10 Wrestling Finishes Performed On The Fly
1. Straight Edge Means I’m Better Than You
In August 2007, a heel John Morrison was the ECW Champion - that’s WWECW, the Disney version, of course. He’d been feuding with fiery babyface CM Punk on the company’s third brand, and had beaten him in three separate pay-per-view matches, most recently at SummerSlam.
Having come out on top, the decision had been made to find a new opponent for him: the Boogeyman. The following week, ECW’s main event was scheduled to be a Fatal Four Way between the Boogeyman, Big Daddy V, the Miz and CM Punk, with the winner becoming the new number one contender. Dave Lagana reminisced about that night in a 2011 blog post, reproduced here - back then, he was the head writer for ECW.
As Lagana tells it, he was at the gorilla position as the bell went, and noticed that, unusually, Vince McMahon wasn’t sitting at the desk. After the match had started, Lagana saw McMahon walk back in, sit down and call Fit Finlay, the agent for the match, over to his monitor.
The two talked quickly, then Finlay relayed something to the referee. Moments later, Punk fed the Miz the GTS and pinned him to become the number one contender again. The feud that had just ended was kickstarted once more.
Why Punk and not the Boogeyman, as was originally the plan? This was the week that the Signature Pharmacy steroid scandal broke. Two days later, WWE made the announcement that they were suspending ten active wrestlers whose names had appeared on the list of performers who were illicit customers of Signature Pharmacy… and John Morrison was one of them.
The company had originally intended to Morrison to beat the Boogeyman, but the upcoming suspension changed matters. He would need to drop the title to his next opponent, and the Boogeyman wasn’t any kind of WWE world champion, even the ECW version.
Back in 2007, there was an extreme reluctance on the part of Vince McMahon and the agents to put any weight behind CM Punk as a potential future star. In booking meetings, Punk was constantly put down and belittled behind his back… and that behaviour continued months after he defeated Morrison for the ECW Championship, with his title defences making him look weak and foolish, a fluke champion.
The office weren’t fond of Punk, and didn’t see much in him back then… but he was notoriously and legitimately straight edge. What with media treating the Benoit scandal as drug-related, and now Signature Pharmacy being the worst steroid scandal for over a dozen years, there was kudos involved in having a straight edge champion at that precise moment.
Right then, straight edge really did mean that Punk was better than everyone else.