The self-styled and now retired Best In The World, Phillip 'CM Punk' Brooks was constantly and consistently over as a face or a heel throughout the length and breadth of his professional wrestling career. A born motormouth and a student of old school wrestling psychology and modern movesets, Punk had some of the best mic skills in the business. In the ring, Brooks was excellent but by no means perfect unlike some of his contemporaries, who could describe themselves as natural athletes or who were genetically gifted, the future WWE champion had to work his ass off to achieve the required fitness level and degree of competency as a wrestler. Everything except mouthing off came as a challenge to him: and Brooks being no stranger to confrontation and a contrary mindset, thats just how he liked it. Everyone knows the story by now. CM Punk wasnt supposed to be a WWE superstar, much less become the megastar he became. Almost no one in the office believed in him when he debuted in developmental in 2005, yet just over six years later he was beginning the longest WWE championship reign of the last quarter of a century. Brooks learned the business in order to bend it around his own hard head, and the same was true of the WWE: he learned how it worked in order to make it work for him. Unfortunately for him, what he learned was that the WWE works purely at the whim of Vincent Kennedy McMahon and the inner circle of yes men and family members that surround him. Through sheer hard work, talent and force of personality, Brooks got to the top of the company only to discover that he still wasnt allowed into the VIP room with Triple H and John Cena et al. After several years, he finally realised that the WWE just wouldnt bend the way he wanted it to. When he decided to leave WWE in January 2014, utterly disillusioned with pro wrestling, he went radio silent: the biggest mouth in wrestling zipped it. Over almost the entire of the rest of the year, the world heard nothing from Phil Brooks or CM Punk: about his reasons for leaving, the circumstances surrounding his leaving, his plans for the future, whether hed ever be coming back. The speculation reached fever pitch, until at the end of last year, Brooks was finally able to assert control over his own career and name, and announce his next move on his own terms and at his own convenience. Think about it. In 2014, despite a total absence from the WWE, professional wrestling and public life in general, Phillip Jack Brooks managed to turn his given name into as much a synonym for heat as his wrestling moniker, resulting in a massive increase in his value as a commodity, and all without saying a word. He contemptuously wiped his ass on the WWEs efforts to cool off that heat and control his movements, and fifteen months after he walked out on the RAW after the 2014 Royal Rumble, the live crowd still chants his name whenever they become restless, or bored with the listless excuse for entertainment that they see in front of them. Meanwhile, hes abandoned a seven figure salary and what amounts to a job for life (at his level, at least) to take the same laser focus and discipline he applied to pro wrestling and the WWE, and apply it to attempting to become a full-fledged all-rounder as an MMA fighter. Whether he succeeds at the level that he wants to is still up in the air: but one things for sure, it wont be for lack of trying.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
