Monday Night Raw (30/4/12)

[PowerButchi]

Punk was begging Triple H to be the timekeeper and asking to wear his blazer.

 

Because Punk learned who the man was. I've mentioned it before, but HHH beating Punk and Kevin Nash twatting him all the time was my highlight of 2011. HHH beating Lesnar may well be even more fun!

[Dirty Eddie]

You

[Sphinx]

If triple h ends up fighting lesnar and winning, i wont be pleased. He did this with CM punk and it put a speed bump into cm punks push. The man is just so damn selfish.

 

If he doesn't drop the WWE Title at the next PPV, I'm stopping watching wrestling forever. Wait a minute....he isn't the champion is he? Who is it again?

 

To be fair, it did stifle Punk's momentum. His booking post-MITB was shit. I understand that he had to be back for Summerslam, so they were in a difficult situation because of the timing. But at Summerslam, he got a Jack Knife from Nash and would get hit by Nash sporadically afterwards. He didn't get anything back on Nash apart from some (and admittedly, I'd imagine this was Punk's fault) lame inside references. Then he lost to Triple H and was having a laugh with him on the Raw when everyone had buggered off in protest of Triple H. He then entered a dull feud with Del Rio (which I'd attribute to Del Rio more than Punk) before picking up a bit of momentum from Survivor Series onwards with the Lauranitus feud. Then Jericho came back and made a pig's ear of his return (change) and, again, Punk is starting to build momentum again now.

 

Why did Triple H need to win it? I'm a big Triple H fan, but Triple H was booked as the biggest, most sympathetic face when the focus needed to be on Punk.

So pretty much everything and anything thats gone wrong for Punk since MITB has been someone else’s fault? None of it his own? How about, Punk’s momentum got stifled because he came across like such a smug, arrogant, cocky, unlikeable little shit during his promos at the time. The ones where he got carte blanche to write his own stuff and drop PIPEBOMBS~ all the time. He thought he could appeal to all the smarks by making insider references to Triple H and his marriage to Steph. But it wasn’t 2003 anymore, and it just came across as small time, and unprovoked against the now super popular Triple H.

 

You’re right, the booking of Punk could have been better, but even so, Punk never carried himself like a star in the process. The whole duration of that feud, Punk never looked on the same level as people like Triple H. And i don’t mean in the ring between the bell ringing, I mean in his promo’s, his attitude, the way he walked and talked etc. People throughout the history of WWF/E have had moments/periods during their rise to the top that would have stifled their momentum (just look at Triple H in the summer of 99 for example), but being able to take the shit and still look like a star in the process is what separates the good from the great. And Punk - while very entertaining (saying all this, I actually do like Punk) - doesn’t come across like a star.

 

I don't think Punk comes across as much of a star, but I think they should have given him better booking post-MITB. They got cold feet on him it seemed. I'm not saying it's all the fault of the booking at all; I'm saying that it's a big reason he didn't get over as much as I feel he could have. I don't think that 'you called Eddie Guerrero a vanilla midget!' is relevant or the work of a main event player. He's to blame for that. But when he left that stuff out, he was good on the mic.

 

The problem was that they were pushing Triple H into being 'super popular' at the expense of Punk. At the end of the day, you had face Punk vs. face Triple H. They'd put Triple H in many sympathetic situations where he had to choose between his mate Nash and his company, and having the company walk out with a vote of no confidence against him as he stands hopelessly in the ring. Him feuding against a heel Triple H would have surely worked better?

 

Punks works best with anti-authority angles. His initial promo got people talking. His promo on Big Johnny was much better than he'd been doing before. His contract signing with Vince was great. If Triple H was the heel authority figure and Punk was feuding with him, you'd have more success. I thought Punk was going to face Johnny at Mania.

[JohnnyChimpo]

You

[JohnnyChimpo]

With regards to the bit in bold above, I disagree somewhat. That first promo on the ramp was a standout moment for sure, but even better was the live contract negotiations with Vince, where Punk had the whole arena in the palm of his hands and ran circles around McMahon. That was some excellent TV.

This is quite true. He did look a star in those two promos, which are now the exceptions that prove the rule. He showed then that he was capable of looking like a star, but he just didn

[Dirty Eddie]

With regards to the bit in bold above, I disagree somewhat. That first promo on the ramp was a standout moment for sure, but even better was the live contract negotiations with Vince, where Punk had the whole arena in the palm of his hands and ran circles around McMahon. That was some excellent TV.

This is quite true. He did look a star in those two promos, which are now the exceptions that prove the rule. He showed then that he was capable of looking like a star, but he just didn’t do it consistently enough. The greats can get fed shit and still come out of it looking like a superstar. He caught lightning in a bottle with that first promo, but it was like his thought process went; “They all loved it! They loved all the insider references and faux shoot shit. Lets just keep doing that.’ And it got old. Fast. I think in that regard, Punk dropped the ball. He went from doing serious promo’s, where the insider remarks were both edgy and relevant to what he was talking about, to just spouting any old shit that he brainfarted out. Like when he was cutting a promo with Nash, and he dropped in that Nash called Guerrero a vanilla midget. It was so out of the blue, and completely not relevant to what was being discussed at the time. It was like he stopped and thought to himself; “Shit, the people love Guerrero, Nash put him down about 15 years ago, saying something about it to get a cheap pop.” It was just silly. Another time, when Triple H was at the comic con thing, and asked Punk to get in touch with WWE so they could discuss a contract, and Punk replies with “I’ll call Steph, pretty sure I have her number” (I’m paraphrasing obviously), almost as if he thought that would be edgy, cause it served no other purpose than that. He went from looking super serious and all business to doing that God awful, cringeworthy getting pretending to get sick, over and over and over and over and over again routine. The list of stuff like that can go on. Things like that, all of which Punk had control over, where big parts of him stifling his own momentum.

 

People can point fingers and blame the booking, and they have valid points. But Punk himself has just as much responsibility to shoulder when it comes down to it.

 

I agree with most of the fair criticism to Punk that you posted above. Like I said, it was really just the point about him never looking like a genuine Star that I took issue with.

 

I'm not excusing Punk's lame "throwing up" skit or any of the overly insider stuff he did that wasn't funny or clever. A lot of it was lame and nowhere near as good as his first few weeks. But the thing is, even if his material had all been brilliant - he was throwing it towards Triple H, so he was kind of fucked anyway. Triple h is super popular so it turned into a weird face/face feud. The fans have long embraced Triple H as a huge face, so putting him against Punk (who was building face momentum prior to that) was just an awkward thing to do.