The Cult of Personality

So I've held off blogging about the whole CM Punk angle that's happening right now in the WWE for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because I've been burned before getting prematurely excited about angles that start off buzzworthy and fizzle out quickly. But the very fact that this angle has gotten some mainstream attention tells me that if nothing else the WWE has all the more pressure on them to have this payoff positively. So far, things have been good.

If you've been out of the loop, here's a quick recap:
- About a month ago when CM Punk received a title shot, he announced that his contact ended the night of his title shot and that when he defeated John Cena for the title, he planned on leaving the company with the belt.
-Then as a lame duck employee, he went on several awesome work/shoot rants about the terrible people that ran the company and the poor way they treated their employees.

- Panicked over the fact that someone might leave his company with the title (ala Bret Hart back in '97), Vince McMahon puts pressure on John Cena to win the match by telling him that if he doesn't Vince will fire him.
- This created all sorts of buzz for the Money in the Bank PPV. Was Punk really leaving and they'd simply job him out? Would Punk win but then in a swerve not leave? Would they try to recreate the Montreal screwjob to prevent Punk from leaving with the title. The fact that the match was taking place in CM Punk's hometown of Chicago, just added to the aura of this match.

- So what happened? Well believe it or not, Punk won (relatively cleanly) and seemingly left the company.
- This put the company in a bit of a tailspin. Vince tried to pretend like Punk never existed, he set up a tournament to crown a new WWE champion and prepared to fire John Cena. However, on the night after the PPV, Triple H returned to announce that the board of directors had decided that Vince was not capable of handling the day-to-day duties of running the WWE anymore and put Triple H in charge.
- With The Game now running the show, a match was made between John Cena and Rey Mysterio, who had won the WWE title in the tournament to determine who was going to be the champion. To the surprise of no one Cena won and became WWE Champ once again, only to be visited at the end of the show by none other that CM Punk, who came out to his new, awesome theme music.



So that's where we stand right now. It's believe that Punk has resigned with the company, but a lot of it remains unclear from a real life perspective. Some feel he's back for good, while others believed that he's working on a brief extension and will be done in another month or so. In the meantime, it appears that Punk and Cena will square off in a couple of weeks at Summerslam to determine the 'true' WWE champion. If Punk gets jobbed out in that match and leaves, it will be a dark end to this awesome angle. If he's planning on sticking around, there's the potential for him to finally pick up that anti-hero superstar role that's been vacant ever since Stone Cold Steve Austin left. For now, they've done a good job of hooking me back in, but it's only with cautious optimism at this point.