Reported by Marcus Cygy of WrestleView.com
On Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 4:44 PM EST

CYGY’S VIEW: LOOKING AT CM PUNK’S TIME IN ECW
By Marcus Cygy – October 11, 2007

First and foremost I would like to give a shout out to all my fellow Canadians. Hopefully you all had a great Thanksgiving this past weekend. It’s always nice when you get a chance to have some turkey dinner! It’s also a time though to be really thankful for what we have here in North America. When you leave Canada or the United States to another country overseas, it just isn’t the same. Often we take things for granted over here and never go into deep thought with just how lucky we are to have some of the things we have dealing with health care, technology, shelter, you name it. We have the best of the best here and we should be thankful instead of being greed hungry like some are. Onto the main focus of this column though – CM Punk!

The current ECW World Heavyweight Champion is CM Punk. He finally defeated the former champion, John Morrison on September 1, 2007 during an edition of ECW on Sci Fi. However, this decision to make the title change didn’t come from the ECW booking team; in fact the title change occurred for the wrong reasons. John Morrison was involved with a drug scandal released by ESPN relating to steroids and pain killers, and since the Benoit tragedy last June the WWE has been hampered tremendously by various media outlets therefore they had no other choice but to send Morrison packing on a 30-day suspension.

It was a dream come true apparently for CM Punk. He is now the World Heavyweight Champion of a major organization, and while yes he now is a champion and nobody can take that away from him, but I just gather that World Wrestling Entertainment had ample opportunity before hand to make a more meaningful title switch.

Since being the ECW Champion, the ratings for that program have gone down the toilet. I wouldn’t say CM Punk is to blame though. I think the fans, like me, have grown very tired and bored of giving the ECW brand a chance. I’ll admit it, I haven’t watched the show since the beginning of September because honestly I’m not really into seeing The Miz in the main event, and I definitely don’t want to see The Boogeyman or Big Daddy V no less.

CM Punk vs. Tommy Dreamer is an intriguing bout. CM Punk vs. Rob Van Dam I would have loved to see. How about CM Punk vs. Sabu? We could have seen that too. Even CM Punk vs. Bobby Lashley would have been good. Where was CM Punk during those days of the ECW brand though? He was stuck in the mid-card while he was easily the most over commodity with the fans in attendance.

I know this is far back, but going back to November 2006 at WWE Survivor Series I think it was a telling story when CM Punk got a much louder reception than D-Generation X’s Triple H and Shawn Michaels – the kingpins of RAW. Right then and there, I knew that CM Punk had to be new ECW World Heavyweight Champion within a matter of weeks and I figured it would finally come to fruition at ECW December To Dismember as part of the Extreme Elimination Chamber Match.

That night of the ECW Pay-Per-View though, Paul Heyman was released of his booking duties and from being an on air personality all together. Apparently he was the brains behind pushing CM Punk straight to the top and beyond and it was going to start that night by crowning Punk the new champion. WWE head ups saw differently though when they changed the result to Bobby Lashley becoming the champion.

Thus we saw CM Punk scratching the surface for the next few months as best as he could. We didn’t see any ROH classics that he had with Samoa Joe, Austin Aries, or Raven for that matter. We saw squash matches for the most part.

Everyone was waiting anxiously for the defining moment where CM Punk was going to win the crown jewel in ECW, but it never would happen with any hype, instead it would happen during a quick desperate switch to protect the company’s assets.

Now with John Morrison back from his suspension I do see them rekindling that feud which is fine for now I guess. Those two can produce some great matches together; however, I think the candle for CM Punk in ECW is almost finished burning. There’s no way they can really save him on that brand because a lot of fans have already tuned that program out and forgot about it. I think they only way they could lift ECW out of the hole, it would be by bringing in a big star from either RAW or SmackDown! and they did that this past June in the case of Chris Benoit. It also appeared that they were going to start a feud between CM Punk and Benoit where Benoit was set to win the ECW World Heavyweight Title at WWE Vengeance and then have CM Punk chase him for the title. Well you know the story; John Morrison took Benoit’s place for tragic reasons. So instead it was CM Punk chasing Morrison.

By the time the next draft lottery comes around though, I would be really intrigued into seeing CM Punk moved to either SmackDown! or RAW.

Before I would have said the SmackDown! brand but now I see great potential on both brands for CM Punk. On RAW you have Randy Orton, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy, Umaga – all of whom I think could have excellent matches with CM Punk. And who knows, maybe Chris Jericho vs. CM Punk too?

On SmackDown! I can see a few good encounters for CM Punk as well. They have Rey Mysterio, Finlay, Matt Hardy, Montel Vontavious Porter, The Undertaker, and the returning Edge this November. I do find though that The Undertaker vs. CM Punk would be one of the more intriguing matches to point out. I’ve always found that The Undertaker has had tremendous chemistry with the smaller wrestlers, and a guy like CM Punk could certainly adapt into that chemistry in my mind.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone for their emails. Through the last couple of columns I’ve been writing I have been getting a lot of great responses and interesting ideas. I am already planning to answer a lot of your emails through my next column here at WrestleView.com, so if you have a question that you would like answered here on the site, just give me a quick email at marcuscygy@hotmail.com with your name, and where you live if you would like, and maybe it’ll make it in my next column!

For WrestleView.com, I’m Marcus Cygy.

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Marcus Cygy is a former employee of Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions then you are encouraged to email marcuscygy@hotmail.com to get the “View" straight from Marcus Cygy and it may just make it on the next Cygy’s View! Regardless of the outcome, your emails will be responded to personally but in due time because of the heavy volume of emails, thank you! To read past articles written by Marcus Cygy, visit the archive at MarcusCygy.com!