CM Punk Takes Raw To A Level Not Seen In Ages - July 1, 2011

Welcome to the "CM Punk needs to do a promo like that every week" edition of The Wrestling List. What a promo that was! It was straight out of the attitude era with reacting to it. Fans were abuzz over it and it just great stuff. Let's get right into it.

Monday night's Raw had three moments on it that I found enjoyable. Raw Roulette was the theme for the episode. However, the big buzz of the show came at the end where CM Punk cost John Cena his match against R Truth. Then, he went and sat down on the ramp and did a shoot promo ripping the company apart. It was incredible. He talked of how he didn't dislike Cena like so many do in the back but just realizes that Cena is better at kissing up to Vince than he is. Punk said he is the best they've got but he isn't as good at kissing up as Cena is and Hogan and Dwayne was. He talked about how he had been vilified since day one because Paul Heyman liked him. Punk said that he was a Heyman guy just like Brock Lesnar was. The common thing with him and Lesnar was that he was leaving just like Lesnar did but he was taking the title with unlike Lesnar. Punk ripped on the company for being there and being the workhorse but never being on any of the merchandise. He said he was the best on the mic, best in the ring, and best even on commentary (completely agree on the commentary thing). He talked about leaving and how he was taking the championship with him. He pondered on what he would do next saying that maybe he would go to Ring Of Honor and then said hello to Colt Cabana. He talked about Vince some more saying that unfortunately this company would be no better after Vince was gone because it was being taken over by "his idiotic daughter, his son-in-law, and the rest of his stupid family". When he got to telling a personal story about Vince, his microphone was cut and he said he had been silenced and the show went black. It was awesome!! The crowd started to cheer for him as well. I know I was. I was sitting there with my mouth open and a smile on my face as he kept talking while applauding. Just incredible. That is how you do a promo folks. It definitely got people talking. Many have taken to Twitter to comment on the promo including Stone Cold Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, Mick Foley, Bret Hart, and more.
Stone Cold Steve Austin: "just melted my 52 inch TV with a scorching hot promo…delivery, content, and attitude..one of the best promos I've ever seen."
Shawn Michaels: "Gettin ready 2 head home. 2 words 4 @CMPunk- thata boy. Felt like old times. Anywho, back 2 my normal life, tweet u on touchdown:-)"
Chris Jericho: "Congrats to @cmpunk and Vince McMahon for doing something tonight that hasn't been done in awhile...make history."
Mick Foley: "I have no idea where this @cmpunk thing might go, but I know I'll be watching. Captivating stuff."
Bret Hart: "The best promos are always the ones that sound real"

If you missed the promo, here it is:


Oh, there were other happenings on Raw. Great to see Shawn Michaels on the show. He was in the opening segment and had a face off with Punk and Nexus. He was later in a backstage vignette with Diamond Dallas Page and Booker T which was a promotion for the WCW DVD. Another big highlight which actually woke me up was when Big Show was knocked through the side of the cage by Mark Henry. It looked great and completely caught me off guard. I cracked up at the fans watching it happen in the building. Standing in stunned reaction. Evan Bourne and Sin Cara had a good match. Rey Mysterio teamed with Alex Riley against The Miz and Jack Swagger which was a solid match. Fun ending.

Other notes from Raw. Funny that Punk posted on Twitter before Raw saying "I'm in full 'what are they going to do fire me' mode?" I guess now I know why the ending graphic for Raw was put up unusually early just as the 10:00 hour hit. There would be no end graphic due to the plan to cut to black. I bet Ring Of Honor appreciated that mention on Raw given that they are about to launch syndicated in September. I was wondering if WWE would mention the voting mess-up when the Sin Cara/Bourne match happened. They acknowledged but didn't ever really say, hey, we messed up. They did not mention at all about the Vickie Guerrero match stipulation being messed up. Instead they had Kofi get to pick his match and said that he personally voted for Vickie to be banned last week so wanted that to happen this week. That was another mess-up last week with the voting as that was the winner but the 2 out of 3 falls match was shown as the winner. Voting mess up.

The coroner's report has been released on the passing of Macho Man Randy Savage. Still hard to believe that I'm typing those words. It was due to cardiovascular disease. His brother, Lanny Poffo, has been doing interviews off and on and he told the story of the accident. He said that Savage's wife actually steered the car off the road into the tree. Poffo said that this avoided several people getting hurt that were on the road in that same area at the time. He said that she was a hero for doing what she did to save the other people.

Colt Cabana is someone that really needs to work big to capitalize on his name being mentioned on Raw. And he is. He did an interview with the Miami Herald. Colt talked about Punk's reasoning for wanting to leave WWE and here were some of the comments: “From being laughed at by the trainers in Ohio Valley Wrestling to Paul [Heyman] finally bringing him up and everybody treating him like dirt, telling him he has an attitude problem and calling him the ‘King of the Indies.’ Just looking down on him, he just felt shunned his whole time there. It was a complete struggle. The power of him not really caring because he was ready to leave — I always said the power of not giving a **** is so important. He is really at the point where he just wants to get out of there. It’s too frustrating for him. If he said anything that made anybody mad, what are they going to do to him? Not re-sign him? He doesn’t want to be there. So I think that idea is so powerful. He is so strong in his beliefs with the straight edge lifestyle. By being how strong headed that he is, he was able to have the power to go out on television and say what probably every other wrestler has wanted to say. He made unbelievable television. He made unbelievable history in wrestling. He almost has the ability to change professional wrestling as we know it. It has been so stagnant and vanilla. It kind of shook up the wrestling world because of his real life frustrations.”
To read more of the interview which is definitely worth a read, here you go: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/30/2292336/colt-cabana-thanks-friend-wwe.html#ixzz1QsWmhRN8

I watched a little bit of Impact last week. Oh, and I need to say that I messed up on the main event for Destination X. It is instead going to be AJ vs. Daniels instead of having Joe in the mix. He is in another match. Going back to Impact. What is up with Sting? That is just bizarre with what they are doing with him. It's just strange and I don't really like it. I know that Hogan and Bischoff have been raving on Twitter about how great it is. I don't know. Just not my cup of tea but maybe others like it.

Ring Of Honor held their long awaited press conference last week where they talked about the launching on the Sinclair networks across the country. They had talent there to promote the product and took questions from the media. I don't know if there was anything really groundbreaking that was learned that we didn't already know but I do know that I get to see ROH here locally every week so that is a huge plus. On another note, I'm hearing great things about their PPV last week.

That is it for today. Wishing you all a great day. Take care and God bless!!