"I'm a Snake"

AEW's MJF and CM Punk Show There Are Levels To This Shit

CM Punk, covered in his own blood and hanging from a chain over the top rope, was in a pretty tough spot last night on AEW Dynamite. To make matters worse (because things can always get worse), his rival MJF was berating him in front of thousands of fans, punctuating each pulsing gush of Punk’s plasma with an insult, his brand new t-shirt covered in his foe’s quickly congealing DNA.

A week before, MJF had been near tears as he shared an emotional story about the bullies of his youth and the refuge he found in the world of wrestling. It was there, in a profoundly fucked up place, that MJF finally felt like a part of something that mattered, something bigger than himself.

His favorite wrestler was CM Punk, the verbally dexterous shit-stirrer who, once he was done riling up everyone he crossed paths with on the indie scene, took his motor-mouth and his bad attitude to Stamford to take on the whole goddamn system from within.

Punk was MJF’s guy just when he needed someone to look up to the most—until he wasn’t, famously walking away from the business in what should of been his professional prime to follow his own passions. Punk had convinced MJF and a legion of other hardcores to buy into his “me against the world” persona and his fuck you attitude. But, at least from MJF’s perspective, the face of the revolution, the man who refused to bend the knee even to the mighty Vince McMahon himself, simply disappeared, leaving a hole where he once stood that was never quite filled.

Every super villain needs an origin story and this was MJF’s. He was abandoned in his time of need and it hardened him. He couldn’t rely on CM Punk and he couldn’t be CM Punk. He had to be better than CM Punk. Better than everyone.

For weeks the two men had bantered back-and-forth in the ring, dueling monologues that evoked a time in wrestling’s past when it could still make people feel, when lines were drawn and you had to pick a side because this was war.

But this time Punk looked stricken as he walked to the ring.

“Is it true?” he asked, as MJF left to seek solace outside the glare of the spotlight.

“Is it true?”

Last night, shaken by lingering doubts and the ever-present fear that he had done his people wrong with his abrupt departure, Punk did what a man does. He offered MJF his apology and his hand. Instead he got a hug—and then a low blow that was just the beginning.

“You stupid, stupid old man. I’m a snake,” MJF told his former favorite. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist. And this Sunday, at Revolution, I’m going to show you and all these mindless sheep that I am the devil himself.”

That’s classic wrestling storytelling, executed in way we’ve rarely seen in the PG-era of WWE-style “sports entertainment”, for almost two decades the only real game in town.

But it’s also more than that.

What’s beautiful about AEW is that it isn’t afraid to make art directed specifically at the most hardcore members of their audience. This could be enjoyed by anyone—but only people who have followed Punk’s story for a decade truly understood the magnitude, both of MJF’s love for his enemy and the extent to which he was twisting the knife in an open wound with his words.

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In 2005 rumors flew that Punk was on his way to WWE on a developmental deal, which made him winning the Ring of Honor title from Austin Aries even more shocking to diehard fans who were sure they knew what the result would be.

“We will miss you,” fans chanted, perhaps believing his first and only ROH title victory was something of a parting gift from an appreciative promotion. Punk played into that sentiment for a moment, before telling the crowd that, in his hands, the microphone was a pipe bomb.

And he exploded it right in their gullible faces.

Punk shared the parable of the old man and the snake, telling fans “the greatest thing the devil ever did, was making people believe he didn’t exist. And you’re looking at him right now. I am the devil himself and all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it.”

The “Summer of Punk” followed, four memorable title defenses that July that served as his final hurrah before he indeed departed for the WWE, a true good bye to the community that had built and nurtured him. Glory, with all its consequences (intended and otherwise) was waiting.

Not everyone remembers this 16-year-old slice of wrestling history. But MJF does. And so do many of the promotion’s most ardent fans. And that history, suddenly, appears incredibly relevant to the present in more ways than one.

Last night AEW’s Tony Khan revealed he’d bought Ring of Honor, home to Punk’s memorable first pipe bomb and the formative years of many of the sport’s biggest stars. In addition to hundreds of hours of streaming content, it’s also another outlet for all the pent-up creativity out there in the wrestling world. AEW used to be a wrestling promotion. Now it’s becoming a universe, a place where heroes from disparate worlds can come together and play, a place where stories can linger across time and space, where everything counts—not just the things that happen Wednesdays on TBS.

WWE created its own kind Universe, a place where wrestling history went to die, where stars from a place like ROH weren’t celebrated. They were renamed and repackaged as if they were freshly minted coins. If it didn’t happen on Monday Night Raw or SmackDown, it might as well have never happened at all. Wrestlers have no past before WWE, at least in the storylines, and it’s been that way since former world champion Dory Funk Jr, a man who had traveled the globe as a headliner, was rebranded “Hoss” Funk, his past heroics all but erased from the narrative.

MJF’s homage to his idol, even as he leaves him in a bloody heap, tells us two things:

ROH’s legacy is in loving hands with Tony Khan and the wrestlers in AEW care every bit as much as we do. They understand they can create moments of their own, not by ignoring the past, but by using it in ways that resonate.