This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. The video can be found Here.
I was going to start this video with a joke about CM Punk and Heat, but even I'm not that fucking hack...
On December 26th in Madison Square Garden, CM Punk had his first match in a WWE ring since the 2014 Royal Rumble. I always thought that CM Punk's WWE televised debut was the August 1st episode of ECW on Sci-fi, but it turns out he had appeared in WWE a few times the year previous. There are a few appearances of future stars that WWE likes to acknowledge, maybe the most famous being Bryan Danielson facing John Cena on an episode of Velocity in early 2003. This match was even recreated as a highlight of Bryan's career in WWE 2K19. That isn't even Bryan's first time in a WWE ring, as he was appearing in dark matches under a mask as the American Dragon as early as 2000, and later would have matches on Heat and Velocity against the likes of Jamie Noble, Paul London and his old training partner Brian Kendrick. There are some other well known ones, such as that clip of Brock Lesnar hitting a mighty impressive shooting star press. If you've only ever seen his Wrestlemania 19 one where he could've hurt himself very badly, it's insane to see the ungodly amount of height he was able to reach when hitting the move right. By the way I'm aware that he used the move in OWV and there is footage of that, but the clips of him do the move in the larger WWE setting just hits differently.
In the weeks prior to Punk being signed by WWE, he would wrestle two televised matches on Sunday Night Heat, which at the time was airing on Spike TV in the US, but would move to WWE.com later that same year. On the episode that aired on April 17th, CM Punk would team with Russell Simpson in a losing effort against Simon Dean and Maven. Simpson had worked a few enhancement matches for WWE around these years, but mainly worked indies, according to Cagematch using the names Skull Manson, Psycho the Death and Dawg Cheetum, which sounds like what I'd come up with if you asked me to write a Troy McLure joke. Due to some form of miscommunication, Todd Grisham on commentary refers to Punk as Chad Collyer, who is a different wrestler all together who was also working sporadic enhancement matches around this time. Both Todd and Jonathan Coachman seem to be under the impression that the team was called CM Punk, and Coach proceeds to bury the name. An edited version of this match is actually on WWE's YouTube channel still today, and as you can imagine, the comments are turned off.
The match itself is fairly unremarkable to watch, but is it though? On the surface it's a pretty basic enhancement match where Maven and Dean pick up the win. It turns out though that things might not have gone the way they were supposed to. Speaking recently on his YouTube channel, Maven claimed to be CM Punk's first WWE opponent, and we'll get back to that soon, but he also states that Simon Dean changed the finish of the match to protect Punk, who he saw big things in, and decided to pin Simpson instead. Maven says "Earlier on when we were discussing the match backstage he (Simon Dean) said When I come in, I'm going to knock you out, Punk you roll to the floor, that way we can get the slam on Simpson. I don't know why he wanted to protect Punk. He might have seen what the world would see in Punk years later." Maven also points out that neither he or Simon got in trouble for pinning the other guy, maybe since the right team still won.
Punk's next WWE match a month later would be a singles match with Val Venis, one in which it'd be hard to change who gets pinned and get away with it I suppose. It also seems going in that someone briefed Todd Grisham and Jonathan Coachman on the guys name, so thats an improvement I guess. Coachman does however refer to Punk as quote "a kid from the South" though. Yes, that famously Southern state, Illinois... There's a bit more to this match than the previous, with Punk sneak attacking Val, turning heel in the opening minutes, and spending most of the match working on Val's leg. The entire match becomes all about Val Venis's hurt knee, with Val not able to hit his signature moves like the fisherman's suplex because of a potential injury. He does however make it to the top rope to hit the Money Shot and win.
As you can probably guess, Val Venis has also talked about this match on YouTube. As you can also likely guess, Val takes maybe a bit too much credit for getting Punk hired by WWE. Clearly he had a part in it with this being Punk's final match for them as an unsigned talent and I'm not doubting that, but let me clarify what I mean. In his video from Wrestling Shoot Interviews, Val essentially claims in short that he heard that Punk was a guy who does moves that mean nothing, and so he structured a match around the two of them walking in as babyfaces, Punk turning early on and a knee injury. He repeatedly says that the fans didn't know who CM Punk is, but this match took place in Pennsylvania, where Ring of Honor is based. I'm not saying he would have been a local hero or anything, but there absolutely will have been people in that crowd who knew CM Punk. At first I gave Val the benefit of the doubt, assuming he was referring to the wider TV audience, but he repeatedly calls it a dark match, so he has to be talking about the fans in the live crowd. Val's essential point is that he made Punk tell a story, which if you know Punk's work feels like a grandiose claim.
Several weeks after the Val Venis match, Punk signed his WWE contract, and for maximum effect, he signed it inside an ROH ring at Sign of Dishonor on July 8th 2005. Not only that, but he signed it on the ROH World championship belt that he had recently won from Austin Aries, kicking off what is known as the 'Summer of Punk'. He had been a fan favourite going in, but post match turned to the dark side with an epic promo, maybe one of the best of his entire career. By September he would begin wrestling for OVW, WWE's then developmental territory. While I'm talking about Punk and WWE developmental, another thing I learned while writing this video is that in 2011 CM Punk would make a non televised appearance for WWE's later developmental promotion pre-NXT, FCW. On October 21st 2011 Punk would be called out by, and would even wrestle a very young looking Dean Ambrose. In an around twenty minute match that exists on YouTube as fan footage, CM Punk would win hitting the GTS. Speaking of people Punk doesn't get on with any more, guess who his tag team partner was in his last OVW match...
Remember how I said we'd get back to Maven's claim that he was in Punk's first WWE opponent? As far as being a WWE talent maybe, but remember that wording for later. While these two matches are interesting to note given they took place right before he signed with WWE, the first evidence I could find of him in a WWE ring was neither of these. On May 12th 2003, Punk would wrestle a dark match against a wrestler called Khalsa Singh.
Despite my best efforts I couldn't find the actual match, but I did find a clip from his entrance, and being fully honest, my desire to learn more about this clip was the entire inspiration for me falling down the rabbit hole and making this video. His entrance was interesting for two reasons. Firstly, Punk was announced to the ring by the legendary voice of WWE entrances, Howard Finkle. When Punk won the WWE championship at Survivor Series 2011, he was announced to the ring by the Fink, who received a heart warming reception by the fans in Madison Square Garden. Finkle was introduced by WWE's more regular announcer at the time Justin RRRRRRRoberts, as CM Punks personal ring announcer. Partly this was a dig at his opponent that night Alberto Del Rio, who around this time had his personal ring announcer Ricardo Rodriguez as a huge part of his act. In an interview with WWE.com, Howard called this moment one of his quote "top three Garden moments", and given his history in that building that says a lot. It wouldn't surprise me if Punk requested Howard also to add to him winning the WWE title at MSG. It also wouldn't surprise me if Punk wanted Finkel as his ring announcer that night as a reference to that 2003 match where Howard first introduced him.
Having said all that, the other reason this introduction is notable is far less elaborate. In the clip Howard introduces CM Punk from Philadelphia Pennsylvania, which given how tied to Chicago he is, feels really jarring to hear, like if you heard that Superman was actually from Gotham. I can't play it here in case it loses by pinfall to the dreaded YouTube Copyright system, but a link to the clip will be in the description. The explanation I've seen for this is that Punk lived in Philly at the time, and given his connection to the indies around that area, mostly Ring of Honor and his role as a trainer at ROH's wrestling school at the time, that's likely true. When recent reports came out about Punk turning up at the performance centre I wasn't all that shocked. He once described his time as a trainer at ROH's wrestling school as quote, being like "a pig in shit", which sounds a bit worse than that expression actually means. In the same interview with Loud Wire Punk also confirms that he was living in Philadelphia, so likely given that he was an unsigned talent, they didn't care too much about where they announced him from. Incidentally, the match took place in Philly, so it could also have just been to get him a pop from the crowd.
Given the nature of WWE dark matches, especially in the days where less wrestling fans were terminally online, it's possible that this was CM Punk's first WWE match, but sadly not provable definitively, unless Punk himself answers the question. But I still left a thread hanging earlier, what about Maven's claim that he is Punks first WWE opponent? It turns out I found one more match that might dispute that claim depending on how you define a WWE opponent. On the same date as the CM Punk vs Khalsa Singh match, that nights episode of Raw featured a one off appearance by the Legion of Doom, who lost a very short match to the then Raw tag team champions Rob Van Dam and Kane. This would end up being the final time the legendary Road Warriors slash Legion of Doom would appear together on WWE television, as Hawk would pass away in October 2003. What you might now know however, is that this wasn't the LOD's last WWE match, as at the following night's Smackdown taping, Hawk and Animal would wrestle in a non-televised match against a South Carolina based wrestler called Doug Delicious, and you guessed it, CM Punk. In trying to get some concrete proof that this match happened, I discovered that CM Punk in 2018 actually replied to a tweet about this match, cryptically saying "The story behind this one is great". I guess that is fairly solid evidence that the match did happen. So to finally put Maven's claim to bed, if you only count active WWE roster members then yes he is right, but he did face some genuine WWE legends beforehand, who were looking to make a comeback at the time. Some further digging for information about the LOD match led me to of all places, a July 2018 episode of Something Else to Wrestle With, the short lived WWE Network version of Bruce Prichard's podcast, which has a whole episode about CM Punk's arrival in WWE.
Bruce despite my fears going into watching this actually offers a great deal of insight. He states that Punk was perceived by WWE brass as an indie wrestler everyone was raving about, but to them didn't look like a wrestler. To quote him referring to Punks 2003 matches, "nobody saw a whole lot in him." In 2003 Punk was wearing the long shorts similar to the ones he would wear in his Revolution 2022 match with MJF, but by 2005 he had adopted wrestling the trunks he would wear for most of his career. He also notes that other Ring of Honor talents were on their radar at the time, specifically mentioning Bryan Danielson and Samoa Joe, neither of which would be signed by WWE until 2009 and 2015 respectively. Interestingly he calls Ring Honor a great place for young wrestlers to hone their craft at the time, but also says that WWE generally viewed them as "just another independent wrestling promotion. "They didn't do a lot of shows and what we did see was few and far between... There was some talent there that we knew about and kept our eye on, but it was just another place to find talent." The reason I found this interesting is simple. Take a look at the giant list of talent that was closely linked to Ring of Honor, and look at how many of them are massive stars in WWE today. You could make this point about TNA and PWG as well as they used similar talent, but the idea that ROH wasn't seen as anything special yet many of their current stars came through there is interesting to note.
Getting back to CM Punk, Conrad Thompson directly asks about his 2003 tryout matches, and we even get to see footage from both Punks's entrance that I referred to earlier, but also the match itself, showing Punk winning with a Hammerlock DDT. It's also interesting to note that John Laurinitis, who was head of talent relations at the time and later had an on screen feud with Punk, according to Bruce was advocating for Punk to be signed. Later in his career Punk would notably rage against general manager Johnny Ace, even going as far as to parody his former gimmick as one half of the Dynamic Dudes in WCW on the 2011 Slammy's episode of Raw. Finally, they briefly show a clip of the LOD match, proving that it did actually happen, though we still don't exactly know what Punk meant by "The story behind this one is great". The final thing worth drawing from this WWE Network show is that Bruce notes that his 2003 tryout matches were quote "unremarkable", and Conrad Thompson noted that he is glad they didn't sign him then, as the much respected trilogy of matches with Samoa Joe would never have happened, with the first of three ROH World title matches happening in June 2004.
I haven't been able to find any other instances of Punk working dark matches for WWE, so I guess this must be our answer. With Punk now back wrestling in a WWE ring again, I thought it might be interesting to hunt for his first time in a WWE ring. So far a match with Seth Rollins seems to be coming, with many speculating that it might grant both Punk and Rollins the Wrestlemania main event they both wanted. Sorry, to quote CM Punk, the "night four of a buy one get one free extravaganza." Here's a Fair warning you're going to see that quote flying around for the next few months, and thats nothing compared to his comments about Crown Jewell...
Sources:
CM Punk Cagematch records: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=80&page=20
Daneil Bryan vs Jamie Noble, WWE Velocity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPqasrC5MEw
Lesnar Shooting Star Press: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f__vaaneWNY
April 17th 2005 Punk & Russell Simpson vs Simon Dean & Maven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VClA_zjeUhY
Maven: I was CM Punk's first WWE opponent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5cYOXQ8aWc
May 15th 2005 Punk vs Val Venis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHiajPlPXNg
Val Venis on Punk match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSpuUC97fvY
October 21st 2011 Punk vs Ambrose FCW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMwr6FsWiLo
2003 clip on X from Richard Last @maskedwrestlers: https://twitter.com/maskedwrestlers/status/1738595021455298794
Finkel on Survivor Series appearance: https://www.wrestlezone.com/news/245533-howard-finkel-speaks-on-his-survivor-series-appearance
CM Punk Loudwire quote: https://www.ringsidenews.com/2019/10/24/cm-punk-says-he-was-a-pig-in-sht-as-a-pro-wrestling-trainer/
A pig in mud definition: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/happy+as+a+pig+in+mud
Something else to wrestle with: Enter CM Punk: https://network.wwe.com/video/74278
No comments:
Post a Comment