The Most Insane Wrestling Lore HIDDEN On The Internet

The internet is forever.

It's changed shape a few times since we all got our grubby hands on it, and the rate of changes pushed through by those billionaire boffins in Silicon Valley might be faster than any of us normies can keep up with, but if you just assume everything on this and every screen is for keeps, you're best equipped for whatever comes next. Yes, posts on socials can be deleted, old websites can be give a scorched-earth treatment and Google itself might not quite be the internet detective it once was. But it's sat in a server room somewhere, ignored like a lot of lost media but there all the same. Alive, if not kicking.

Wrestlers forget this sometimes when trying to peddle some false narrative via worker-speak that was more effective before anybody could fact check every single detail a frazzled memory can summon. Incredible archives such as HistoryOfWWE, Cagematch and ProFightDB can prove or disprove just how close or far away a wrestler is when trying recall exactly how many towns they made. Wrestlenomics and WrestleTix have the numbers - all kinds of numbers - even when promoters want to provide their own. The likes of the Wrestling Observer and Pro Wrestling Torch archives sit as neatly(ish) ordered(ish) collections of the gossip, scuttlebutt and industry talk from the time they were published.

Then, behind cobwebbed corners and long-abandoned Geocities hyperlinks, there's...

Beginning with a post in October 2002 and ending with a heartbroken tribute to Eddie Guerrero shortly after his passing in 2005, CM Punk's LiveJournal is as complete a record of his time with Ring Of Honor outside of the the safely-housed Tony Khan-owned footage itself. It's also the inner thoughts and feelings of a 23-to-27-year old man making his first steps in an arrested development industry doing as the sign advertises - live journaling - the life he's experiencing. 

These are the caveats and qualifiers its important to note before diving into a mixed bag of hot takes, reflections, thoughts and feelings from a controversial figure in...more controversial times. People change and Phil Brooks is the sort of man that appears to change more than he'd be willing to admit, but in between his seemingly unending quest to be the undisputed king of the edgelords is a man that still has the desire to be the undisputed champion of the world. The love for wrestling - be it the wrestling business, wrestling history, the camaraderie from wrestling or his success in wrestling - sweats through the prose as much as he does through long matches to send punters home happy across America.

There's a lot of complaining about airports, a lot of time spent with Colt Cabana and Ace Steel, a lot of treasured moments with Harley Race and the sort of insomniac rambling that rarely breaks out of the DMs into public consumption in the post-social media age. It's too densely packed to digest page-by-page here, and is in its own way an enormously recommended read. And who knew emojis (or as they were then, emoticons) could look old? They may as well be cave paintings sat alongside the slate of options in your smart phone, but Punk diligently attaches one to every post to summarise his state in a single funny face, whether he's feeling tired (sleepy face), dirty (googley eyes?) or, as is often the case, irate (big red angry scowl). 

CM Punk is a man innocent and guilty of every accusation thrown at him. As brilliant or as awful as you think he is. A worker to his core with provable facts made false but with the fiercest belief in his own truth as anybody still working in wrestling today. A throwback that also gladly broke every rule he espoused. This is the inside of his brain from his formative years in wrestling.