On CM Punk's Heel Turn

June 29, 11:51 AMNY Pro Wrestling ExaminerAaron Glazer

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With a CM Punk heel turn seemingly inevitable after his match with Jeff Hardy at The Bash,now is a good time to look at Punk’s first major heel turn, why it’s so good and still spoken of so reverently today.

If you frequent pretty much any wrestling message board, you’ve heard that Punk should go heel and use the “Straight Edge means I’m better than you” gimmick to get heat.  The concept behind this is that since CM Punk doesn’t do drugs or drink alcohol, he is better than and looks down on those who do, in this case Jeff Hardy who has numerous wellness policy violations.  The idea for this gimmick isn’t new and was pulled off to great success.

In early 2003, right after Ring of Honor’s first year, they began flying in a relatively unknown indy wrestler named CM Punk.  There were few heels in the company at the time since the entire promotion was based around competition.  This was, of course, made for the Straight Edge Punk, for whom you might have heard “competition is my only addiction.” Punk was in numerous good matches and began making a name for himself, rising up the card.  Around this time, as ROH started to grow, they began booking former ECW star Raven.

CM Punk immediately began attacking Raven brutally.  Match after match, Punk tormented the former star, ignoring honor, competition.  The feud became so personal that it began attracting indy wrestling fans attention to this fairly new company, Ring of Honor, but still, no one knew why Punk was taking this so personally.  After an event called Wrestlerave, Punk explained in one of my favorite promos ever:

And that was Punk’s first heel turn.  Where did he go from there?  Check back tomorrow for more on CM Punk.

For more info: Come back here tomorrow for more on this exact subject.  For a discussion of Punk's current heel turn check Pulse Wrestling for a column by me on that very subject.