Triple H and CM Punk (But Mostly Triple H) Bury a Good Match

There's nothing Triple H won't ruin for his own ego.

WWE

This starts off really well.

Let’s set aside for a moment that the build to this match is so convoluted that even the often efficient and hard working WWE hype video that precedes can’t make heads or tails of it. Put aside for just a moment as well the fact that Kevin Nash has gone on record to say that Triple H felt such real, personal spite for CM Punk that he went out of his way to put a stop to a Nash/Punk match and to slot himself into this position instead. Let’s just forget all that for a moment, we have time to come back to it later.

When the bell rings, this gets off to a really great start. That shouldn’t be too surprising really, both these guys are historically well suited to gimmick matches. Triple H especially has always done his very best work in matches that allow him all the smoke and mirrors he needs to compensate for other deficiencies. One need only look at his best matches from his much lauded 2000 run against Cactus Jack or even Chris Jericho. Punk himself probably gets closer associated with a more traditionally-minded style, but his time on the indies is spattered with red too in the feuds with Raven and Jimmy Rave.

And both men put that experience to good use here. Unlike the strangely methodical Hell in a Cell match with Shawn, there’s an actual sense of urgency here created by Punk attacking Hunter before the bell. They’re able to maintain that energy too, brawling in and around the ring in a way that feels appropriately heated given the circumstances. They’re both moving with energy and purpose, none of the gimmickry feels convoluted, and there’s even a brutal looking introduction of limbwork here when Hunter rams Punk’s knee into the ringpost.

WWE

As we’ve seen in the last two matches covered here though, Hunter’s matches have a way of making their worse qualities known. In this match against Punk, we get perhaps the most blatant intrusion of bad intentions yet. Just as Punk rallies back with a big elbow drop on to Hunter through the announce desk, The Miz and R-Truth come down to the ring and attack both men for reasons that both I and history have refused to recall. Pretty much all semblance of the match’s narrative from the heated first half evaporates here as this becomes more of a cavalcade of interferences and near falls from that point.

And that’s where the real juicy bits come.

In the midst of all that chaos comes Triple H’s real political machinations in this regard. I have no clue what the backstage situation was that led to the booking of this match but the interferences do read as a kind of compensation for Punk’s eventual loss that there might be some doubt over who would actually take a clean win in this scneario. If that’s not the case, then it almost feels like additional narrative reasons to somehow re-center Triple H as the main character of the story.

This was 2011 after all, CM Punk’s still the hottest professional wrestler in the world off of the June pipebomb and the historic Money in the Bank title match. He’s ruffled a lot of feathers backstage between his brazen attitude towards the company as well as his meteoric rise disrupting what had otherwise been a rather stale and stagnant main event scene. There were many people backstage who did not enjoy seeing Punk succeeed, and Triple H was the foremost of them.

Triple H works hard to undo so much of the good will Punk' has, or at the very least siphon it off for himself here.

When Miz and R-Truth attack, it’s when Hunter’s down and losing the match. Triple H himself even eats a Skull Crushing Finale from The Miz before R-Truth drapes Punk’s unconscious body over the COO. Triple H kicks out. That valiant, heroic COO of a multimillion dollar corporation overcomes the odds of a hateful outside attack to stay in the match.

After both Hunter and Punk fight off Awesome Truth, Triple H nails the Pedigree on Punk and gets an obscenely long visual pin on him. In fact, it’s only because of John Laurinitis stopping a second referee from counting the fall that Triple H doesn’t handily win this match. Punk does get a nearfall on Hunter with a post-GTS pin getting broken up by R-Truth, and he’s even gifted a kick out when Triple H catches him coming off the ropes with a Pedigree.

But the masterstroke is bringing out Big Sexy.

When Kevin Nash appears, again to attack both men, it’s Hunter that fights him off with a sledgehammer. Again, he re-centers himself as the active player in this story, the hero who has to protect his precious company against all odds. Even worse, is that it’s somehow effective! Goddamn “Triple H!” chants start up as Hunter crawls his way into the ring to get a pinfall over CM Punk that he would never return.

What a miserable match. So actively hateful, so indicative of the kind of heat vampirism that’s characterized Hunter’s career for decades. We’ve not gotten into all his earlier offenses in this regard, but this just might just be the most spiteful one in the bunch. If Kevin Nash is to be believed, this was all a product of real hate—Hunter wanted to embarass CM Punk with this victory. You can see it in how smug he is after the bell, throwing a crotch chop at the downed Punk. Hunter could maybe stomach other people standing in the limelight, but he sure could not stomach that person being in CM Punk in 2011.

It’s such an upsetting match, one that demonstrates how self-sabotaging the machine can be. At his hottest period, the peak of his popularity, CM Punk gets relegated to being a bit player in Hunter Hearst-Helmsley’s Kliq drama just so that the latter can feel good and big about himself.

This may have the best action of the matches we’ve covered so far, but it also has the ugliest intentions yet.

Rating: *1/2