[2013-01-27-WWE-Royal Rumble] CM Punk vs The Rock

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[ShittyLittleBoots]

I love the hype video package for this match, and Rock's pure babyface promo before the match is also really great. The match itself is pretty far from great, but it's not bad. I liked the fact they went after their respective weak spots -- Rock had a worked up mid-section going into the thing, so Punk tried to wear him down by targeting it. Makes sense, and Punk's work over it was definitely very solid. Then as he makes one mistake & seems to tweak his previously injured knee, Rock sees that and starts returning the favor by delivering a stomping to that knee. Rock doesn't really fully commit going after it though, and as the match becomes more even, it becomes more about the big moves & counters. It's okay I guess, but definitely very, very, very forgettable stuff. I 100% liked the first half (or so) much more w/ the slower build & all. Gotta mention that it's also a shame that the announcing table crumbled under them when they were going for that big spot of the match in Rock delivering a Rock Bottom to Punk through it. Overall I think it's a solid match, but it's also very disappointing at the same time -- it's only memorable for the result + for the fact that it's Punk vs. Rock. It was very fun to go back & watch it though, as I hadn't seen it since 2013 prior to today; as far as me getting worked up about wrestling goes, this match & its result is up there w/ the best of 'em. Was a massive (still am) Punk fan back then, and while I knew that Rock was 110% sure winning the belt, they got me good with that finish after The Shield interfered. Then a couple of minutes later I'm triggered so bad as Rock pins Punk after that People's Elbow. Good times :') **3/4

[The Man in Blak]

This is both better than you might expect it to be and worse than it should have been, given the creative that was foisted onto this match. Rock almost torpedoes the entire face/heel dynamic of the match before they even get into the ring with a comically overwrought "inspirational babyface" pre-match promo, complete with a straight-faced invocation of Dusty's "my hand is touchin' your hand" promo. My god, Dwayne, just say you're The People's Champ and you're here to throw Punk's skinny white ass into a volcano or something. I'm happy that your mom survived cancer too but deploying that here alongside a testimonial of how you had seven dollars in your pocket after being unable to make the NFL (????) demonstrates you (or Gewirtz) didn't understand the assignment.

Anyway. The big angle hovering over this match like a bad fart is that the Shield beat the crap out of Rock leading up to this match so, if they get involved here in any way, then Vince will strip Punk of the title. Rock and Punk generally work pretty well together here, with Punk targeting those damaged ribs and generally offering solid counters to Rock's brawling with kicks and submissions. Even though the crowd leans more for Punk in the beginning, Punk does his best with a multi-faceted heel performance to try and bring things back on track: there's a little bit of trolling (with the Spanish announce table teases), a little bit of old-school heat (with Heyman getting physically involved), and some good, old-fashioned disrespect (casually walking over Rock's injured ribs). A lot has been made of Rock's limited stamina during this run, but he keeps a decent pace with Punk here and sells well throughout, including a beautiful wobbly-leg collapse after a Punk roundhouse kick. There is a weird moment where Punk counters a sharpshooter into what looks like a failed or botched small package before recovering into an Anaconda Vice, but the positioning and eventual counter on the Vice is so perfect that it actually ends up coming off like a nice bit of struggle. And, naturally, the eventual Rock Bottom table spot foreshadowed by all those teases earlier gets sabotaged by the table collapsing underneath the weight of both guys, but they run it back on the floor and it works just as well.

Eventually, the Rock gets enough of an opening to set up for the People's Elbow...and the lights go out. The Shield comes down under the cover of darkness to lay out the Rock and, when the lights come up, Punk recovers enough to roll the KO'd Rock into the ring for the pin. The production lingers on Punk's victory just long enough to almost bait you into thinking that they'll actually let the schmozz play out for a potential Raw resolution tomorrow night...and then Vince comes out. In the only smart beat of this entire debacle, Rock does the classic babyface play of not letting Vince take the easy way out by simply stripping Punk and, instead, asks for the match to be restarted, even though he's a complete wreck outside the ring. 

Unfortunately, things completely fall apart for the second "half." Punk immediately jumps on Rock after the bell, hits the Savage elbow drop, but Rock simply blows it off and pushes off a GTS attempt into a spinebuster and a People's Elbow for the win. The extra time that they used to sell the false finish could have been used to do a more gradual build into Rock's comeback but, even with the time they had, Punk missing the elbow and struggling into some other move to counter into the spinebuster would have been a smoother transition.

Since the Elimination Chamber rematch is an overbooked bomb, this ends up being our only good look at what a "real" match between Rock and Punk would have looked like and what we have in the first half is actually pretty good! it's just hard to enjoy it as a whole, given all of the counter-productive booking that surrounds it. ***