CM Punk: How We Got Here

This Sunday CM Punk is going back to his hometown of Chicago to face John Cena for the WWE championship in his last match for the promotion. In case you've missed it, CM Punk has been on fire as of late, even getting time on ESPN thanks to Jim Rome. Like he said on Monday Night Raw a few days ago, wrestling is being talked about mainstream and for once it isn't about somebody dying. The reason behind CM Punk's success is that he has managed to find a way to walk the tight-rope between what is real and what is a show better then any other wrestler since the boom of the internet. Back when Austin and The Rock were ruling the airwaves wrestling fans were far less cynical and much easier to please. And while I am enjoying the ride I can't help but wonder how we managed to get to this point where we'd believe almost anything out of his mouth.

If you haven't watched wrestling in a while you might not realize that except for The Undertaker, there aren't a whole lot of “gimmicks” in the WWE. R-Truth is acting crazy and Santino is a goofball but at the end of the day it doesn't take stretching your imagination to find those guys believable. Most guys are just an extreme version of themselves amped up for our entertainment so CM Punk has certainly found a niche as the tattoo-covered straight edge superstar that is a messiah and is also better then all of us. The Straight Edge Society showed us that CM Punk is a leader who is going to tell us the truth and they hammered that point home even further with the New Nexus. The turning point though? Punk's honest commentary.

I remember hearing that Punk was killing it on commentary. Word was he was injured but because he had so much momentum they didn't want to risk him losing it. What transpired though is what I think led to Punk's believability as a loose cannon the level of the late Brian Pillman. Punk made quiet a few comments about the “real” world outside of WWE's reality and listening to him gave you the impression that you really didn't know what he would say next, but the lines I remember most was about Alex Riley.

At that time Riley was the apprentice to The Miz and had just gotten arrested for driving under the influence. The next time Riley was making his way down the entrance ramp, CM Punk quipped that he was “dressed for court”, along with a few other one liners about Riley's current run-in with the law. From there (and possibly even before that) CM Punk had set the stage that he was more then willing to go outside of the WWE Universe and into the real world for the sake of wrestling. Do I think that he was really shooting? Of course not, but it doesn't matter. We as fans want to believe he was and with how Punk has presented himself, he is the one guy that fans consider just crazy enough to go that far because he's went there (on a lesser scale, obviously) before. We want to believe again like we did when we were younger and Punk lets us do that. And because of that he's right when he tells us he's the best wrestler today.