John Cena vs. CM Punk (Jun 2011 – Aug 2011)

Background

John Cena went into the summer of 2011 as the reigning WWE Champion and the company's lead act, the man every program on Raw was built around.[1] CM Punk went into it as a wrestler whose last two big matches had been losses.

Punk had spent the first half of the year leading the New Nexus, taking the group over from Wade Barrett on the January 3 Raw and running it through an initiation that involved members hitting each other with kendo sticks.[15] The New Nexus cost Randy Orton his title rematch at the Royal Rumble, and Orton spent the following months punting the stable's members out of the picture one at a time.[15] Orton beat Punk at WrestleMania XXVII on April 3, then beat him again in a Last Man Standing match at Extreme Rules on May 1.[15]

June turned it around fast. Punk pinned Cena in a non-title match on the June 13 Raw after R-Truth distracted the champion, beat Rey Mysterio at Capitol Punishment, and then won a Falls Count Anywhere triple threat over Mysterio and Alberto Del Rio on June 20 to earn a WWE Championship shot at Money in the Bank.[1] Standing in the ring after that win, he told the audience something that wasn't part of any previous angle: his WWE contract expired at midnight on July 17, the night of the pay-per-view, and he was planning to leave with the belt.[1]

That last part was true, which is what separated this from every other contract angle. Punk's deal was genuinely running out, he had genuinely not signed a new one, and by his own account in WWE's Best in the World documentary he was genuinely on his way out: "I was really leaving. This was as real as it gets. Clock strikes midnight, I'm out of here."[3]

He had also done a version of this before. After signing with WWE in June 2005, Punk won the Ring of Honor World Championship from Austin Aries at Death Before Dishonor III on June 18, then announced he was taking the belt with him to WWE and signed his WWE contract on the title itself.[16] That run ended with James Gibson taking the belt back in a four-way elimination match in August and Punk losing a two-out-of-three-falls farewell to Colt Cabana in Chicago.[16] Six years later the same premise was on Raw, with a national television audience and a champion in John Cena who had no idea the crowd was about to turn the building into a referendum.

Build-up

The June 27 Raw came out of Las Vegas under a Raw Roulette gimmick, with the night's stipulations spun off a wheel, and Punk turned up in three separate places on it. He was booked against a mystery opponent, drew Kane, and simply walked out of the ring and took the count-out loss.[26] Later he interrupted Shawn Michaels, who was on the show to announce his hunting series, to remind the audience his WWE contract expired at Money in the Bank on July 17.[26]

The main event was Cena defending nothing in a non-title tables match against R-Truth, and Punk cost him that too, pulling him out of an Attitude Adjustment long enough for Truth to drive him through a table in the corner.[26] Then, with Cena still laid out, Punk walked down to the top of the entrance ramp, sat cross-legged in a Stone Cold Steve Austin t-shirt, and talked for about six minutes with nobody in the ring.[4][26]

He opened by telling Cena he liked him more than he liked most of the people in the back, and then said he was the best wrestler in the world anyway.[4] "You're as good as kissing Vince's ass as Hulk Hogan was," Punk said, though he allowed he wasn't sure Cena was as good at it as Dwayne.[4]

From there he went down a list of things WWE television did not say out loud. He said the fact that Dwayne was in the WrestleMania main event the following year and he wasn't made him sick, and pointed out that for all his winning he still wasn't on the collector cups or the program covers.[4] He named Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling as places he might take the WWE Championship after July 17, and he waved into the hard camera at a friend the company had released: "Hey, Colt Cabana, how you doing?"[4]

Then he went after the family. "I'd like to think that maybe this company will be better after Vince McMahon is dead," Punk said, "but the fact is, it's going to be taken over by his idiotic daughter and his doofus son-in-law."[4] He said the brass ring he'd been told to grab did not exist: "I've grabbed so many of Vincent K. McMahon's brass rings that it's finally dawned on me that they're just that, they're completely imaginary."[4]

He was still going, working through WWE's anti-bullying campaign, when his microphone was cut mid-sentence and the broadcast ended.[1][4] A review written the next morning caught how it landed: "Raw stopped broadcasting at this point, leaving most viewers unsure whether it was shoot or work," and the writer noted that almost nobody was willing to say for certain which it was, given that Punk's contract really was running out.[27]

Punk was storyline suspended that week and stripped of the Money in the Bank title match.[1]

Cena's answer the following week reframed the whole thing. He went to McMahon and told him he would walk out of the company and hand back the WWE Championship unless Punk was reinstated. McMahon agreed and attached a price: if Cena lost at Money in the Bank, he was fired.[1]

That left one Raw before Chicago, and WWE spent it on a contract signing that never got signed. On July 11 McMahon came to the ring with a new deal, warned that "contracts should not be negotiated in public," and found out Punk's lawyers had written their own version.[9]

Punk's demands ran down a list: his own jet, because McMahon's smelled; his face on all the merchandise; the return of the WWE ice cream bars; a CM Punk movie; the WrestleMania main event, above Cena against The Rock.[9] The last item was an apology, from McMahon, for being a hypocrite about anti-bullying and for the people the company had fired, Colt Cabana and Luke Gallows among them.[9] McMahon gave it to him in five words: "I apologize you son of a bitch."[9]

Cena's music hit before the pen touched paper. He told Punk he was a hypocrite who was about to take the belt and abandon the audience that had just spent three weeks chanting for him.[9] Punk's answer was that Cena had stopped being the underdog years ago and had become the New York Yankees.[9] Cena punched him, told him goodbye, and Punk got up, tore the contract in half, and said he would be the best in the world somewhere else.[9]

The Matches

Money in the Bank was held on July 17 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, on the edge of Chicago, in front of an announced 14,815 with about 12,000 paid and a gate near $750,000.[1] Signs reading "If Punk loses, we riot" were everywhere, and Cena worked the entire match as the visiting heel in a building that had decided otherwise.[10]

The match ran 33 minutes and 44 seconds.[1] The early stretch was slow and deliberate, Cena working in broad strokes and Punk countering out of headlocks, until Cena caught him with an Emerald Frosion.[14] Cena took over from there, and the middle of the match was built on Punk taking a beating and refusing to fold.[14] Cena suplexed him from the apron to the floor, hit a leg drop off the top, and got a two count on the Attitude Adjustment.[13]

Punk went to a top-rope hurricanrana into a Go To Sleep attempt, and Cena kicked out of everything either man had.[13] After thirty minutes Punk finally connected with the GTS and Cena rolled to the floor.[1] As Punk pushed him back into the ring, McMahon and John Laurinaitis came out from the back.[1]

Cena locked in the STF and Punk would not tap. McMahon told the referee to call it anyway and sent Laurinaitis to ring the bell, the same finish that had ended Bret Hart's WWF career in Montreal fourteen years earlier.[1] Cena let go of the hold, got out of the ring, and knocked Laurinaitis down before he could reach the timekeeper.[1][10] Punk hit the Go To Sleep on him when he climbed back in and pinned him clean.[1]

McMahon sent Alberto Del Rio out with the Money in the Bank briefcase before Punk could get off the mat. Punk kicked him in the head, took the belt, and left through the crowd, stopping to blow McMahon a kiss on the way out of the building.[1][10]

The rematch at SummerSlam on August 14 at the Staples Center drew a sellout 17,404 and ran 24 minutes and 8 seconds, with Triple H as special guest referee.[2] Cena hit an Attitude Adjustment for a near fall, Punk answered with a GTS for one of his own, and the finish came on a second GTS that Punk pinned him after while Cena's foot was on the bottom rope.[2] Triple H counted three and did not see it. Kevin Nash walked out and jackknifed Punk in the middle of the ring, and Del Rio came down with the briefcase and beat him with a step-up enziguiri to take the title.[2]

Aftermath

Punk spent the week after Money in the Bank on television WWE did not control. On July 21 he turned up at WWE's Comic-Con panel in San Diego with the championship, sitting alongside Triple H, who had just replaced McMahon as WWE's chief operating officer.[17] Punk asked him "how's life in Fantasy Land?" and Triple H asked him back "how's the unemployment line?"[17]

Back on Raw, Triple H relieved McMahon of his duties and inherited the title mess.[2] On July 25 Rey Mysterio beat The Miz in a tournament final to become champion and lost the belt to Cena later the same night, at which point Punk walked out with the original one.[2] A match to unify them was made for SummerSlam, and on the August 8 Raw Triple H installed himself as its referee.[2]

SummerSlam left Del Rio with the title and Punk with a grievance aimed at Nash and at the two people signing the checks. He went after Nash, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon on television, and a Punk against Nash match was signed for Night of Champions.[11]

Triple H took the match instead and made it No Disqualification; Punk added a stipulation that Triple H would have to resign as COO if he lost.[11] The September 18 main event ran long and got crowded: The Miz and R-Truth attacked both men, Nash came out of the audience and jackknifed Punk, and Triple H hit Nash with a sledgehammer and then Punk with a third Pedigree to win.[11] He kept his job.

Punk got the title back on November 20, beating Del Rio with the Anaconda Vise at Survivor Series in Madison Square Garden. That reign ran from November 20, 2011 to January 27, 2013, a total of 434 days.[18] Cena spent the same stretch in the year-long build to The Rock at WrestleMania XXVIII.

Behind the Scenes

The part of this angle that was not a work was the contract, and it stayed unresolved right up to the last hour. Punk had agreed to a two-day extension purely so he could appear at the pay-per-view, and by ESPN's account he had still not signed a long-term deal when he walked into the Allstate Arena.[3] He signed it hours into the show, behind closed doors, while WWE officials were still deciding the finish.[3]

Punk's own version of what he wanted is consistent every time he tells it. Of the months leading up to it, he has said: "Fed up is an understatement. I was tired. I was sick. I was mad. I was feeling depressed."[3]

On the negotiation itself, his account is that the leverage was real and the ask was not financial. "Vince said, 'You have me over a barrel here.' I wasn't in this for silly demands. It wasn't even about the money. It was simply, 100 percent about the respect and being placed on the card where I deserve to be."[3]

The promo itself was pitched to him rather than the other way round. Punk has said a writer met him at the building that day, grinning: "You're gonna love this. They're gonna give you a microphone and they want you to air your grievances."[3]

What he handed in was not what he said. "I had to make an outline for Vince and I didn't say anything I wrote in the outline," Punk told the SPORT1 Wrestling podcast, "I just know that I needed him to agree and then I went out there and said whatever I wanted."[5] His reasoning was that the outline would have been edited: "The thing with live television is, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."[5] By his telling McMahon had told him not to mention Brock Lesnar or Paul Heyman, and the one thing McMahon actively asked him to add was a jab at Stephanie.[5] He came back through the curtain expecting trouble and got two words instead. "When I came back it was 'I smell money,' is what he said," Punk told Stephanie McMahon on her own podcast years later. "At the time, that was the stamp of approval, that was it."[6][7]

Punk has also been dismissive of the copies. "I have seen more people post that promo, try to emulate that, and completely miss the point," he said, describing the formula as: "Go out there and you tell them four things that you know are true, and then the fifth one can be 'I was born on Mars.'"[7]

The Stephanie material has two competing explanations attached to it, and they don't sit comfortably together. Punk's account is that McMahon requested it.[5] Kevin Nash, on his Kliq This podcast, has said the off-script material about Triple H and Stephanie is exactly what killed the planned Nash against Punk match at Night of Champions: by Nash's telling, Triple H came to him backstage and said, "You're not wrestling Punk, I am. I'm beating that motherfucker."[8] Nash has framed it as heat that burned off in time rather than a lasting grudge, noting that the two eventually worked together fine.[8] Neither man has produced a version that reconciles Vince asking for the line with Triple H taking a match over it.

For all of that, Punk's account of Cena's role in the summer contains no friction at all. Speaking on All The Smoke, he called Cena a "wrestling soulmate" and said plainly, "John is a guy who I'm very grateful for in my career ... he didn't have to be that nice or giving to me, a lot of top guys back then weren't."[20] He described Cena as one of the few at the top who handed the spotlight over: "Was one of the guys who was like 'Here's the ball, kid. Run with it.' And I did what I could."[20]

Punk credits the building as much as the booking. "I ride the wave. I am carried to the position I'm in because of those fans, because of those people in Chicago," he said of that night. "Just an unbelievable once-in-a-lifetime atmosphere where we capture that lightning, we're riding on that lightning bolt and all the ingredients are there."[20]

Legacy

Dave Meltzer rated the Money in the Bank main event five stars, the first WWE match since 1997 to get the full rating from him.[1] Wade Keller wrote that it was "exactly what a main event is supposed to be," and that while the "athleticism wasn't at the A+ level, but everything else that equals magic in pro wrestling happened."[1]

The Wrestling Observer's 2011 year-end awards went the same way. Cena against Punk took both Match of the Year, for the Money in the Bank bout, and Feud of the Year; Money in the Bank won Best Major Show; and Punk won Best on Interviews.[12] WWE's own retrospectives later placed the match fourth on its list of the 50 greatest WWE Championship matches and the event second among its 15 best pay-per-views.[1]

The business numbers were good rather than transformative. The Observer reported at the time that Money in the Bank did 195,000 buys worldwide, 139,000 of them domestic, against 164,000 for the 2010 edition.[19] SummerSlam that August did 296,000, down from 349,000 in 2010.[19]

The two men wrestled again on the February 25, 2013 Raw with a WrestleMania XXIX shot at The Rock on the line, and Cena won it after Punk missed a top-rope elbow.[21] Reviewers have generally ranked it just below the 2011 match rather than above it.[21] Cena marked the Money in the Bank anniversary himself on Twitter in July 2020: "I bet on myself that night, the usual amount. Not a smart wager choosing the guy who can't wrestle over the best in the world, but I'd like to think we all won that night."[22]

Punk carried the WWE Championship for 434 days after Survivor Series, the longest reign of the modern era at the time it ended.[18] Looking back on the summer that started it, he told Stephanie McMahon that the promo changed how he was seen inside the company: "It really made me feel like I had finally leveled up in management's minds."[7]

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. Money in the Bank (2011) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_in_the_Bank_(2011)
2. SummerSlam (2011) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SummerSlam_(2011)
3. "Coming full circle: CM Punk, Money in the Bank and Chicago" — ESPN. https://www.espn.com/wwe/story/_/id/23764929/coming-full-circle-cm-punk-money-bank-chicago
4. "My Ten Favorite CM Punk Promos" (June 27, 2011 pipe bomb transcript) — Pro Wrestling Transcriptions. https://prowrestlingtranscriptions.com/2020/04/17/my-ten-favorite-cm-punk-promos/
5. "CM Punk On How Much Of WWE Pipe Bomb Promo Was Scripted" — WrestleTalk. https://wrestletalk.com/news/cm-punk-pipe-bomb-scripted/
6. "CM Punk Reveals Vince McMahon's Immediate Reaction To Iconic Pipe Bomb Promo" — PWMania. https://www.pwmania.com/cm-punk-reveals-vince-mcmahons-immediate-reaction-to-iconic-pipe-bomb-promo
7. "WWE Champ CM Punk Looks Back On 2011's Summer Of Punk, Pipe Bomb Promo" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/2215936/wwe-cm-punk-summer-2011-pipe-bomb-promo-looks-back/
8. "Kevin Nash: In 2011, CM Punk Said Something Off Script That Pissed Off Triple H" — Fightful. https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/kevin-nash-in-2011-cm-punk-said-something-off-script-that-pissed-off-triple-h-he-told-me-im-beating-that-motherfcker/
9. "Raw Results - 7/11/11" — WrestleView. https://www.wrestleview.com/wwe-raw-results/24969-raw-results-7-11-11/
10. "CM Punk def. John Cena (New WWE Champion)" — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/shows/moneyinthebank/2011/cena-punk
11. Night of Champions (2011) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_Champions_(2011)
12. "2011 Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards Announced" — KB's Wrestling Reviews. https://kbwrestlingreviews.com/2012/01/26/2011-wrestling-observer-newsletter-awards-announced/
13. "That Night In Chicago | CM Punk vs John Cena | In-Ring Statistics" — Pro Wrestling Musings. https://www.prowrestlingmusings.com/post/that-night-in-chicago-cm-punk-vs-john-cena-in-ring-statistics-wwe-money-in-the-bank-2011
14. "John Cena vs. CM Punk, WWE Money in the Bank 2011 (7/17/2011)" — Handwerk Reviews. https://handwerkreviews.wordpress.com/2020/06/05/john-cena-vs-cm-punk-wwe-money-in-the-bank-2011-7-17-2011/
15. The Nexus (professional wrestling) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nexus_(professional_wrestling)
16. "The Incredible True Story Of ROH's Summer Of Punk" — Cultaholic. https://cultaholic.com/posts/the-incredible-true-story-of-the-original-summer-of-punk
17. "CM Punk invaded Comic-Con, mocking Triple H and WWE" — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/punk-invaded-comic-con
18. WWE Championship title history, CM Punk reign beginning November 20, 2011 — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/classics/titlehistory/wwe-world-heavyweight-championship/25045682
19. "WWE PPV buyrate totals; 2011 vs. 2010 numbers" (Wrestling Observer figures) — WrestleView. https://www.wrestleview.com/wwe-news/28225-wwe-ppv-buyrate-totals-2011-vs-2010-numbers/
20. "CM Punk Reflects On Legendary 2011 WWE Championship Match With John Cena In Chicago" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/2152442/cm-punk-2011-wwe-championship-john-cena-chicago/
21. "John Cena vs. CM Punk, WWE Raw (2/25/2013)" — Handwerk Reviews. https://handwerkreviews.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/john-cena-vs-cm-punk-wwe-raw-2-25-2013/
22. "John Cena Responds To CM Punk About 2011 Money In The Bank Match" — WrestleTalk. https://wrestletalk.com/news/john-cena-responds-to-cm-punk-about-2011-money-in-the-bank-match/
23. "Inside story of CM Punk's Pipe Bomb: WWE Greatest Moments" — YouTube (WWE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruWL_3C81YE
24. "FULL MATCH — CM Punk vs. John Cena – WWE Championship Match: WWE Money in the Bank 2011" — YouTube (WWE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZb3dfX3cQA
25. "Alberto Del Rio cashes in his Money in the Bank briefcase" (SummerSlam 2011) — YouTube (WWE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLBRGW2oETA
26. "Raw: June 27, 2011" (Raw Roulette results) — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2011-06-27
27. "WWE Raw 27th June 2011" (contemporaneous review, June 28, 2011) — What I Think About When I Think About Wrestling. https://ithinkaboutwrestling.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/wwe-raw-punk/

Further Listening

• WWE: CM Punk - Best in the World (2012 documentary) — Punk's own account of the expiring contract and the walkout plan
• What's Your Story? with Steph McMahon — Punk on the pipe bomb outline, Vince's reaction, and what imitators miss
• All The Smoke — Punk on the Chicago crowd and on John Cena handing him the spotlight
• Kliq This with Kevin Nash — Nash on the cancelled Night of Champions match and Triple H taking it himself
• SPORT1 Wrestling podcast — Punk on how little of the promo matched the outline he submitted