8 Wrestlers Who Tried To Look Cool (...& Immediately ATE Sh*t)
4. CM Punk Tries To Hit The Buckshot Lariat
It was difficult to tell what the point of the 2022 CM Punk Vs. Hangman Page storyline was because, as it transpired, the two wrestlers were telling different stories.
CM Punk thought he was telling a basic all-babyface programme. It’s hard to add much juice to that sort of thing. You can’t really do any heat angles. Punk basically said that he respected Hangman, but tried to gain the psychological advantage.
Hangman Page, meanwhile, played it as if he was in a blood feud with Punk and seemed to want to skin him alive. Page said that Punk didn’t act like a champion when the camera wasn’t present, vowing to protect AEW from him. That is because Page was under the impression that Punk had cost friend-turned-bitter enemy Colt Cabana his job as an AEW producer.
Punk was apparently unaware. When telling his rather generic side of the story on commentary, Punk intimated that he had Page right where he wanted him when Page used the Go To Sleep to defeat Konosuke Takeshita.
One of two things happened here:
1) Punk, who had used the Buckshot on John Silver the week prior, wanted to manipulate Page into using the GTS instead of focusing on his own game. Or
2) Punk was aiming for an “anything you can do, I can do better” angle, building a finisher theft trade-off at Double Or Nothing.
This didn’t work either way. When Punk hit Silver with the Buckshot on Dynamite, it was a minor disaster. Punk was never once a good wrestling athlete, and his attempt to front-flip into the clothesline was predictably terrible. It was hard for him to play the ice-cold, conniving old veteran when he executed the move like he was at his first day of wrestling school. And his name was Erik Watts.