The CM Punk Movement Was Over Before It Began
The "Pipe Bomb" wasn't a waste of time, but it was a false dawn. Punk's promo still kicked every kind of *ss with spare ones around the corner left bending over for the boot. It was a victory for talent-driven creativity that would only emerge from a system stifling it in the first place. There's a sense Punk was wise to this as he took the stage, too.
Stone Cold Steve Austin, he of biggest thing going in wrestling history this side of Hulk Hogan tweeted to say it had just melted his screen as one of the best he'd ever seen, and he rebuilt Vince McMahon's entire empire out of t-shirt sales from an improvised riff on the bible. It can't have hurt sales of that rather ugly Austin shirt Punk was wearing as he cut it too. And even that felt partially by capitalist design.
Was Punk paying tribute to 'The Rattlesnake' in real life, remembering the incredible impact of that legendary King Of The Ring speech and hoping to mirror it? Was he showing him some respect in kayfabe after a feisty interaction between the pair just weeks earlier? Or was he such a canny operator that he realised how to maximise the value of his message beyond the words themselves? The world stared through the wrestling window again for a few minutes, and they saw echoes of a guy they remembered, rather than a yellow "N" on an arm-band they wouldn't have had a clue about.
He'd stolen the show and sold another one, and in true punk and Punk style, he'd done it all by himself. But to what end?
CONT'D...