This was a No Disqualifications match.
This is obviously a very famous match for both good and bad reasons. More on that in a bit.
This site is designed for me to mostly review matches and shows I’ve never seen, because I was an overly self-sheltered WWF/E fan for the first like 20 years of my life. So why would I be reviewing this very famous match?
Well, duh. Because I’ve never seen it!
I’ve wrote on this site before about my first foray into the idea of abandoning wrestling altogether in 2002 (The Undertaker vs. The Rock vs. Kurt Angle - Vengeance 2002) and essentially, that period was saved by the product simply getting better and my sophomore year of high school not going exactly how I imagined it due to moving to a new town.
And then yeah, there were times during my senior year and first year of college where I missed stuff simply because I didn’t have the time or ability. There were far more important things than wrestling. But I always found my way back to wrestling, and I’d go and watch stuff I’d miss eventually, because I never wanted to be too out of the loop (god bless you, KaZaa).
But after years and years of a “will he / won’t he” relationship with the product, I had finally had my fill during the peak of the PG Era. The crappy stuff with guest hosts for RAW, the ridiculously watered down and infantile product being put out, the constant misuse of some of the best wrestlers in the industry in favor of goobers like Edge or Triple H, and I had just had enough. WrestleMania 29 was the first time I had ever watched a WrestleMania live and immediately said “man, that sucked”. Sure, there were Mania’s before that I eventually looked back on and realized were bad. But usually in the moment, the recency bias poisons my brain into thinking “hey that was all really good”.
Add this in with the fact that I was in the middle of my long running NWA/JCP/WCW review project on The Original BustedQuad, and I’m literally going from seeing more Chavito/Swoggle bullshit and then watching Flair/Eaton at the January ‘91 Clash. There was no comparison.
So a few weeks after WrestleMania, I simply threw in the towel. And for the first time in my life, purposely, I missed a sustained period of WWE programming. And the more time that passed, the more I just assumed I was never going back.
I followed along with reading about some stuff that would happen via the message boards or the long running MSN group chat I was in, but even when something sounded decent, I just didn’t have the urge.
In the build to Summerslam 2013, and in talking with some of my old BQ pals, it felt like the company may ACTUALLY be getting into a mode of having Bryan and Punk as their top two guys (lmao) and I was finally feeling the need to have that itch scratched by the wrestling bug again.
I didn’t watch Summerslam simply because I had plans with friends and that will always take precedent over this embarrassing lifelong hobby. But I picked things up again the night after on RAW.
BUT, within a few weeks, I realized the WWE machine would never truly change. Punk was being horribly wasted in a Rybaxel feud, Bryan was clearly just a fan service tease (that they were later forced to deliver on against their will) and nothing had changed. Orton, in his most boring era, was champ. Batista was coming back. Big Show and Kane were still being used in main events. Triple H was Triple H. Just…fuck it all, man.
Instead of throwing a fit and going back to not watching, I figured I’d keep watching RAW and the occasional PPV, but I was never going to go back and watch something I missed. I didn’t care how good something sounded, I wasn’t going to do it. And it’s something I still followed until recently (I didn’t watch WWE HIAC 2022 and I still have never gone back to watch Cody/Seth, for example). But this site is finally a place where I can pick and choose what I want to watch and at my own pace and leisure.
So, that long, dry, go-nowhere story out of the way, onto the match!
The story is quite simple, I suppose. Punk took a break after losing to the Undertaker, and this pissed off Paul Heyman who felt Punk wasn’t in it for the both of them anymore, and when Punk returned, Heyman waited for the right moment to exact his form of revenge before calling in his Beast Incarnate. And now Punk wanted revenge, to prove there was more worth in the BEST than the BEAST.
The behind the scenes story is old hat by now. Punk hated his life. Creative was dog shit, his big WWE Title reign was sacrificed to the Rock, essentially making him a 434 day transitional champion, and his health was in bad shape. Vince guilted him into coming back early for this match, and then changed the creative to have Brock win, which Punk objected to as well. And with all that molded together, you have the makings of what would be the last good match CM Punk has had in the WWE to date.
The match is brutal and fantastic, in all its glory. Punk is definitely in bad shape, it shows and he lacks explosiveness, but he’s still giving 100% while only performing at like 60%. Wrestling math, bitch.
In the build up, Brock mocked Punk’s MMA influenced move set, for obvious reasons. So it was a nice touch when Punk was able to not only break out that MMA inspired offense on Brock, but do it by constantly beating him on the mat, which was always the main weakness of Brock’s game in the octagon.
Heyman was his usual self on the floor: an extraordinary supporting actor. My favorite spot came when Heyman was distracting Punk on the apron, and Punk gripped him up by the tie. Brock grabbed Punk for the F5, but Punk held on to Heyman’s tie and was choking him. Heyman had to plead with Brock not to do the move because it would in turn hurt him, so Brock angrily put Punk down, and that led to Punk surprising Brock with a GTS and a guaranteed pin to end it, but Heyman DOVE on to Punk to break it up!
Punk is able to counter another F5 attempt with a DDT and goes right into the Anaconda Vice! He’s going to beat Brock on the ground, it makes perfect sense! But that damn Heyman breaks that up too. Punk finally locks the Vice on Heyman but Brock is able to use this time to recover and absolutely DESTROY a prone Punk with chair shots. And a NASTY looking F5 on to the chair ends it, The Beast beats the Best.
Some people, I think, have judged this match a bit too harshly, given that their main criticism is Punk got too much offense in on Brock compared to a lot of other guys. But I think it all plays into the evolution of Brock’s character from 2012-2018. Early on in his return, he misjudged a lot of things: the Cena match, at least 1.5 of the Triple H matches, and then this match where he almost got made to tap out numerous times. And all of it was done so it could show this scary son of a bitch adapting to a “sport” he hadn’t taken part in much over the last decade. It helped make this anomaly of a wrestler that went on in the next 12 months to end the Undertaker’s streak at WrestleMania seemingly with ease, and then absolutely squashed the WWE’s Ace at the next Summerslam to win the belt. Each match was a lesson for Brock to learn and adapt, and because of those first two years of matches, he went on an absolute unmatched run of dominance. To me, it’s brilliant.
Buuut, that doesn’t change the fact that this might as well have been the actual end for Punk. On his ill-fated podcast with some dude who shares a bank account with his mom, Punk said he told Vince in the build up to this match when it was decided Brock would win, “Is Brock going to be at work the next night? Or the week after that?” And Vince said no. So Punk said “Oh okay, so since I’m losing, does that mean I don’t have to be at work the next night?” And Vince said well of course you do, we need you. And Punk said “well if you need me so bad tell me how it makes sense to have me lose to a guy nobody’s going to see on tv again for another six months?”
That may not be the EXACT transcript of the conversation, but you get the idea.
The match itself delivered. I don’t think I’m going to rank this as high as I’ve seen it ranked elsewhere, but that’s probably mostly due to me watching this ten years after the fact, and having my mind so bogged down knowing what this led to in the long run.
But an ass whooper is an ass whooper.
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