#and obviously both wrestler's careers (especially punk's longer one) and time in AEW is much more than just this one specific feud but

[fallout-lou-begas]

okay so here's the thing for all of my non-wrestling followers.

if you want to understand why i've been posting so much about CM Punk and MJF and how it's over and we'll never get it again and i can still hear you saying you will never break the chain never break the chain, then. then. you have to understand. here's how to understand. here's the path i took to understanding it myself.

this. this is a very excellent forty-five minute documentary that covers the entirety of the feud between CM Punk and Maxwell Jacob Friedman. it is art. the feud itself is art. it's one of the best things ever done. it's about a very sick, sad, desperate, angry child who grew up to lash out against everything that's ever tried to love him before it could hurt him first, because his childhood hero was the one thing that he could count on but that hero walked out on him--and what happens when he meets that hero again. yes it's extraordinarily psychosexual and homoerotic. of course it is. it's wrestling.

but then. then you have to understand that some time after the events of the feud covered in that documentary, this happened

(MJF appeared to go completely off the rails during a live taping, insulting everything and everybody including his own boss while begging to be fired, before his microphone got cut off, and after this he basically wasn't seen again)

and then some time after that, this happened

(Punk defeated Jon Moxley to become the AEW world champion, only to be immediately confronted by a suddenly returning MJF, who had won the rights to a championship match with a masked identity earlier that night)

and then immediately after that, this happened

(CM Punk, while his tricep was torn from his match, shit-talked multiple people in the company while sitting directly next to his boss during the post-event media scrum, resulting in a legitimate backstage fight and several suspensions for all involved, and after that Punk was stripped of the championship and basically wasn't seen again, but it least it gave us the iconic line "i'm old, i'm hurt, and i'm tired, and i work with fucking children")

and then some time after that, this happened

(MJF became the new AEW world champion by also defeating Jon Moxley, who had become champion again after Punk's suspension and injury)

and then some time after that, this happened

(the premiere of a new weekly wrestling show on Saturdays, AEW Collision, which was created with CM Punk as a centerpiece and premiered with his 'second coming' and an angry, triumphant promo in which he claims he has something in a red bag that is rightfully his: it's not in the video, but as he leaves, he glares into the camera and asks: "what's in the bag, Max?")

and then some time after that, this happened

(Punk reveals that his red bag does indeed contain the "real" world championship, which he claims is his because no one has taken it from him by pinfall or submission)

and as that's all going on, this is happening

(MJF is becoming best friends with Adam Cole, another hero from his past, in a way that is playing out like the most wholesome alternative possible to the sick and twisted fixation he had on Punk, while (suspiciously?) not acknowledging Punk's return actions literally at all)

and so as you can see we were perfectly, and i do mean perfectly positioned, for a second CM Punk and MJF feud in which the roles are reversed, where Punk is the vengeful and obsessive one and MJF is the good guy on the upswing completely oblivious to the other guy's one-sided obsession, or something like that, or anything. and after Punk did two title defenses of his "real" world championship, we just may have been right about to see it. so you have to understand. and once you understand that, then you'll understand what it means to understand that we'll never get it now. that it's actually completely over. that he's gone again. and you will understand why this feels so bad.

fuck!