the programming the WWE creates each week.
This is where the WWE will fail. Every once in a while, they create a vivid and absolutely engrossing “moment” – think Daniel Bryan and Nexus in their debut assault after weeks of Bryan being verbally accosted by Michael Cole. It was such a hot topic at the time and just like pretty much any other “moment” the WWE has fabricated in the last decade or so, that’s all it was. It happened, it went, and shortly after, WWE dropped its ball again and went right back to the same boring and tired ways that have kept the company in a hazy status quo for years.
Whether or not they were all good or not (and they certainly were a mixture of both), the days of the late 1990s held more excitement. There was so much going on – so much actually cool stuff – that even when they dropped the ball on one program, there were five others that kept the audience captivated and coming back to see what happened next. Somewhere in there, the WWE got lazy, I suppose and have been riding for years on half-assed angles and programs. And no matter how good Punk was last night, he was right: He is just a spoke in the wheel. Unfortunately, the rest of the wheel is wearing out slowly and no matter how strong he was, it doesn’t matter when the rest of the tire can’t hold up its part of the work.
I’ll be honest: I don’t have faith that Vince McMahon or any of his writers (so humorously named “Creative”) can actually harness this into more than that moment. Maybe I’ll be surprised, but judging by the way the Invasion fizzled after Heyman’s last-ditch effort to make it feel real, or after Joey Styles took a seat to commentate on a wrestling zombie shortly after firing off his own round at the company, I don’t have faith. It’s amazing in ways, that a company that just a decade ago could keep multiple captivating storylines going now has trouble with one (and judging by the spoilers for next week’s pretaped show – which I won’t actually spoil – it’s already headed down). We’ll see. Maybe they’ll prove I’m wrong and that they can rekindle a fire within the company. I seriously doubt it though. In the meantime, congratulations to CM Punk for getting that moment and for using it for all its worth. Even if the rest of the angle and the company itself can’t catch fire, that one moment was a damn good one.