You know whose name we haven't heard a lot in the last seven or eight days?
Some fans will roll their eyes at my merely alluding to the man who held the WWE championship for 434 days in 2012 - 2013. Others may have clicked on this article just to see if there was a new rumor or sighting of The Best in the World.
But for the most part, the quantity and magnitude of news concerning WWE in the days since WrestleMania 30 on Sunday, April 6th has removed CM Punk from the pro wrestling conversation.
As many have pointed out, last week was bananas. We celebrated Daniel Bryan's achievements in the ring and in life. We were shocked, saddened and struggled with our feelings about a legend with Warrior's return to the spotlight and departure from the mortal coil.
Through all of that and more, one story has continued to pop up again and again since the inciting incident in New Orleans. And it has replaced a three month long dialogue that focused on why CM Punk left WWE, what it would take to bring him back and what would happen if he returned.
And the reason is because that Undertaker's historic loss to Brock Lesnar last Sunday scratches many of the same itches we have as fans in the new kayfabe, "Reality Era" of pro wrestling.
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The way that most internet fans consume pro wrestling product has its roots in the Montreal Screwjob. The impact of backstage dealings on the on-screen product spread throughout the scripted drama that played out in the ring and became a selling point for a greater number of fans.
In 1997, though, word spread slowly through print publications, message boards and fan-to-fan at live events. The release of Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows a year after Survivor Series in Quebec provided a central through line to the narrative, a place for all subsequent conversations to start.
Fast forward a decade or so, technology and fandom have advanced in tandem to where the debate about Vince McMahon, Shawn Michaels, Earl Hebner and Bret Hart that developed over years can all happen in a matter of days or even hours.
It was into that cauldron that Punk dropped his infamous pipe bomb in 2011. Now, we all had something that interestingly blurred the lines of work and shoot AND a forum in which to discuss it with thousands of others immediately.
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Part of the fascination with CM Punk's post-Royal Rumble exit is because it was the same man who so publicly aired his issues with his employer in June, 2011. We missed him because he was a great performer, but also because there was already so much fodder for debate.
Was he still upset for the same reasons? Had he been promised things that never materialized? Was he being unreasonable, then or now? If that was a storyline, is this one, too?
Likewise, the prestigiousness of The Streak and the long discussion among fans and industry insiders about how it should be handled as age and wear & tear caught up with The Dead Man had set the table for the speculation that has been so prevalent on this site and others like it in the last week.
If the '1' in '21 - 1' had happened after a critically-acclaimed program against a young star like Roman Reigns, or in a match where nearly every wrestling pundit hadn't mockingly picked Undertaker to win, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Not so much because the outcome wouldn't have been surprising, but because we would have answers to the questions that are now driving the conversation.
Why now? Why Lesnar? Who made the call? Who knew what, and when?
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Undertaker losing at The Showcase of the Immortals was going to dominate the pro wrestling news cycle no matter what. But the way in which it shocked the world and immediately spawned more questions about how and why it happened than that it happened make it a distinctly "Reality Era" event.
CM Punk's absence was always going to be less of a story as time went on, and we realized that he's not coming back, at least not in the short-term future.
But for any other similarities and differences they share as monuments on the pro wrestling landscape, one replaced the other in our conversation because they provide the same kind of mystery for us to try and piece together with a set of unsubstantiated clues.
They will both stay part of the legacy of he new kayfabe, at least until someone goes on the record with real answers.
As long as we don't know, we'll always want to know.