Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Suspense? In WWE?! ... WHAT?!?!


It's been a little over one decade since I started regularly watching WWE again. I should know exactly what will happen with the CM Punk/John Cena feud this Sunday; especially since Punk's contract is up and he signed an extension to work the PPV. But this storyline has been written so well and Punk has been so convincing in his role that I actually don't know what they'll do. There are five or six distinct possibilities.

1: The most obvious and the most likely choice for them to make. John Cena pulls his Superman bullshit again and wins. Nothing changes. This whole angle and all the opportunity to profoundly shake things up has been wasted.

2: John Cena essentially has the Stone Cold Steve Austin WrestleMania X-Seven heel turn, allying himself with Vince McMahon as the corporate champion.

3: The Montreal Screw-job 2: Electric Boogaloo. This may be more likely than it seems as they'll be in CM Punk's hometown of Chicago, but, as much as they don't deserve it I really want to give WWE's creative team a little bit more credit than this.

4: CM Punk wins and the winner of the RAW Money in the Bank match earlier in the night cashes in on him to win the belt.

5: CM Punk wins, but McMahon strips him of the title as he's under contract until the night is over.

6: The most unlikely possibility. They actually let Punk win and take the title with him when he leaves.

The simple fact that I even put #6 on the list shows how fine a job they've done with this story, and believe it or not I hope they go with it. It clearly mirrors the story of when CM Punk left Ring of Honor for WWE five years ago; Punk even exactly quoted on Twitter the announcement that he made on his LiveJournal at the time that he signed with WWE, but the major difference is that in RoH he was the champion until he dropped the belt in his last appearance. He's in the opposite position in this story, so it's all up in the air. I'm for the most shocking and unlikely outcome for the exact reason that it would be so unexpected and shake up the company so much.

They've got two world titles, so the World Heavyweight Championship can fill the role of company championship, but all of a sudden we've got two brand specific MitB winners with only one championship. Do they both count? Does only the SmackDown! MitB contract count? This could also solve the problem of a lack of talent depth caused by the departure of Edge due to injury and Undertaker and Triple H not being active wrestlers anymore; with everybody wrestling for the World Heavyweight Championship it makes the lackluster roster look a little bit deeper and makes the world title mean a little bit more.

Then again, this could all be a put on and CM Punk is actually going to re-up his contract regardless of what happened on RAW last night. If this happens then WWE has a legitimate chance to do with Punk what they tried to do with Cena and Orton but weren't quite able to pull off in making a new legend. I sincerely hope that the tone deaf people in charge of WWE have been listening for the last few weeks, because we're loving this and we want more.

Of course, we are dealing with an "idiotic daughter" and a "doofus son-in-law", so my hopes aren't high.

But they do exist, and I am on the edge of my seat.

Don't fuck this up.