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| Punk news was at a dearth, but hoo boy, that didn't stop YOU PEOPLE from talking about him en masse Photo Credit: WWE.com |
'Tis December 23, and the aluminum pole is set up in the middle of the living room. Ryback and Rusev are in the wings to engage in feats of strength, and the dinner table is ready for a good meal. However, before we can eat, I have something I want to get off my chest that's been bugging me for nearly the whole year. In fact, I would say it all started on January 28 when everyone realized that a certain tattooed, straight-edge, former voice of the voiceless wasn't on RAW and wasn't showing up to the Smackdown tapings either.
Yes, CM Punk left WWE after one month of employment this year, and the rest of YOU PEOPLE just would not shut the fuck up about it. From the minute you all realized he wasn't going to show up anymore, it was non-stop CM Punk chatter, as if the rest of the wrestling world didn't matter as much as a dude who walked out for his own health and sanity. You reported constantly about anything you could about Punk's status with the company or people's opinions on it or even dates when he could potentially return. You kept tweeting about how WWE wasn't the same without him, even though he was at best the fifth best part of the show if you were being generous. You chanted his name at every turn. Even now, he's gone off into a completely different field, and you won't stop prattling on about him. Enough is e-fucking-nough.
It wouldn't be so bad if all this chatter was based on factual reporting of what was going on, but from the moment it was apparent Punk was gone, people started playing the blame game or reflexively defending a monolithic corporate entity as if WWE didn't have corporate lawyers to do that job for it. No one knew a goddamn thing about what went down until Colt Cabana dropped that Punk episode Art of Wrestling on Thanksgiving, but oh no, that didn't stop any of you from putting your two cents in even though actual things were happening not only in WWE, but in other promotions as well.
That is the thing that bugs me the most about all this Punk cacophony, the tendency for wrestling fans AND reporters even to go on about things where facts are scarce if known at all. You don't meet demands for news by creating artificial supply. Any chatter about Punk until his two-part interview with Cabana and the official/unofficial response from Vince McMahon on the Austin show has been just that, artificial supply. These nuggets, even the clearly fake leak that Dave Meltzer's source fed to him about Punk's return that got everyone mad at him, were all at best wishful thinking about what people wanted to think about Punk passed off as news. It exposed that the standards for what passes as news aren't nearly as high as they should be.
CM Punk is not a martyr. He's not a savior, nor is he a be-all, end-all for conversation. It's clear he's moving on with his life or else he wouldn't have changed careers at this point in his athletic lifespan. Whether or not his move into MMA is hypocritical or not given his comments about part-time wrestlers is not something I care to debate, and honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it's something MMA journalists, bloggers, and fans can chew on for all I care. My wish is that all YOU PEOPLE learn a lesson from this year of Punk, and that's maybe think about things before you say a billion words about them.
Now, let's eat and bring on the feats of strength.
