CM PUNK AND BOBBY ROODE: TWO MEN WHO OVERCAME EXTREMELY SHAKY STARTS TO BECOME MUST-SEE WORLD CHAMPIONS
By Stuart Carapola on 2012-04-13 12:48:37
There's good news and bad news for CM Punk and Bobby Roode. The good news is that they've both been the top champion in their respective companies for about the same amount of time, in the 5-6 month range, a time during which they've gotten the chance to prove they deserve the spot and, at least in my opinion, have come through.
The bad news is that, despite holding the top prize available to them, they've both been made to play second fiddle while somebody else headlined a major PPV. In Punk's case, his match with Chris Jericho was the semi-main event of Wrestlemania while Rock and Cena went on last, while Roode's long-awaited rematch with James Storm has to share the spotlight with a Lethal Lockdown match that's built around the feud between Eric Bischoff and his son Garett, who is not even close to having earned his stripes in the business. Regardless, I think both men have done a great job in their role and have been helped by being booked into really strong storylines after fairly shaky starts.
Let's start with Punk, who had been the focal point of what was widely regarded as the best storyline of the year in 2011 when he beat John Cena for the WWE Title on his last night in the company, but returned just weeks later and wound up in what many fans perceived as the doghouse. He lost the WWE Title to Alberto Del Rio and found himself playing the third wheel in a feud between Triple H and Kevin Nash before losing clean to Triple H on PPV, and the impression people got was that he was being punished for daring to get himself more over than he was intended to be.
It was understandable that some people had doubts when Punk defeated Del Rio to regain the WWE Title at Survivor Series in Madison Square Garden, given the way he had been treated since his return. However, Punk has been generally booked well and is now feuding with Chris Jericho in a conflict that's become increasingly personal as time has passed.
I understand why some people would feel uncomfortable with Punk's family and their various personal issues becoming a part of the storyline since I know some of that might hit a little too close to home for some viewers, but my personal belief is that it's made the feud a hell of a lot more interesting than it would have if it was just about Jericho wanting the title and the two of them having a bunch of good matches.
Wrestling draws people in by creating a heel who people hate so much that they'll pay to watch the virtuous babyface destroy them. The problem is that, in 2011, there's so much bad stuff going on in the world and people are so desensitized by violence on TV, in movies, and in video games that, as Bobby Heenan once said, it makes it impossible to get heat by pulling the tights anymore. On top of that, WWE has gone so far out of its way to sanitize their product that there's not one heel on their roster who doesn't look like a bumbling fool, and it's impossible to take them seriously, much less get people to hate them.
So when you have a guy like Jericho show up and start attacking Punk's straight edge identity by talking about his father's alcoholism, his sister's drug issues, and even going so far as to expose him as a bastard to a national audience, it's stuff that goes so far beyond what any other heel in the company has done for years that it stands out and makes fans really hate Jericho and want to see Punk tear him apart.
Punk has also done a great job of selling the effect Jericho's words have had on him, because he's so mad that he doesn't come out and pose, he doesn't high five fans, he comes stalking out to the ring looking like he wants to kill someone and gets disqualified for bashing Mark Henry in the head with foreign objects. Then Jericho takes it a step further and tells Punk that the straight edge lifestyle is a lie because Punk knows deep down that he's an alcoholic just like his father. Then Jericho takes it yet further when he attacks Punk, pours a bottle of Jack on his face, and smashes the bottle on his head.
Of course we just happen to be coming up on Extreme Rules where Punk, who by this point is undoubtedly ready to disembowel Jericho with his bare hands, will finally be able to get his hands on Jericho in a match with a violent enough stipulation to suit his mindset. But the beauty of this angle is that by doing so, he's actually playing right into Jericho's hands because this entire strategy of playing with Punk's head has been designed to make him lose control and ask for a match like this where Jericho will be legally able to do whatever he needs to in order to accomplish the goal he said from the beginning that he came back to accomlish: regain the WWE Title and prove that he's better than the guy he sees as a low rent Chris Jericho knockoff: CM Punk.
The feud between Punk and Jericho is a perfect example of how good booking, characters whose actions make sense, and a slow build can lead to a match where two guys hate each other so much that you damn well need to pay to see what happens when they finally get their hands on each other. It really is booking at its finest, but the same can be said about the feud between Bobby Roode and James Storm, who will meet at this weekend's Lockdown PPV for the TNA World Title.
Like Punk, Roode got off to a very shaky start as champion. Going back to last summer when TNA began the Bound For Glory Series, it became pretty clear early on that Bobby Roode was going to come away the winner. It's been obvious for a long time that TNA has had big plans for him, and it appeared that they were going to finally pull the trigger on Roode and have him win the series, then go on to beat Kurt Angle for the World Title at Bound For Glory.
Roode won the Bound For Glory Series, but after weeks of video packages and a build that made you think there was no way Roode could possibly lose what would be the biggest match of his life, he lost. Sure, Angle had the ropes, but Roode still lost, and the best part was that Roode was told for weeks that he was going to win the title, and was only informed earlier the day of Bound For Glory that he wouldn't after all.
That swerve was enough to make you wonder what TNA was smoking, but the events of the next several weeks afterward totally made everyone's head spin. Roode's longtime partner James Storm wound up challenging Angle on Impact just four days after Bound For Glory and beat him in seconds to win the title everyone thought would be Roode's. Storm gave Roode a shot at the title since Roode had gotten screwed at Bound For Glory, but we got swerved again when Roode broke a beer bottle over Storm's head and pinned him to win the World Title.
We had gotten where we thought we would since Bobby Roode was now the TNA World Champion, but we had taken such a convoluted path to get there that it came off like TNA management was throwing fans the finger for getting too emotionally invested in their product. TNA's fanbase can be very vocal, but that's because they're largely made up of hardcores who have been following the company for years, have watched Storm and Roode slowly work their way up the ranks over the course of a decade, and were really pissed off to watch them get the treatment they did after we've seen so many people in both companies have that happen to them and never recover.
Luckily, this time turned out to be different because since Bound For Glory, TNA's once haphazard, confusing, and repetitive storylines have improved 1000%, and in fact the Roode-Storm feud has been so well done that the match at Lockdown may have been built to better than any match in company history.
Like Punk and Jericho, both men have believable motivations: Roode has seen greatness in himself from day one and always expected to be the World Champion. He played the game with Beer Money and Fortune, but once he had the opportunity to claim the greatness he coveted above all else, he threw away his friendship with Storm without a second thought and never looked back.
Storm, on the other hand, has taken Roode's actions very personally and has never forgotten the betrayal. He thought that Roode was his best friend and a man he could count on to watch his back, and even when they had to face one another in the Bound For Glory Series, Storm always wanted them to walk out of the match still best buddies. He never saw Roode's doublecross coming, and the last six months have been about Storm working his way back to a position where he can challenge his former best friend, in a steel cage, with the biggest prize in TNA on the line.
Aside from the trials and tribulations of Storm and Roode in the Impact Zone, we've spent months watching video packages of both men's friends and families talking about the effect the situation has had on them, including Roode's family talking about how they barely know him anymore because of how much he has changed since winning the title. We've gone deep into both of their lifestyles away from the ring, as Roode is now a suit-wearing corporate sellout, while Storm has stayed true to his roots as a beer drinking redneck who hangs out in bars, listens to country music, and trains in his barn.
Both men have fought through incredible odds to wind up where they are this weekend: Roode has had to deal with an adversarial GM in the form of Sting from the moment he won the title, as Sting sent challenger after challenger after Roode in the hopes of knocking him off. AJ Styles and Jeff Hardy both failed, and finally Sting took it upon himself to get in the ring and try to take Roode out, but he failed as well.
Storm's road was no easier, as he first had to go through Kurt Angle, who attacked Storm out of bitterness over the way Storm beat him for the title, and then Storm had to get past Roode's associate Bully Ray, who thought he should have been the top contender and wanted to mess Storm up badly to prove himself the superior man.
In fact, Bully Ray's involvement has added yet another dimension to the feud, as what started out as subtle hints that Bully Ray secretly wanted to get his hands on his buddy's title progressed to Bully indirectly laying claim to a title shot by going after Storm and saying he shoulde be the #1 contender, and then finally became Bully Ray straight out telling Roode to his face that he wants his title and physically attacking him on more than one occasion. There's a possbility he may become a factor in the title match, but even if he doesn't, whoever does come out of the cage with the title will see Bully Ray looming on the horizon after Lockdown.
Both Punk-Jericho and Storm-Roode have been very well booked storylines, and I can't remember the last time I was this interested in the title programs in both companies at the same time. Neither feud is getting as much of the spotlight as they should, but these are the kinds of feuds that made me a fan of professional wrestling, and it just goes to show that you don't need the power struggles, you don't need farting women, you don't need leprechauns, and you sure as hell don't need the Three Stooges, just give me two guys who want to kill each other and watch me empty my wallet.
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