History Headscratchers / CMPunk

* Speaking of, I distinctly recall CM Punk drinking a beer on a three hour Raw few years back; Stone Cold closed the show with a beer bash and Punk was one of the first people he tossed one to, and it very clearly showed Punk drinking it. Did that ever come up at all?

** He's got a perfectly good - and rather hysterical - reasoning for it: when he was in college, all of the other guys were getting tattoos of their favorite beer's logo. Being Straight Edge back then too, he said "Alright, I'll get a tattoo of ''my'' favorite vice... Soda."

*** Yeah, the whole ''caffeine is a drug'' arguement is more of a smart ass shot against Straight Edgers when they don't actually believe in that. When someone says "I don't do drugs" they're not talking about caffiene, medication, etc., they're talking about the recreational and hardcore drugs.

** There are different degrees of Straight Edge, with the lightest and most common being no smoking, drinking, drug use, and not using medication if it's not prescription. Caffeine's fine, especially since it can be pretty hard to avoid it.

* One aimed more at Phillip Jack Brooks, not the character he plays on TV: in real life, he is straight edge. However, he has a Pepsi tattoo, the reasoning being that he likes Pepsi. ''Caffeine is a drug''.

** What the one troper was saying about "if this is someones first impression of straight edge" well i fully agree with that. Of course if you ask me all WWE had to do was put some more emphasis on the particular type of straight edge that punk truly is: Militant Straight Edge(look up straight edge on [[TheOtherWiki Wikipedia]], they have a section about it. That nerd Matt Striker could have easily explained to the viewers the difference between that, and what normal straight edge is

** What the one troper was saying about "if this is someones first impression of straight edge" well i fully agree with that. Of course if you ask me all WWE had to do was put some more emphasis on the particular type of straight edge that punk truly is: Militant Straight Edge(look up straight edge on [[TheOtherWiki Wikipedia]], they have a section about it]]. That nerd Matt Striker could have easily explained to the viewers the difference between that, and what normal straight edge is

** Case and point: Rey Mysterio actually once owned him in a promo by lampshading this after telling Punk to shave his own head and be an example to straightedge… only for Punk to take the bait and preach his superiority to everyone again.

** Yep. If you pay attention, you'll realize that Punk being straight-edge is only a big deal because he makes it so. The people he feuds with usually don't comment on it, instead focusing on the more important aspect of his character : He's an enormous asshole.

** Straight-Edge itself isn't portrayed as a bad thing: just the zealous version of it Punk follows.

** Well, he has done a (much more normal of course) straight edge character as a face, so expect to see a good example of straight edge soon, and keep in mind that as much as {{WWE}} tries to portray itself as kid friendly and moral, it really isn't, they are very backwards, and while {{WWE}} is loads better than {{TNA}} (See [[RapeAsComedy Orlando]] [[DepravedBisexual Jordan]] for starters) they are not progressive, at all, name a gay face, or a woman portrayed as the equal to a man, or a black wrestler who's character isn't based on being black and has a title, or a member of a clique that isn't portrayed as a freak to be gawked at (Jeff Hardy doesn't count, Daffney doesn't count) or a woman who has a place beyond FanService? There are bigger issues than straight edge being portrayed badly, but it's still an issue.

*** Punk was face for a very long time when he first came to the E. They only recently turned him heel. What they need to do is turn Edge and Jericho heel. Edge's brief face run after the Royal Rumble was AWESOME, and Jericho's gimmick was old within the first three months of his turn.

* Any other IRL Straight Edgers annoyed/offended by the way the lifestyle is portrayed as a cult instead of just a lifestyle? I know it's just a character (and Punk is fucking brilliant in any role, I think), but if this is someone's first taste of Straight Edge, they're getting a horribly warped view of what is generally a positive thing, and to me, that just really sucks.

**** Sorry, I've got a lot of frustration built up. Frustration over not just this, but the way they ended Punk's last World Title reign. As you may recall, it was a HIAC match against Undertaker that had Punk lose to him in under ten minutes. (Which I was outraged over at the time, not knowing that by the same time next year I'd have seen him job to somebody lower on the card in about half as much time.) People wondered why the match didn't go longer and why it was the first match of the night, which was unusual for a World Heavyweight Championship match. It was at this time that stories surfaced of Punk having heat backstage because of something that happened between him and Taker. Prior to the 2009 HIAC pay-per-view, Undertaker thought that Punk wasn't dressed well enough for a World Champion representing WWE, and told him so. Punk's response was something to the effect of "What about John Cena?" Which makes sense; if Cena can walk around in a t-shirt and jeans all the time, why can't Punk do the same? But that was apparently the wrong thing to say, and that was the reason they not only took the title off of Punk, but made it a short match and a curtain jerker to boot. As for why wrestling's so factional and filled with hatred...well, you might have a point that some of the guys who are the recipients of that hatred don't deserve it. But it's easy to assume the worst if you are a smark, because smarks have heard lots of stories about wrestlers engaging in backstage politics to build themselves up and bury other guys. It's well-documented that Hogan has done it, that Nash has done it, that HBK did it a lot during the Attitude Era, that HHH does it, etc. I don't know exactly how much control Taker has backstage, but all signs point to it being a lot. And while it may be true that he's used that power for good sometimes--allegedly, when HBK was refusing to job to Austin in the weeks before WrestleMania 13, Taker intimidated him into doing so--it's also true that Taker was involved in that "Wrestler's Court" (google it) and that his current wife is the unified Women's Champion who never jobs.

*** Wait, he got uppity with Taker? Over what? And why the hell is wrestling so factional and filled with hatred?

** The answer to the question of why Punk has jobbed repeatedly to Show along with the entire SES is this: WWE is booked by idiots. The damage done in the past by said idiots can be found on [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WallBangers/ProfessionalWrestling this site]] and on wrestlecrap.com. That might seem simplistic, but I can't think of any other reason for it. Unless Taker ''still'' hasn't forgiven Punk for getting uppity with him.

* Why is Punk jobbing to Big Show on a constant basis? I understand he built a career outside of the WWE but they've given him some pretty good pushes before. Why now is he made to look like a chump? Who benefits by Big Show squashing him every couple weeks?

*** CM Punk was injured in the match and required staples, the real reason he was wearing the mask was to conceal the injury.

*** I get that having the hated heel who's ashamed of his shaven head having to display it to everybody is satisfying, and that sometimes there's a real-life excuse for these things (like you said, if you're going to be bald on top it's almost always a better look if you shave the sides as well). I'm just saying that they should have unmasked him sooner, because it makes a lot more sense if a guy still doesn't have any hair on his head after something like a week or two than it does if he hasn't grown any hair back after two months. And based on last week's Smackdown, Punk ''does'' seem to be growing it back now that the mask is gone. [[MST3KMantra Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking too hard about this stuff]]...but it JustBugsMe all the same.