CM Punk vs John Cena (c) for the WWE Championship – WWE Money in the Bank – July 17, 2011

Last night, just before midnight, a friend of mine posed a question: “Have you ever seen a Five-Star Match live?”

I was a bit thrown, both from exhaustion and from the fact that I don’t typically rate matches on any sort of scale. In fact, I usually try to avoid any type of ratings system on here as not to project the false authority a lot of bloggers present to their readers. That said, I wanted to give to my friend an answer, so I began to roll around in my head what a perfect match in Professional Wrestling really is.

First, athletic prowess is a must. The match should have some impressive moments and logic-driven action. Next, the match must make narrative sense, fitting into both the larger narrative of the wrestling world and progress as a reflection of it. And finally, perhaps most importantly, the crowd has to care. They have to care when they get to the building, they have to care when they leave it. This weight falls not only on the match, but the construction of the entire event.

In the summer of 2011, the WWE did just that.

 “Do I have everybody’s attention now?”

The WWE Universe, the largest group of Wrestling fans in the world, were tired. After years of unremarkable, often bizarre angles, even those in charge of WWE knew that they were behind the ball in the industry they had dominated for so many years. In 2009, Punk, already a one-time World Champion, would regain the title from Jeff Hardy. The angle would give the WWE its first view of Punk as a heel and his rivalry with Hardy could not have been hotter. Though the pair probably should have tangled into Wrestlemania, Hardy would leave before the fall of 2009. Punk would fall to The Undertaker in an interesting series, but one that once again pushed the biggest heel in the company out of the title picture. WWE fan’s frustration grew. In 2010, the first steps to correct this came in the form of The Nexus, a group of upstarts who threatened the status quo of the company. Punk, now swimming around Raw, sometimes even on commentary, would eventually attack Cena and take control of The Nexus. Punk’s attention would then be diverted to Randy Orton for Wrestlemania, once again keeping him away from the belt.

Frustration grew.

In June of 2011, in one of the most expertly executed moments in the history of Professional Wrestling, CM Punk would deliver THE promo. After a fairly standard attack on WWE Champion John Cena, Punk plopped himself down on the entry ramp and began to tear into the WWE and how they were not the company they should be. He proclaimed that he would be leaving the company, with their belt. After a few weeks, it was established that Punk’s title shot would come in his home town of Chicago at Money in the Bank. It was perfect.

Though certainly not to blame for the WWE’s growing irrelevance, John Cena was the physical representation of the company’s most forgettable era. Cena himself was and is one of the greatest performers the industry has ever seen, but his position as the face of the WWE now bred more ire than admiration. Punk, on the other hand, always played the outsider. As face or heel, Punk had the support of the crowd by simply being interesting. Even when signed to the WWE, he always seemed to hit a wall no matter what belt he had or how many “brass rings” he grabbed. Even when he should have been “the man”, it never seemed like the company wanted him to be. Though it is debatable how much of this was part of the story and how much came from real politics, by July 2011, it had become the biggest narrative in professional wrestling. It was the biggest one in nearly a decade. As an athletic contest, the confrontation between the face of the WWE and the people’s champion excels. Both performers were at the height of their capabilities and put on an impeccably paced match for the crowd. Sure, there are a few hiccups here and there, but that’s true even in Dave Meltzer’s lauded Six-Star contests. When you’re moving, not everything is going to work. The match’s finish, which I’ll avoid spoiling completely, affirmed Punk’s position as an unstoppable force, even in the face of the corporation. And that last element, the audience. Oh man. I was lucky enough to be in that crowd, and I’ve never felt anything like it. Louder, more invested, it was the potential of this business presented physically in a mass of thousands. With Daniel Bryan, a figure comparable to Punk, winning the Money in the Bank briefcase earlier in the night, the crowd believed even more that the impossible was going to happen. Imagine the sound when it did.

This match is important even today. It established to the fans that the stagnant days of the WWE were over, and that they would have a lot to look forward to in the coming years. I fully believe that the WWE Network is borne of this summer. It also was a proof of concept for the modern style of storytelling, instead of weaving a complete narrative, the WWE now finds most of its success in bending their audience’s perception of reality into their fiction. Expect more on that in coming weeks. Kayfabe never died, it just tricked you into thinking it doesn’t exist.

This match is available on the WWE Network and multiple home video releases.