Ask 411 Wrestling: Who Approved CM Punk’s ‘Pipe Bomb’ Promo?

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We’re here this week to talk about Sid, WWE roster cuts, and weird Wrestlemania matches. If you’ve got questions about those or any other wrestling-related topics, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected], or, if you’d prefer, use the comment section below.

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Nate is getting punked:

I’m watching the CM Punk Pipebomb, and I’m wondering if you know how it came about? Is there any information on who thought of it (or allowed it, perhaps), or why it was concocted, or even the motivation behind it (other than CM Punk being disenfranchised with WWE)? How was Vince ok with the whole thing?

Looking back at all of the usual sources, there was really no reporting on this at the time, which leads me to believe that there wasn’t much to the story of how this promo was proposed or how it got on the air. It went through the normal processes. Some combination of CM Punk and the creative team proposed it, ran it up the flagpole, and got it approved by the powers that be.

Some fans think that scenario is unlikely and refuse to accept it. They think that Vince McMahon won’t run with anything that isn’t his idea or that he’s too thin-skinned to allow anything on his television that will be critical of him. However, that’s really not the case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR0ycL1UU2I

Yes, Vinnie Mac does keep his character pretty strong and he wins more often than he loses. If you look at everything he’s done since he became a heel authority figure over twenty years ago, you’ll see that he’s more than willing to have his own shortcomings pointed out or to look the fool when he believes it’s what’s best for business. How many times was he humiliated by Steve Austin in the 90s? By D-Generation X in the 2000s? Hell, even when he was just a lowly announcer he encouraged heel color commentators to make fun of his “toupee” (which was actually his real hair).

Plus, thanks to every wrestler and their dog having a podcast in 2018, we know more about how Vince McMahon’s brain works than we ever have before. If you’ve listed to Chris Jericho and Steve Austin’s stories about pitching ideas to the boss, you’ll hear that McMahon actually WANTS people to think outside of the box and present their own ideas to him. Granted, both guys have also said that the majority of the current roster is terrified to do that, but Vince is apparently willing to listen to it all.

Put all of those factors together, and this is a scenario in which the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. CM Punk had the idea for the pipe bomb promo, he pitched it to Vince McMahon, the idea was accepted, and from there Punk worked the particulars out with whoever was on the creative team at the time.

Aedonix is getting ready to turn this column into my own personal gave of Total Extreme Warfare.

I know you get a lot of fantasy booking questions, so I’m not going to ask that. My question is: If WWE were to hand talent relations to you and you got to release 5 males and 5 females from the roster (dead weight, not connecting, they just smell funny . . . WHATEVER reason) and you were allowed to hire 3 replacements for each division, plus one male celebrity and one female to become a full-time performer, who would you pick?

I did a column a few weeks ago in which I was asked to run down my thoughts on every member of the WWE roster, so hopefully this doesn’t get too redundant.

Let’s start with some good, old fashioned cleaning of the house.

MEN’S CUTS

1. Dolph Ziggler: As I’ve mentioned in this column before, Ziggler got to the point the point of boring me a long, long time ago. He’s still a perfectly acceptable performer in the ring (if not overrated by WWE loyalists), but as a character he’s done nothing new or different for over a decade. It would be nice to see if he could be reinvigorated by a run outside of WWE.

2. Erick Rowan: If Erick Rowan were pushed as a main event level performer, we’d all be complaining about how he’s one of the worst wrestlers in the world, but in the mid-to-low card and/or in a tag team, he’s pretty innocuous. The main reason that I would cut him if I had to cut somebody is that I’ve long wanted to see Luke Harper getting a singles push, and Harper keeps getting saddled with Rowan every time they’re going to let him break out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOi89LKN65A

3. Jinder Mahal: He has a lot of contrarian defenders out there, but Jinder Mahal is the single worst in-ring performer on the WWE roster who is pushed at the level he’s pushed at. Well, possibly the second worst. We’ll get to the other contender right now.

4. Baron Corbin: I can’t decide whether Corbin is better or worse in the ring in Mahal, but neither one of them is particularly great and both are below the standard of what I expect a WWE main roster competitor to be. Mahal has a bit of a saving grace because he’s become halfway decent at playing an old school foreign heel character, but Corbin doesn’t even seem to have a character outside of, “tough, mean guy” a.k.a. generic wrestling heel #247.

5. Bray Wyatt: I was a big supporter of the Wyatt Family when they first made their main roster debut. They had a cool entrance and music, a unique look, and great delivery on promos. However, as time went on, it became obvious that Bray was mostly sizzle and very little steak. He’s never had a particularly good match or feud, and, though he has a distinctive manner of delivery, his promos typically lack substance. Oh, also thanks to last year’s mumps outbreak, we also know he’s an anti-vaxxer.

WOMEN’S CUTS

1. Alicia Fox: It sort of boggles my mind that Foxy has kept a roster spot for as long as she has. She’s one of the last of the generation of women who was allowed into the ring with frighteningly little experience and as a result never developed great fundamentals, to the point that she recently fractured her tailbone taking what should have been a basic back bump. Plus, having been in the company for over a decade, it’s probably time for her to move on to other things anyway.

2. Dana Brooke: Brooke is obviously athletic and has a good look but was put on NXT television and called up to the main roster far too soon for her own good. I don’t know that I would outright cut her from the company, but a return to the developmental system would not be the worst thing for her right now. Or, if she’s going to remain on the main roster, it should be as a manager/valet/statistician and not a wrestler.

3. Naomi: Much like Alicia Fox, Naomi is one of the last holdouts from the days of the WWE “divas” division, though she has taken to wrestling much better than Fox has and has more capacity to be carried to a good match. However, if you’re trying to reshape the company’s women’s division so that it consists entirely of post-Revolution competitors, the former Funkadactyl is somebody who will have to go.

4. Carmella: In some ways, keeping Carmella on the roster makes sense, because if you have one woman who’s not a particularly good wrestler amid a division of mostly good to great wrestlers, she can draw some legitimate heel heat because the fans will never want to cheer her performance. However, I’d much rather have a roster in which everybody gets over based on their talent and not their lack of it, soooo . . .

5. Tamina Snuka: I don’t take much issue with Tamina, but it seems like she’s been shoved into the background ever since Nia Jax showed up, probably due to the similar nature of their gimmicks. If she’s not going to be utilized effectively, I would prefer to see her spot handed over to somebody else.

MEN’S REPLACEMENTS

1. Daisuke Sekimoto: At 5’9″ and 265 pounds, Daisuke Sekimoto is a powerhouse of a wrestler who is built like a fireplug. He’s got some impressive high-impact offense and has gone toe-to-toe with some of the biggest stars on the modern independent scene. Combine that with some top-notch facial expressions and a charisma that isn’t reliant on promos, and you’ve got a unique package just waiting to be seen on a higher level. Sekimoto would make a great enforcer for a heel Shinsuke Nakamura.

2. Pierre Carl Ouellet: In 2008, Fit Finlay was a 50 year old professional wrestler regularly having great matches on WWE television with men who were literally twenty years his junior. He was having a career renaissance after many years of relative obscurity. Ten years later, another 50 year old wrestler is having a career renaissance on the independent scene, and his name is Pierre Carl Ouellet. The former Quebecer has become a hot commodity, working surprisingly good matches in AIW and at Joey Janela’s Spring Break, and now he’s getting ready for PWG’s Battle of Los Angeles. I’d be thrilled to see what he could do back on wrestling’s main stage.

3. Pentagon Jr.: WWE has long been on the lookout for a Latino star who could fill the void left by Rey Misterio Jr., but, whether it’s been Sin Cara, Kalisto, or Alberto Del Rio, nobody’s quite been up to the task. If pushed properly, I think that Pentagon Jr. could be that guy, because, instead of being an attempt to clone Misterio, he combines some of the traditional elements of lucha libre with a more grounded, modern style. He’s more high impact than high flying, and he makes you believe that he’s a legitimate badass, despite not being the biggest guy and not having the best physique.

WOMEN’S REPLACEMENTS

1. Faby Apache: At 37 years old, Faby Apache is a twenty-plus year veteran of the professional wrestling scene and perhaps the most talented female competitor in Mexico. Though WWE has recently shown respect for the Japanese side of women’s wrestling with their signings of Asuka, Karai Sane, and most recently Io Shirai, they have yet to do much with incorporating lucha libre into their new, more serious women’s division, and Faby would make for an excellent first step.

2. “Session Moth” Martina: Some of you are likely asking yourselves right now, “What in the world is a ‘session moth?'” To put it mildly, it’s Irish slang for a lady party animal . . . think about the Dublin equivalent of one of the female cast members of Jersey Shore. A young competitor named Martina has adopted that persona on the Irish/U.K. independent scene, and she’s done an awesome job with it. She’s probably more gimmick than straight wrestler at this point (though she’s not too shabby in the ring), but one of the things that the WWE women’s division lacks right now is somebody with a fun, over-the-top character to contrast with the more serious wrestlers. That’s why WWE needs Martina.

3. Riho: I have been watching and writing about at Riho’s pro wrestling career for almost twelve years. She’s twenty-one years old. I’ll let you do the math on that. In addition to having the level of skill that doing something since your elementary school days affords you, Riho would bring something different to the WWE women’s division. Though the company now has three Japanese women under contract, Riho’s style is quite a bit different than any of them, as she is excellent at hard bumping and playing the underdog. She would make a great contrast to Asuka in that manner, being the plucky, never say die competitor who fights from underneath as opposed to the unstoppable buzzsaw who plows through opponents.

CELEBRITIES

1. John de Lancie: No, I don’t want to train the 70 year old John de Lancie to be a professional wrestler, but can you imagine him as a pro wrestling general manager or other authority figure? I can, and it’s glorious.

2. Cris Cyborg: This is the single biggest professional wrestling match that you could put Ronda Rousey in. Book it, Gabe.

Matt B. wants to generalize about Sid:

It was widely reported in Aus that when Sid Eudy signed with the WWF in 1991 he insisted that his contract included a clause that he was to wrestle Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania. Is there any truth to this?

Kinda.

In the April 22, 1991 edition of the Wrestling Observer, Sid’s pending departure from WCW for the WWF was a hot topic of discussion, and it was mentioned in an almost throwaway line that “WCW officials believe” that the Wrestlemania event was promised to Sid in order to get him to jump ship. However, in subsequent weeks, the publication didn’t have much if anything to say about Hogan vs. Sid being preordained.

Interestingly, the Observer revisited the topic in its April 7, 2014 edition in response to an article published on WWE.com about Wrestlemania matches that almost happened. In that issue, Dave Meltzer reported that WCW’s head honcho at the time of Sid’s departure, Jim Herd, directly told him that Sid was leaving due to the promise of a Wrestlemania main event.

So, there is no confirmation that an express, written clause in Vicious’s contract stated he would be wrestling Hogan at Mania VIII. However, it seems pretty clear that there was at least some promise made to the Sidster that he would be working with the Hulkster.

Of course, several similar promises have been made to other wrestlers over the years and were not honored, so who knows what made Sid a special case.

Connor has something against Head Cheese for reasons I cannot determine:

Wrestlemania 16 was such a strange card, Al Snow and Steve Blackman vs T & A and Boss Man and Bull Buchanan vs. D-Lo Brown and Godfather would barely qualify as passable Raw matches so why put them on the grandest stage of them all?

Why did Wrestlemania I include Tito Santana vs. The Executioner? Why did Jake Roberts pin George Wells on Wrestlemania II? What was up with Butch Reed vs. Koko B. Ware on Wrestlemania III? Is there a reason that Mr. Perfect squashed the Blue Blazer on Wrestlemania V? Who thought it was a good idea to do a Barbarian/Tito Santana match on Wrestlemania VI? Did Wrestlemania VII need Earthquake sitting on Greg Valentine? Was the one minute and eleven second bout between Owen Hart and Skinner necessary for Wrestlemania VIII’s success? Who the hell let Bob Backlund face Razor Ramon on Wrestlemania IX? Oh, and while we’re at it, who cares about the Blu Twins versus the Allied Powers on Wrestlemania XI?

I think that you see where I’m going with this by now. There have always been pretty useless midcard and undercard matches on Wrestlemania, going back to the very beginning. Heck, the trend continues to this very day now that Mania battles royale have been reinstituted after several years off the card. If you look up the results for virtually every Mania show, you’re bound to find something that sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of importance.

What a Maneuver is the computerized man of the 1990s:

Why did WCW have the York Foundation in the early 90s? Was it to add more spice into the mix of the hotly contested divisions of the TV, United States Tag Team, and Six-Man Tag?

I don’t believe that there was any special reason for it. They were just an undercard heel stable that helped fill out the bottoms of the promotion’s cards – though they did come with the added bonus of being the first on-camera experience for Terri “Marlena” Runnels, who had previously been working backstage as a Turner makeup artist.

And, on that note, we’ll wrap it up for another week. If you’ve got a question for Ask 411, don’t forget to send it along to [email protected]