#I need to show my first drawing of young JD from like 3 months ago

[raiinshowers]

Two Promises.

Sneak peek of an unfinished piece. For a future scene from my trolls fic, 'Know It’s for the Better'

[wrestlingisfake]

The CM Punk Saga

It's almost time for AEW's "The First Dance" show, and everybody's still prefacing their hype with "if CM Punk isn't there it'll be a huge disaster, but..."

I'll be in the building. They could've booked CP Munk and I'd still be there. But obviously the Punk tease makes this special. If he's there, it'll be historic to witness the reaction in person. And hell, if he's not there, it'll be historic to witness the fiasco in person. I find that kind of funny--after all these years, it's not the man that sold me a ticket, it's the drama surrounding the man.

Punk had wrestling fans in the palm of his hand after the 2011 "pipebomb" promo, in which WWE allowed him to air his real grievances with the company to build tension for a world title match with John Cena. I get the impression WWE expected it to cast him as a whiny heel. But Punk tapped into the fans' frustrations with WWE, and they embraced him as someone who would fight to change what they resented about the company. He was "the voice of the voiceless."

The problem with that kind of role in WWE is that you can only "fight the power" as far as Vince McMahon lets you on his TV show, and then he'll book his side to win the argument. Within a couple of months a lot of the edge was taken off the storyline. Fans still wanted to believe in him as a rising force for change, but the product didn't reflect that. That dissonance came to a head at the 2014 Royal Rumble, which happened to be the day before Punk quit WWE.

In hindsight, Punk's departure had nothing to do with the fans' frustration with the Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority storyline. But at the time nobody knew what Punk's problem was, and neither side was talking. So the two issues sort of got blended together--Bryan's crusade against kayfabe management and Punk's beef with the real thing. I'm sure a lot of fans figured, if Bryan wasn't going to defeat the Authority at Wrestlemania, then Punk was the logical alternative, and WWE must've screwed that up too. Unless...maybe it was all a work, a storyline to make things seem hopless for Punk and Bryan before slamming them into key Wrestlemania matches.

The buildup to the March 3, 2014, episode of Raw was surreal. Stop me if you've heard this one: The show was booked in Chicago, weeks away from a big pay-per-view, and CM Punk wasn't advertised, but it felt like the perfect opportunity for him to make a surprise return, so the live crowd was ready to go apeshit if he didn't appear. When he didn't appear, I think fandom truly started to accept that he was gone for good. But the saga shambled on.

When it was clear Punk wouldn't be fighting for their cause in WWE, fans nevertheless clung to him as a symbol of resistance. The "CM Punk" chant became a potent and controversial tool for disruption. If you just boo at the show, WWE can play that off like you're mad at the bad guys, but if you chant the name of the guy that walked out on their bullshit, there's no good way for the company to spin that.

A lot of people came to hate the Punk chants, but here's the thing: They mainly happen during an absolute dogshit Raw segment. If you listen to your audience and keep them entertained, then they're easier to control, and it's less of an issue. WWE instead prefers to control the audience by telling the them how to be entertained and refusing to listen if they dissent; the Punk chant puts the lie to that approach.

Punk's next move outside of WWE was a huge topic in 2014. Again, fans wanted to believe he'd continue to fight for them somehow. Remember, this was back when Global Force and Lucha Underground had just been announced, and before Impact had gotten thrown off Spike TV. It felt like it wouldn't take much for a serious alternative to WWE to emerge, and give Punk a way to quit WWE without quitting wrestling.

Months of silence led to increasingly wild speculation. A friend of Punk's wrote an editorial about how fans were hanging around outside his home waiting for him to throw out the trash. I'm pretty sure I know what they wanted to ask when they met him. His appearance on Colt Cabana's podcast and his UFC run helped clear the air, but not enough. Fans never gave up trying to find out when he'd come back to save pro wrestling. Punk's comments on the matter were rare, and never seemed to be enough to get people to leave him alone about it. He'd gone from wrestling's Che Guevara to wrestling's JD Salinger.

The rise of NXT and the ROH/New Japan alliance in the mid-2010s seemed to almost be enough to distract fans from their CM Punk fantasies. But then in 2018 Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks decided to run their own indie supercard, and picked Chicago as the location. You could almost hear the Punk in fans' heads saying, "At last, a non-WWE US show big enough to be worthy of my star power. This is what I have been waiting for!" Punk denied that he would be there; of course, to wrestling fans that just means he's swerving us and he will be there. And he wasn't there.

But this is the turning point in the story. I was at All In. I heard like one guy try to get a Punk chant going, more out of ironic self-awareness than anything. Nobody was into it. They'd have been glad to see Punk on the show, but they were there to see the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, Kazuchika Okada, Kota Ibushi, etc. That's probably when it hit me: Everyone had been waiting for Punk to lead the revolution, because they thought no one else could, but these guys had gone ahead and done it without him.

As All In led into AEW, speculation about Punk remained high. But then another funny thing happened, when Jon Moxley dramatically exited WWE in 2019. Moxley didn't immediately announce his future plans, and lots of people figured Moxley must be done with wrestling. The Punk saga had clearly taught fans to manage their expectations. Rumors about both Punk and Mox appearing at Double or Nothing were all over the place, but were generally dismissed as wishful thinking. Then, out of nowhere, Moxley ran in at the end of the show. Then he was announced for a run in New Japan. Fuck, I thought, who needs CM Punk?

And so, I've spent the past few years being over this whole thing. I'd given up trying to figure out CM Punk, or what it would take to bring him back to wrestling. I had a whole array of big names trying to play the part everyone wanted him to play, in a promotion that I thought would never exist without him. Let him enjoy his retirement, and I'll enjoy AEW. So of course he'd decide now is the time to come back. Allegedly.

I'm excited about the possibility of seeing Punk blow the roof off the United Center. It'd be fascinating to see some satisfying closure to this whole thing. And yet, I have no idea what CM Punk means to pro wrestling in 2021. What does "the voice of the voiceless" do in a company full of people listening to their audience? Will fans be into him when they realize he can't/won't be exactly like they remember him from seven years ago? At 42 years old, will he need to play a bitter old heel to stay relevant? How will fans respond when they realize this isn't the big comeback they always dreamed of?

It's those questions that are the real draw for me, regardless of whether The First Dance lives up to expectations. And it's strange to think that's the main attraction to Punk, as if we're talking about an Ultimate Warrior comeback or something. Seven years ago I just wanted him to return to wrestling so I could see him wrestle. Now I kinda just want to see if he looks totally different from the last time I saw his picture.