10 Booking Steps For CM Punk In WWE
11/30/2023 10:56 AM
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Euphoric return aside, CM Punk in WWE will be a Triple H success story - here's how...
CM Punk’s appearance on the 27 November Raw split opinion.
Advertised as Punk’s first time with a live WWE microphone in almost a full decade, expectations were high. Too high, in fact. Was Punk going to tear apart AEW in the same manner he’d done towards WWE? Was he going to sit on the stage, cross-legged, waving at Colt Cabana? Was he, perhaps, going to address the temper tantrum thrown by Seth Rollins at Survivor Series?
As it turns out, none of the above. He’s back in WWE and that was about the extent of it. The juiciest bits were the mention of his wife AJ Lee and, in a line not uttered to the live audience, when he stated that he was in WWE to make money, not friends.
That was it - and that’s fine!
This was all it needed to be. CM Punk, a verbal wrecking ball renowned the world over for his snappy and witty promos, can’t deliver a pipebomb every week - but there is a lot he can do.
Join us now as Wrestlelamia looks at 10 Booking Steps For CM Punk In WWE.
Admittedly, this may be too easy a route for WWE to travel. The Tony Khan-led promotion - and Khan himself for that matter - has scarcely resisted the urge to bash the competition. Had Vince McMahon still been in charge of WWE then sure, go wild, but WWE under Triple H operates as a different machine and thus, the AEW dig-fest is off the table.
Legally, CM Punk is likely unable to mention AEW regardless of how much the fans have clamoured for him to slam Jack Perry and The Young Bucks. Tony Khan, when quizzed on Punk’s WWE comeback in an interview with the BBC, stated that he was lawfully unable to comment on the situation (H/T Inside The Ropes):
“Can’t talk about that nor do I think it’s the time or the place. But I appreciate you asking and I am really excited about AEW All In at Wembley Stadium. Not to dodge or duck your question, it’s just not something I can legally talk about.”
If Tony Khan can’t discuss CM Punk, Punk can’t discuss AEW and thankfully, he almost certainly won’t.
Digging into the opposing brand never works successfully. It does nothing more than provide a point of discussion for the competition; Triple H should know better than anyone else.
This is more about when CM Punk’s first WWE match will be, not necessarily who it will be against. It’ll probably be an Austin Theory or a Grayson Waller, a good hand between the ropes to ease Punk back in, but when’s the best time to do it?
The holiday season.
While holding off on CM Punk’s first match back in a WWE ring until a Premium Live Event may better suit WWE’s tastes, WWE viewing figures typically drop off for a week or two around any holiday period, be it Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, or whatever as friends and family gather to munch into turkey, set off a few fireworks at all hours to really annoy their neighbours, and tune into EastEnders for the only time all year.
By promoting CM Punk’s anticipated in-ring return across Christmas and New Year’s, particularly as both holidays are on Monday this year, it’s a guaranteed means of maintaining a consistently high viewership across the otherwise dire down period before the road to the Royal Rumble kicks into high gear.
It’s Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins.
It has to be.
Punk and Rollins’ issues away from the ring make for scintillating reading. Seth deemed Punk a cancer to professional wrestling in a heated chat with Nick Hausman and Punk? Well, he believes Rollins should put his money where his mouth is and stop talking crap online.
An angle like this is a prime opportunity to blur the lines between reality and kayfabe. CM Punk’s emergence at the closing of Survivor Series left Seth Rollins being held back by Michael Cole of all people, flipping off Punk as ‘The Second City Saint’ couldn’t resist a smile and waved his way. Although this has since been confirmed by Dave Meltzer, via Wrestling Observer Radio, as all being part of an angle, how much of it is?
Seth looked pretty fierce in the moment and has since doubled down on his actions, both during a live event the day after the incident and on the post-Survivor Series Raw. Punk, on the same episode, claimed that he was back in WWE to make money, not friends.
Reality or otherwise, WWE has gold on their fingertips with this.
Cody Rhodes, LA Knight, and GUNTHER.
Those were your front-runners to win the 2024 men’s Royal Rumble match until Survivor Series. CM Punk now leads the charge with odds of 6/4 - and he should go all the way.
CM Punk challenging Seth Rollins for the World Heavyweight Championship is presumably one of the planned World Title matches for WrestleMania, with Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes’ second declaration of war over the Undisputed Universal Championship being the other. The issue with the latter is that Cody has already entered himself into the Royal Rumble field, some two months before the match is due to take place.
That’s usually an indication, if WWE programming has told us anything, that Rhodes will come close, but not close enough.
It works out, though, as Rhodes can get his shot at ‘The Tribal Chief’ by winning the Elimination Chamber match. This leaves Punk to win the Rumble, which he should do from either the first or second spot, and will avoid a potential hijacking of the entire match.
The 2014 Royal Rumble - a top-three worst Rumble ever - suffered from this badly when Daniel Bryan failed to enter the bout. WWE can’t afford another of its type.
There’s an old saying in life, “The second is never as good as the first”. Soup tastes better on the second day, not the first. Red Dead Redemption II was far superior to its predecessor. Even CM Punk himself is a testament to this theory, as his WWE return outweighed his AEW debut by a fraction of excitement.
But no matter the context, CM Punk should not - repeat, should NOT - drop another pipebomb on WWE.
The original, seminal moment from the 2011 Summer of Punk was so raw and provocative because no one else dared to stray from the typical WWE promo in the manner that CM Punk did. You wouldn’t get The Big Show taking a seat on the stage complaining about whatever nonsense was on his mind, would you?
It’s a moment that has lived on for eternity as the CM Punk WWE moment, but its place in the history books doesn’t need a 2023 remaster.
This will disappoint many, given Punk’s known ability on the microphone, but there are other ways to sell an angle or build to a marquee showdown. Not every CM Punk promo needs to break the fourth wall.
Listen to what CM Punk had to say when Triple H insisted that Punk’s WrestleMania 29 quest vs. The Undertaker was the main event of the night rather than John Cena vs. The Rock (H/T Cageside Seats):
“So Hunter goes, ‘You know, Punk, you were in the best match at WrestleMania last year and that was the main event.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not f**king stupid. The main event is the last match. You can push it to people who buy the pay-per-view [that] there’s four main events; there’s one main event. There’s always been one main event, and I deserved it. I still deserve it. And now Daniel Bryan deserves it. And you think you’re just going to give it to Batista and Randy?’”
Now listen to what Punk had to say with regard to what he had wanted to do on that same WrestleMania:
“I was trying to politic my way into the main event but it wasn’t like, ‘Let me beat everybody,’ it was, ‘Hey, let’s do a three way, it will be elimination. Have somebody pin me in f**king five minutes, I don’t care.' And then I’ll be able to be like, ‘Ha, I did the main event at WrestleMania’ and I’ll be able to move on. F**k it, you know? It won’t be such a hang up for me anymore, it won’t be such a mind f**k'.”
CM Punk is desperate to headline ‘The Show of Shows’ - and it’s happening in 2024.
WWE will be missing the boat if they put Punk anywhere but the ‘Mania main event, especially with the show now being a two-night affair. To reiterate, CM Punk vs. Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns are WWE’s currently presumed main events for each night. There’s no harm in giving Punk the main event rub.
It won’t be the only thing Punk does that night, though…
Too soon?
Perhaps, but CM Punk needs new content. The whole “I was gone for a decade” schtick worked in AEW because, until August 2021, he really had been done with pro wrestling. When he came back to AEW following his suspension, he did so with a new lease of life via the Real AEW World Championship. This allowed him to stay fresh and interesting outside of the backstage scandals that had plagued his run.
Thus, a CM Punk heel turn is an absolute must-book for Triple H. Punk hasn’t played the heel alignment, officially, since early 2013, so it would completely rock the boat with regard to what many expect from CM Punk in 2023.
Ending one of the nights of WrestleMania with a heel turn in a manner not seen since ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin sided with Vince McMahon in 2001 would make ‘Mania itself feel fresh as well. Too often has the night ended with a simple championship celebration, which is a satisfactory piece of booking in some cases - Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, Becky Lynch, Daniel Bryan, etc. - but here, the heel turn would push the championship win up another notch.
If the title to this entry reads as a paradox, then apologies, but too long can be way too long in the context of wrestling championship reign lengths.
Roman Reigns is the best modern example of this. He’s held the Universal Championship since August 2020 for a reign of almost 1,200 days as of publication, but it doesn’t feel nearly as prestigious as WWE had intended due to his continued absences from programming. In contrast, CM Punk’s 434-day reign as WWE Champion felt long for the time period as WWE hadn’t dabbled with year-plus-long title reigns in decades but in hindsight, it went past like a breeze.
434 days is too long here, though.
Anywhere close to a full year will be enough for Punk to get his point across while champion, but going past the 365-day threshold risks the possibility of him - and the World Heavyweight Championship - suffering from the age-old wrestling curse; staleness.
For this hot CM Punk title reign, reigning over Raw until at the very least the 2025 Royal Rumble, if not WrestleMania 41, will do.
Ricky Starks.
Seriously.
Ricky Starks has been linked with an AEW-to-WWE jump since he made the jump from the NWA to AEW in 2020. He’s a perfectly moulded WWE Superstar who’d absolutely thrive under the high-stakes pressure and is someone who, although is currently AEW World Tag Team Champion with Big Bill, isn’t actually doing a whole lot in the company.
The reason for that? CM Punk.
Following Punk’s termination from All Elite Wrestling, reports surfaced that he was due to work Ricky at All Out 2023, defending his Real World Championship in the process. That didn’t happen, though, leaving Tony Khan scrambling to pick up the pieces. Starks instead got a critically acclaimed Dog Collar match with Bryan Danielson that ticked all the boxes, but the lack of a payoff to the CM Punk angle - the top star in AEW at the time - must eat away at him.
He’s close friends with Cody Rhodes, too, and was snapped backstage with ‘The American Nightmare’ ahead of the 2023 Royal Rumble so who knows, maybe ‘Absolute’ Ricky Starks will soon be an ‘Absolute’ WWE Superstar.
Darby Allin, Daniel Garcia, Lee Moriarty, Max Caster, Ricky Starks, Powerhouse Hobbs, Wardlow, MJF.
All of those names faced CM Punk one-on-one in All Elite Wrestling and they were all the better for it.
That was one of Punk’s most redeemable qualities throughout his AEW tenure, his eagerness to help establish the next generation for the company. They needn’t win the match either because just by sharing a ring with someone the ilk of CM Punk, their stance within AEW skyrocketed through their association with Punk for however brief.
This is paramount to his WWE comeback story, too.
Where would a Chad Gable, for example, get to by wrestling CM Punk? What about Dominik Mysterio? Even digging into NXT’s back pocket, there’s Carmelo Hayes who’d make for outstanding opposition for CM Punk.
You need only scan the WWE.com Superstars page to get an understanding of the level of dream matches CM Punk could now have across Raw, SmackDown, and NXT, and again, he doesn’t need to do the job on a weekly basis. So long as he has his wrestling boots on and not his firing arm, a whole host of talent could be about to break through.
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