Subhojeet Mukherjee on August 12, 2022
On June 27, 2011, CM Punk cut one of the greatest promos in the history of professional wrestling, one which is still talked about to this day. It truly blurred the lines between a work and a shoot promo and laid the blueprint for such promos.
The promo featured CM Punk speaking on behalf of the disgruntled WWE fans who were simply frustrated with the product back then and Punk took shots at the company, The Rock, John Cena, Stephanie McMahon and others.
While speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Brian Gewirtz talked about CM Punk’s infamous pipe bomb promo. He was asked just how much of it was an actual shoot. Gewirtz stated that Vince McMahon was fully aware of what Punk would say in the promo.
“I mean, the real element of that was CM Punk’s contract was coming up. There were backstage tensions in terms of performer and management, and not knowing whether Punk was going to re-sign or not re-sign. But in terms of the actual segment itself, whether you want to call it a worked shoot, that was something, obviously Vince and the company knew that we had it scheduled in segment 11 for CM Punk to come out and cut a promo, but Punk brought so many elements of that to himself, in terms of sitting down as opposed to standing. I know he worked with Ed Koskey on it. But I believe that the vast majority of it was coming from Punk’s heart and his brain. But at the same time, too, I know going into it, there wasn’t anything he said or was going to say that was, unless he improvised some of that on the spot, but I know Vince and everyone had a version of it in front of them and knew when to cut the mic. It was part of a television show, to be sure.”
“But to your point, there were real life overtones to it and real life passion into it. It wasn’t like, Punk cut the promo, the mic went out, and then he’s giving hugs to everybody backstage going, ‘Oh, this is great. I can’t wait till next year.’ It was palpable, the tension and the realness. It’s a testament to Punk to pull that off so well and have people questioning it to this day, like, ‘What the hell was going on’, and it’s a testament to Vince to say, ‘Yeah, say it, I don’t care, do what you can do. Call me an imbecile.’ I’m sure there were plenty of lines within that, that Punk kind of improvised on the spot, but at the same time, we knew going in this is what it was going to be, and it was going to get people talking. So that was a great example of something just coming together, and it couldn’t have been executed any better.”
The promo will forever stand the test of time and it will remain an important part of pro wrestling history. Punk also returned on AEW Dynamite this week and is likely to face Jon Moxley to unify the AEW World Titles. We’ll have to see how their feud will be booked.
h/t to WrestlingNews.co
August 12, 2022 6:48 am
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