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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jun 28, 2021 4:31:01 GMT -5
Ten years, and I still hate this promo. I know people love it and I know what it did for business, but I’ll never be okay with how I feel it pushed a bullshit narrative about Cena’s character being a “butt kisser” who got opportunities due to management.
After it was shown in kayfabe that he was just physically tough as nails? Nah, screw that.
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jun 28, 2021 4:32:01 GMT -5
This is also 19 years since Cena debuted. It’s nuts to think that 9 years to the day after he debuted, he got a promo cut on him being the “system” And it was f***ing stupid. Still is.
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Post by Bang Bang Bart on Jun 28, 2021 8:41:59 GMT -5
I remember on here the RAW after MITB threat and half of the posts were people complaining that Punk hasnt shown up yet, when I mentioned that I had the cub game on in the other room and Punk is there a bunch of posters were like "well this is ruined, Punk should be on raw tonight" That’s why I think that anything involving Punk between running off with the belt and him coming back had to be fancam, “found footage” kind of stuff of him literally anywhere else. Him showing up on RAW every week doing a victory lap defeats the purpose of the character wanting to leave the damn place to start with. There’s also something else from the angle that you have to factor in at this point that nobody’s brought up, and it’s that Cena is meant to be gone too, having been “fired” for losing the belt to Punk in the first place. I think the story between MITB and SummerSlam is that Punk goes on his indy tour with the belt while Vince loses all semblance of control of RAW having no champion (despite intending to crown one) or his franchise player. I don’t know how to get from A to D, but all I can think of is that Cena ends up as the GM and rehires Punk as the rightful champion at some point. I think we still go down the route of COO Triple H, but not immediately after MITB. Maybe like two weeks into the angle, after we get a few bits of Punk doing his indy victory lap (with “footage” being provided to WWE during program interruptions), the Board decides that Vince has basically f***ed up too much and bring in H to take over for him.
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Post by Push R Truth on Jun 28, 2021 10:13:26 GMT -5
I think the promo, in the moment it was said, was good. Not great, but good.
I also don't think it did anything in the long run and it's impact is minimal at best. I do think it worked a ton of people who thought it was "a real shoot". The only change I believe it did was a bunch of copycat "omg pipebomb" promos that were bad, and those do tarnish the good original promo.
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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Jun 28, 2021 10:27:52 GMT -5
I think the promo was really strong and I'm of the belief that without guys like Punk breaking through folks like Owens, Zayn and others don't get as close a look.
They totally whiffed on the storyline, though. I get wanting to capitalize on Punk being popular so you bring him back earlier, but they should have gone with Punk winning at SummerSlam and then leaving again for a bit. Del Rio, Nash, HHH and others getting involved ruined the storyline.
I'm a fan of what HHH has done with NXT, but I can't help but believe that HHH actively sabotaged Punk and it's the last example of him really f***ing someone over because of his ego.
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Jun 28, 2021 10:38:39 GMT -5
Ten years, and I still hate this promo. I know people love it and I know what it did for business, I mean, short term? Sure. But it also created a problem where people tried to emulate it in the years that followed. I again, point at AJ's astonishingly stupid "pipebombshell". Nobody, and I mean *nobody* came out of that thing looking anything other than f***ing stupid. Congrats, AJ, the division is a joke, the wrestlers all suck and YOU are the champion of said sucky division. Fans will trip over themselves to buy tickets to see you guys now Whoever thought that was a good idea should have been shitcanned on the spot
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Post by Blade on Jun 28, 2021 10:56:44 GMT -5
Ten years, and I still hate this promo. I know people love it and I know what it did for business, but I’ll never be okay with how I feel it pushed a bullshit narrative about Cena’s character being a “butt kisser” who got opportunities due to management. After it was shown in kayfabe that he was just physically tough as nails? Nah, screw that. Your feelings about Cena are well-known, but I think you would do well to consider that: A) Punk largely praises Cena in the promo, noting he likes him a lot better than most of the other guys. B) Punk calling Cena Vince's ass-kisser (and by extension his hand-picked corporate champion) works, as so much in the promo did, on both kayfabe and non-kayfabe levels. For the latter, obviously Cena was the favoured champ of the higher-ups because he'd been The Guy for six or seven years. For the former, Punk was at this point still the leader of Nexus, an insurgent faction that had been feuding with Cena since the beginning, so OF COURSE he sees Cena as symbolic of everything he wants to tear down. How can Punk be the best if someone else is champ? By the higher-ups giving someone else more chances than he gets, and the only target for that accusation is Cena. His character was of a paranoid and ruthless cult leader.It also might behoove you to remember that Cena was presented as the unalloyed face in the feud - he consistently made the honourable decisions, showed respect for Punk, and only lost the match because he let Punk out of the STFU and ran out to prevent Vince from reenacting the Screwjob. Punk meanwhile was either a heel or tweener until MitB.
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Post by Blade on Jun 28, 2021 11:19:48 GMT -5
I again, point at AJ's astonishingly stupid "pipebombshell". Nobody, and I mean *nobody* came out of that thing looking anything other than f***ing stupid. Congrats, AJ, the division is a joke, the wrestlers all suck and YOU are the champion of said sucky division. Fans will trip over themselves to buy tickets to see you guys now Whoever thought that was a good idea should have been shitcanned on the spot Kay, I'll say it: The division was a joke, the wrestlers all sucked and AJ Lee was the champion of said sucky division. She was saying nothing that many fans weren't already saying, and there is no doubt whatsoever that WWE hiring models and pushing them ahead of people who had actual passion for wrestling was a source of considerable frustration for her. Consider also AJ's own experiences with being nearly fired, called unattractive to her face by management, etc. That promo wasn't supposed to put anyone over. It was, first and foremost, because AJ had refused to be on Total Divas and they wanted her to cut a promo about it. Secondly, it was supposed to be a wake-up call, and most observers had little trouble identifying it as such. WWE had to change who it hired and how they featured them. And they did, eventually... though like Punk, AJ wouldnt be around to compete in the era she helped create. To put it another way, yes, the promo didn't serve any purpose in wrestling logic (though this is in part because WWE didn't want anyone to respond to it directly), but it was also never about wrestling logic in the first place: it was about how WWE wanted women to be models and reality show stars, not wrestlers, and that absolutely deserved to be called out.
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Jun 28, 2021 11:34:46 GMT -5
I again, point at AJ's astonishingly stupid "pipebombshell". Nobody, and I mean *nobody* came out of that thing looking anything other than f***ing stupid. Congrats, AJ, the division is a joke, the wrestlers all suck and YOU are the champion of said sucky division. Fans will trip over themselves to buy tickets to see you guys now Whoever thought that was a good idea should have been shitcanned on the spot Kay, I'll say it: The division was a joke, the wrestlers all sucked and AJ Lee was the champion of said sucky division. She was saying nothing that many fans weren't already saying, and there is no doubt whatsoever that WWE hiring models and pushing them ahead of people who had actual passion for wrestling was a source of considerable frustration for her. Consider also AJ's own experiences with being nearly fired, called unattractive to her face by management, etc. That promo wasn't supposed to put anyone over. It was, first and foremost, because AJ had refused to be on Total Divas and they wanted her to cut a promo about it. Secondly, it was supposed to be a wake-up call, and most observers had little trouble identifying it as such. WWE had to change who it hired and how they featured them. And they did, eventually... though like Punk, AJ wouldnt be around to compete in the era she helped create. To put it another way, yes, the promo didn't serve any purpose in wrestling logic (though this is in part because WWE didn't want anyone to respond to it directly), but it was also never about wrestling logic in the first place: it was about how WWE wanted women to be models and reality show stars, not wrestlers, and that absolutely deserved to be called out. So, they had her cut a promo, that served no wrestling logic and was not only meant to NOT put someone over, but bury an entire division and making herself look like a f***ing idiot, on live TV as a "wake up call"......to whom exactly? Themselves? The people THEY hired?
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Blade
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Post by Blade on Jun 28, 2021 11:46:41 GMT -5
So, they had her cut a promo, that served no wrestling logic and was not only meant to NOT put someone over, but bury an entire division and making herself look like a f***ing idiot, on live TV as a "wake up call"......to whom exactly? Themselves? The people THEY hired? I'm very curious as to why cutting a promo expressing what she believed and many other people believed made herself look like "a f***ing idiot". Response to the promo at the time and for years afterwards was very positive (something I was reminded of when searching for a transcript of it to refresh my memory of what she said). She said the whole lot of the rest of the division weren't good enough to lace her shoes. In kayfabe, AJ was an arrogant heel and this largely worked. Out of kayfabe, this was largely correct and so it also worked. The wake up call was for WWE and how they treated women and the women's division. Which was very much needed and is why I don't honestly care much that the promo itself didn't lead to an on-screen storyline (also, if it had, it is likely WWE would bury the wrestlers to put the non-wrestlers over just like when they had the Diva Search women beat the wrestling women back in the day). She had a platform and a voice to tell WWE that they should hire people with a passion for wrestling and train and treat them like wrestlers, and so she did. That was way the hell more important than whether the promo led to some kind of satisfying match or storyline.
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Jun 28, 2021 12:01:32 GMT -5
So, they had her cut a promo, that served no wrestling logic and was not only meant to NOT put someone over, but bury an entire division and making herself look like a f***ing idiot, on live TV as a "wake up call"......to whom exactly? Themselves? The people THEY hired? I'm very curious as to why cutting a promo expressing what she believed and many other people believed made herself look like "a f***ing idiot". Response to the promo at the time and for years afterwards was very positive (something I was reminded of when searching for a transcript of it to refresh my memory of what she said). She said the whole lot of the rest of the division weren't good enough to lace her shoes. In kayfabe, AJ was an arrogant heel and this largely worked. Out of kayfabe, this was largely correct and so it also worked. The wake up call was for WWE and how they treated women and the women's division. Which was very much needed and is why I don't honestly care much that the promo itself didn't lead to an on-screen storyline (also, if it had, it is likely WWE would bury the wrestlers to put the non-wrestlers over just like when they had the Diva Search women beat the wrestling women back in the day). She had a platform and a voice to tell WWE that they should hire people with a passion for wrestling and train and treat them like wrestlers, and so she did. That was way the hell more important than whether the promo led to some kind of satisfying match or storyline. Wrestling 101 dictates that you don't bury your opponents. If you beat them,you beat a shitty opponent. If you lose to them....you lost to a shitty opponent. Saying you're the best of a terrible roster makes you and your title worthless. But....you're talking as if she was allowed to cut a completely unscripted promo on the company, the women's roster and Total Divas, (a cash cow for the company) as some glorious rallying cry that absolutely nobody had any knowlege of, or problem with. She just went rouge on live TV? Okie doke.
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Post by Blade on Jun 28, 2021 12:13:37 GMT -5
Wrestling 101 dictates that you don't bury your opponents. If you beat them,you beat a shitty opponent. If you lose to them....you lost to a shitty opponent. Saying you're the best of a terrible roster makes you and your title worthless. But....you're talking as if she was allowed to cut a completely unscripted promo on the company, the women's roster and Total Divas, (a cash cow for the company) as some glorious rallying cry that absolutely nobody had any knowlege of, or problem with A) The title was worthless and AJ was the best of a terrible roster. I think you are kind of missing my point, as well as hers. This promo was fundamentally about the women's division as a whole and what WWE valued in their female workers. Once again, they wanted her to cut a promo because she didn't want to be on Total Divas: it never had anything to do with her onscreen character to begin with. B) Yeah, that's more or less what AJ says about it, supported by the fact that it wasn't associated with any storyline, and the Bellas complained at the time that they weren't allowed a real time response to AJ burying them and their show. If I were to guess, I would assume someone convinced Vince that AJ was very possibly going to get cheered over the Bellas if they let the obvious feud go forward, which could lead to backlash against a very successful side project. So it became an orphan promo, kayfabe-wise. Edit: honestly, I suspect further discussion on this to be pointless; firstly, because the tone of your responses indicates I am either not explaining what I mean well enough or you are not taking it in for whatever reason. Secondly, because it's edging into the political. So I will simply reiterate: AJ Lee called out both a culture and individuals associated with that culture. Many people agreed, both directly with the promo and in the sense that the women's division of today - despite issues - is both much closer to what AJ was calling for and considerably better liked than the women's division was when AJ cut the promo. It needed to be said, and having AJ say it carried a lot of weight given her position at the time, and therefore I really don't think it is particularly important whether it put heat on a match. YMMV, and I'll leave it at that (at least for awhile).
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Jun 28, 2021 12:27:05 GMT -5
Wrestling 101 dictates that you don't bury your opponents. If you beat them,you beat a shitty opponent. If you lose to them....you lost to a shitty opponent. Saying you're the best of a terrible roster makes you and your title worthless. But....you're talking as if she was allowed to cut a completely unscripted promo on the company, the women's roster and Total Divas, (a cash cow for the company) as some glorious rallying cry that absolutely nobody had any knowlege of, or problem with A) The title was worthless and AJ was the best of a terrible roster. I think you are kind of missing my point, as well as hers. This promo was fundamentally about the women's division as a whole and what WWE valued in their female workers. Once again, they wanted her to cut a promo because she didn't want to be on Total Divas: it never had anything to do with her onscreen character to begin with. B) Yeah, that's more or less what AJ says about it, supported by the fact that it wasn't associated with any storyline, and the Bellas complained at the time that they weren't allowed a real time response to AJ burying them and their show. If I were to guess, I would assume someone convinced Vince that AJ was very possibly going to get cheered over the Bellas if they let the obvious feud go forward, which could lead to backlash against a very successful side project. So it became an orphan promo, kayfabe-wise. But she went out there and cut a promo AS her onscreen character. When you do that, you completely lose any impact you may have with casual fans. And to be clear, I got her point and I don't necessarily disagree with it, but I happen to think it's shitty business and given what resulted from it (nothing), it looks especially stupid with added hindsight
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Post by Alice Syndrome on Jun 28, 2021 12:30:39 GMT -5
So, they had her cut a promo, that served no wrestling logic and was not only meant to NOT put someone over, but bury an entire division and making herself look like a f***ing idiot, on live TV as a "wake up call"......to whom exactly? Themselves? The people THEY hired? I'm very curious as to why cutting a promo expressing what she believed and many other people believed made herself look like "a f***ing idiot". Response to the promo at the time and for years afterwards was very positive (something I was reminded of when searching for a transcript of it to refresh my memory of what she said). She said the whole lot of the rest of the division weren't good enough to lace her shoes. In kayfabe, AJ was an arrogant heel and this largely worked. Out of kayfabe, this was largely correct and so it also worked. The wake up call was for WWE and how they treated women and the women's division. Which was very much needed and is why I don't honestly care much that the promo itself didn't lead to an on-screen storyline (also, if it had, it is likely WWE would bury the wrestlers to put the non-wrestlers over just like when they had the Diva Search women beat the wrestling women back in the day). She had a platform and a voice to tell WWE that they should hire people with a passion for wrestling and train and treat them like wrestlers, and so she did. That was way the hell more important than whether the promo led to some kind of satisfying match or storyline. The only thing I actively dislike about that promo (if we're at least giving them the credit that AJ was intended to be booed for running down the roster and trashing their new show) was the "I didn't get here because I sucked... up to the right people" line. Hearing a popular woman say that, emboldened the pricks who think "ring rats" are or were ever actually a thing, and we got the dirt worst example of it a while later when the Post-Mania crowd thought chanting "You suck Cena, You suck Bryan" at the Bellas was the peak of comedy. Way to bring women's wrestling upwards, April.
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Jun 28, 2021 12:49:21 GMT -5
I'm very curious as to why cutting a promo expressing what she believed and many other people believed made herself look like "a f***ing idiot". Response to the promo at the time and for years afterwards was very positive (something I was reminded of when searching for a transcript of it to refresh my memory of what she said). She said the whole lot of the rest of the division weren't good enough to lace her shoes. In kayfabe, AJ was an arrogant heel and this largely worked. Out of kayfabe, this was largely correct and so it also worked. The wake up call was for WWE and how they treated women and the women's division. Which was very much needed and is why I don't honestly care much that the promo itself didn't lead to an on-screen storyline (also, if it had, it is likely WWE would bury the wrestlers to put the non-wrestlers over just like when they had the Diva Search women beat the wrestling women back in the day). She had a platform and a voice to tell WWE that they should hire people with a passion for wrestling and train and treat them like wrestlers, and so she did. That was way the hell more important than whether the promo led to some kind of satisfying match or storyline. The only thing I actively dislike about that promo (if we're at least giving them the credit that AJ was intended to be booed for running down the roster and trashing their new show) was the "I didn't get here because I sucked... up to the right people" line. Hearing a popular woman say that, emboldened the pricks who think "ring rats" are or were ever actually a thing, and we got the dirt worst example of it a while later when the Post-Mania crowd thought chanting "You suck Cena, You suck Bryan" at the Bellas was the peak of comedy. Way to bring women's wrestling upwards, April. Glad you mentioned this. To casual fans, she looked like a hypocrite because her character had an entire Summer arch where she made out with half the roster and was the focal point of Raw and also, IIRC, one of the people in the ring was....Natalya who has a wrestling pedigree
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jun 28, 2021 15:57:25 GMT -5
Ten years, and I still hate this promo. I know people love it and I know what it did for business, but I’ll never be okay with how I feel it pushed a bullshit narrative about Cena’s character being a “butt kisser” who got opportunities due to management. After it was shown in kayfabe that he was just physically tough as nails? Nah, screw that. Your feelings about Cena are well-known, but I think you would do well to consider that: A) Punk largely praises Cena in the promo, noting he likes him a lot better than most of the other guys. B) Punk calling Cena Vince's ass-kisser (and by extension his hand-picked corporate champion) works, as so much in the promo did, on both kayfabe and non-kayfabe levels. For the latter, obviously Cena was the favoured champ of the higher-ups because he'd been The Guy for six or seven years. For the former, Punk was at this point still the leader of Nexus, an insurgent faction that had been feuding with Cena since the beginning, so OF COURSE he sees Cena as symbolic of everything he wants to tear down. How can Punk be the best if someone else is champ? By the higher-ups giving someone else more chances than he gets, and the only target for that accusation is Cena. His character was of a paranoid and ruthless cult leader.It also might behoove you to remember that Cena was presented as the unalloyed face in the feud - he consistently made the honourable decisions, showed respect for Punk, and only lost the match because he let Punk out of the STFU and ran out to prevent Vince from reenacting the Screwjob. Punk meanwhile was either a heel or tweener until MitB. I don't care. I wouldn't have involved anything "corporate" in the feud, period. If I booked it, it's a straight face vs. face feud, Hogan/Warrior style. Punk never brings this crap up, at all. Vince and Johnny Ace are nowhere to be found. (Del Rio, HHH, and Nash are the least of my issues here, I'm afraid.) I'm convinced WWE and Punk both foresaw a face turn while they were putting the match together. But they didn't need to sabotage Cena's image by tying him to Mr. McMahon. If that means Punk gets less over, well then....f*** it. Fine with me. It would have resulted in me getting less flack for daring to back the more kid-friendly star.
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Post by The Ichi on Jun 28, 2021 16:30:00 GMT -5
Ten years, and I still hate this promo. I know people love it and I know what it did for business, but I’ll never be okay with how I feel it pushed a bullshit narrative about Cena’s character being a “butt kisser” who got opportunities due to management. After it was shown in kayfabe that he was just physically tough as nails? Nah, screw that. I hear this complaint a lot (not just here), but you have to remember that Punk was still a heel when he cut this promo. He's largely targeting faces apart from Vince. Even if you looked at it purely from a kayfabe place, he sounds like a bitter bad guy that's lashing out at everyone. Cena even got to debunk the asskissing claim the next week, and then knocked Punk on his ass and sent him running. It's not telling any narrative that Punk is supposed to be *right* until he officially turned face, and by then his target was mostly Vince and HHH (who was a face but it's easy to play shades of grey with him). We only think it's supposed to be a baby-face promo because we know how true the management stuff is.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2021 16:42:32 GMT -5
A) The title was worthless and AJ was the best of a terrible roster. I think you are kind of missing my point, as well as hers. This promo was fundamentally about the women's division as a whole and what WWE valued in their female workers. Once again, they wanted her to cut a promo because she didn't want to be on Total Divas: it never had anything to do with her onscreen character to begin with. B) Yeah, that's more or less what AJ says about it, supported by the fact that it wasn't associated with any storyline, and the Bellas complained at the time that they weren't allowed a real time response to AJ burying them and their show. If I were to guess, I would assume someone convinced Vince that AJ was very possibly going to get cheered over the Bellas if they let the obvious feud go forward, which could lead to backlash against a very successful side project. So it became an orphan promo, kayfabe-wise. But she went out there and cut a promo AS her onscreen character. When you do that, you completely lose any impact you may have with casual fans. And to be clear, I got her point and I don't necessarily disagree with it, but I happen to think it's shitty business and given what resulted from it (nothing), it looks especially stupid with added hindsight In kayfabe AJ calling out others for using their relationships to get to the top made no sense either. She was languishing on game-show NXT then in the Smackdown lowcard/C show circuit until she started being romantically involved with Bryan/Punk/Kane/Cena/Ziggler and used that to become a fixture on TV.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Jun 28, 2021 16:42:46 GMT -5
I hear this complaint a lot (not just here), but you have to remember that Punk was still a heel when he cut this promo. He's largely targeting faces apart from Vince. Even if you looked at it purely from a kayfabe place, he sounds like a bitter bad guy that's lashing out at everyone. Cena even got to debunk the asskissing claim the next week, and then knocked Punk on his ass and sent him running. It's not telling any narrative that Punk is supposed to be *right* until he officially turned face, and by then his target was mostly Vince and HHH (who was a face but it's easy to play shades of grey with him). We only think it's supposed to be a baby-face promo because we know how true the management stuff is. I don't believe it. I will forever believe the plan from day one was for Punk to be face, on top of becoming a bigger star. Not necessarily bigger than John, he was still their golden guy. But personally, I always felt it could have been written in such a way that didn't give so much ammunition to Cena's hatedom at the time. I think you're giving this promo too much credit. It didn't say anything people online weren't already saying for years, and it put everything into a context that never disrespected Cena's work itself. It tread through those waters carefully and gave people who weren't going to cheer for Cena a main event face to get behind and who was the contrast to Cena that they needed. Rather than give ammunition to his hatedom, it gave them someone who they could see succeed so that it wasn't Cena or bust, amid a bunch of other-show main event experiments that failed, and an overreliance on face Edge, who just was not it. But if Punk didn't say everything that people already felt, it wouldn't have landed at all.
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Post by Clash, Never a Meter Maid on Jun 28, 2021 17:14:07 GMT -5
I don't believe it. I will forever believe the plan from day one was for Punk to be face, on top of becoming a bigger star. Not necessarily bigger than John, he was still their golden guy. But personally, I always felt it could have been written in such a way that didn't give so much ammunition to Cena's hatedom at the time. I think you're giving this promo too much credit. It didn't say anything people online weren't already saying for years, and it put everything into a context that never disrespected Cena's work itself. It tread through those waters carefully and gave people who weren't going to cheer for Cena a main event face to get behind and who was the contrast to Cena that they needed. Rather than give ammunition to his hatedom, it gave them someone who they could see succeed so that it wasn't Cena or bust, amid a bunch of other-show main event experiments that failed, and an overreliance on face Edge, who just was not it. But if Punk didn't say everything that people already felt, it wouldn't have landed at all. In that case, I’m fine with it not landing. Keep in mind, you’re talking to someone who had to deal with a lot of “Cena’s a disgrace to wrestling, he’s the worst ever, killing the business, he’s kiddie and lame, how can you be in your twenties and like him, blah blah” during that program. That still stings with me. Him and Punk had amazing wrestling matches, and their promos just on a chemistry level were great, I just wish WWE hadn’t fed into that sentiment. But I also wish they never sold “Cena Sucks” shirts, either, so what can you do?
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