Why CM Punk Just Lost In AEW For First Time

Overconfident from his successful sh*thousery in the early going, MJF's smartest play against CM Punk unwittingly became his stupidest. But what a journey he took us on.

Obscuring tape in a tight sleeper, MJF effectively garrotted Punk in full-but-not-full view of referee Bryce Remsburg. The hand dramatically dropped twice to ready the crowd for a roar, but then dropped a third time along with the pin you could hear before arena-wide shock turned to incandescent rage. Like Eric Bischoff not seeing the Ultimate Warrior's ghost in that mirror on Nitro only amazing and not one of the stupidest things in industry history, the only man that could do anything about it had missed MJF's violent and nefarious act. Chicago had just been forced to witness their hero's first loss, and it hadn't even gone down clean in the middle.

Justin Roberts couldn't hide his dejection in announcing the winner, and MJF's brilliantly insufferable music played to theoretically send the fans home devastated.

What followed was both exactly as pantomime as it needed to be (to feed the beast that had been created inside a red hot Wintrust Arena), and an astute nod to one of the programme's key themes. In raising his arm in victory, MJF quite literally over-played his hand just as he'd done in the verbal jousts with the clued up and plugged in Punk in the weeks leading up to the clash. The smoking gun fell to the floor, as did MJF when the match was restarted and the 'Straight Edge Superstar' roared back into the battle.

Much has been made of AEW's glut of Dynamite matches that have such an obvious winner and loser that the story's already been told by the graphic before the wrestlers hit in the ring. The task of the performers in these one-sided pairings is to try and earn a tense near fall before the execution of the obvious. Subverting even lofty expectations, this all-star match didn't offer a two count but rang the bell, rang the f*cking bell on an actual conclusion.

What had been divisive in the 1980s was utterly inspired in 2022, much like the match the two continued to have. But where could it go next after such an unlikely peak?

CONT'D...