Fan Report Of CM Punk’s Weekend Injury Scare

Credit: John M. & PW Torch

My friends and I were on the front row of the house show where C.M. Punk was shaken up when The Miz dropped him on his head executing a suplex. I won’t rehash what has been reported, but will add that Miz had trouble getting Punk up for the suplex from the get-go, at one point yelling in Punk’s ear to “straighten your legs, straighten your legs.” I’m assuming this was a spot designed for John Cena when he was working the same tag match on previous house shows and was probably Miz’s first attempt to pull it off.

I also wanted to report on Miz’s audience interaction, which I thought said a lot about why he is struggling to win fans over as a face. At one point Miz was lying outside the ring selling an injury just across the rail from my group of friends. We took the opportunity to give him grief by telling him he should work on his Figure-Four and work on his vertical suplex so he doesn’t almost kill someone again. After Miz’s team won the match, Miz came to our side of the ring as if he were playing heel and started taunting our group by bragging that he “won the match anyway” and asking “what do you think of me now?”

Then, when he came around the ring for the house show slapping of hands, he took his hand down as he got to one particular member of our group and instead stared him down briefly. He proceeded to slap a few more hands until he attempted to slap the hand of another member our group and my friend silently chose not to slap back. Rather than just walking by, Miz stopped and angrily ranted at my friend’s choice not to slap his hand by sarcastically saying, “Oh, you don’t even want to touch me, Punk all the way, huh?” while rolling his eyes and making various contorted faces.

In stark contrast, earlier in the night, Billy Gunn did a bit where he said he had forgotten his part of the New Age Outlaws spiel. Someone yelled to him that he always sucked at it anyway. Gunn shrugged it off and, after the match, he smilingly gave that same fan a thumbs up and the fan ended up standing and applauding him. That’s how I would expect a face wrestler to interact, and in the many shows I’ve seen that is almost always how they do interact. I had never seen a WWE performer so rattled by such little audience heckling as Miz. Even in-character heels are typically able to keep their fan interactions light and fun loving.

Other than the Punk scare and Miz’s lack of professionalism, the show was a lot of fun. Ryback was extremely over. New Age Outlaws vs. Rhodes Scholars and Jericho vs. Ziggler were both especially good house show matches. Corey Graves showed some promise. And, I have to give Tensai and A-Ri props for their ability to seamlessly pull off an in-ring double turn in a matter of minutes. Overall, a good night of WWE style entertainment.

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