When Wrestling Was PUNK!

By EricR

I recently had the privilege of attending WWE's The BASH live in Sacramento for zero dollars (Vince is a big fan of the IWRG reports so we here at SC have a hook-up), and it was a blast. The show was real fun, and as always, the crowd had some real cut-ups. Sure, there were your standard replica belt champions (the more belts on the shoulder the lower the self-esteem), and even a guy who looked like a redneck Paul Jr. from Orange County Choppers, complete with underbrush camouflage Carharrt hat.....but ALSO wearing Jeff Hardy torn armbands!! YES!

But my FAVORITE wrestling fan of all happened to be seated right behind me. Thee Know-It-All-Who-Happens-To-Know-Little-But-Is-Desperate-To-Keep-Talking-For-Fear-of-Losing-His-Listening-Audience. I LOVE this guy! I just can't stop listening to him, as I know there will be minimum 6 verbal gems by the time the show is through. And he did not disappoint.

Oh, sure, he had his opinions on the first half of the show, but it wasn't until C.M Punk came out that things got REAL heated.

"This guy isn't fucking PUNK. I hate this fake punk shit. Man, back in the day, Johnny Only - the lead singer of the Misfits - he had the WWF title man, and it was just fucking wild. THAT guy was punk. But what the fuck does C.M. even stand for?"

Yes. YES. Yes. This guy is right. I mean, never mind that the dude's name is Jerry Only and he mainly played bass and wasn't really the singer for the first 20+ years of the band (and when he did sing, he kinda sounded like Brad Garrett), or that he had never actually spoken to anybody in WWE, or that the last good Misfits album came out over 25 years ago...those are just DETAILS. Details that only a NERD would know, and book learnin' AIN'T PUNK. Punk is all about Devilocks past the age of 40 and just running rampant in the WWE holding the title and just PUNKing it the fuck up.

Is C.M Punk punk? I don't know. Maybe if the C.M. stood for Christ Mangler or Cunt Monster or Comic Manga or Cock Master or something. Maybe THAT would be punk. But that's neither here nor there, because this isn't 1999, when REAL PUNK was running wild on the pro graps.

Who doesn't want to wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of 1999 wrestling? The true glory days of punk rock just giving wrestling the middle finger and just having butt sex with it and stuff. Just getting all rebellious with Manic Panic hair dye and leather jackets and a devil-may-care attitude.

But WAS that the glory days of punk and wrestling? Sadly, it was mostly the end of punk and wrestling. So many PUNK memories...but while you can't put your arms around a memory, you can always relive the good times.

I remember when Johnny Thunders came in to Southern States Wrestling, managed by Robert Quine. He was blasted out of his fucking mind on horse, just making crazy grandstand challenges and nodding off during promos while Quine was wearing these bad-ass cop shades. THAT was punk.

Or back in '96 when Ian MacKaye was scheduled to work a death match tourney, but it was held in a bar, and then some 13 yr. olds tried to get in and they couldn't, and Ian threw a FIT and was like "I remember how much it sucked when I wanted to see a show and there was nothing anybody could do about it because it wasn't all-ages" and he just walked right out of the tournament! Never wrestled again.

I saw D. Boon work as Man Mountain Boon down south, and he had to be the most uncoordinated big man around! He only got like 4" of air on his big splash!

I remember getting excited when I heard Bruce Gilbert from Wire was getting into wrestling, but then remember being disappointed when all of his matches were like 90 seconds long with abrupt endings.

On the other end of the spectrum, Tom Verlaine used to just go broadway out there! His matches would just never end, and they always started and ended great, but the middle was filled with all sorts of stalling and general dicking around.

All that shit was soooo PUNK! But those days are gone.

Will we ever see another punk-wrestling revolution? We may, but as long as WWE keeps hiring these FAKE ASS PUNKS and passing them off as the real thing, we'll just have to rely on these tales and more, passed on by fat assholes sitting behind us at wrestling shows.