From The Nosebleeds: CM Punk Set For Castration Again

Every once in a great while, WWE manages to pull a completely nonsensical move. I know, that's shocking.

In all seriousness, there have been a lot of great moments in WWE's history. Randy Savage's reunion with Ms. Elizabeth and subsequent retirement at WrestleMania VII, Stone Cold v The Rock at WrestleMania XV, and as much as I hate to give either of them credit, John Cena's feud with Triple-H a few years back are just a sliver of WWE giving us top quality entertainment and storylines with appropriate character pushes.

However, for every one of those great moments and storylines, there are those that just make my blood boil. Andre the Giant essentially turning into a jobber for three years is practically unforgivable, Undertaker turning into the “American Badass” was inexcusable (totally awesome return aside), and as much as do profess to love all big men, Great Khali has no business being around a title push.

If the rumors are true, WWE is looking to add another notch to that latter category.

The widely reported story is that JBL will be feuding with CM Punk for the Intercontinental Title.

The first credible reports came out Saturday, the same day as I began to be subjected to torrential rainfall. I'll take that as proof that even Mother Nature is a wrestling fan—she too is weeping at the thought of this feud.

The entire justification for this seems to be that since CM Punk is in the MITB match, he should be title free. While that sounds all well and good at first, I can't help but raise some serious issues.

First, that would crush the value of the IC title. Fights for the IC title used to be major deal—often playing second fiddle only to the former WWF (now WWE) Championship. For further proof, let's look to WrestleMania III. The build up to the fight between Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat was incredible, with a culminating match to equal.

There was a legitimate story line behind that feud, and it wasn't about to be thrown together at the last second the way a Punk v JBL feud would. In fact, while Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat were considered to be two of the premier wrestlers in the promotion, CM Punk has never been given a legit push and JBL is considered to be washed up—push or no push.

If Punk retains the title (and subsequently loses the MITB match or wins but drops the major title shot), the IC Belt would look like it was for hasbeens and washups who just couldn't cut it at the top. If Punk drops the title, it'll still be devalued, by virtue of it being in JBL's hands.

Second, if we're going to treat one mid-level belt that way, we need to treat the other mid-level belt that way. Shelton Benjamin is in the MITB match too—complete with a United States Championship belt. If he doesn't lose that belt before WrestleMania and CM Punk does, you'll not only have devalued the IC belt by giving it to JBL (more on that later), but , as mentioned earlier, you'll have further devalued the U.S. Belt by allowing Benjamin to keep it.

The secondary problem with the U.S. Belt is that there are (or were) two really legitimate contenders for it. The first was MVP—the same MVP who happens to also be in the MITB match. By virtue of him being in that same match with Benjamin, a title change between those two would be a lateral move at best and not solve any of WWE's problems.

The other legitimate contender was Hurricane Helms. Helms returned to SmackDown in December to considerable fanfare and immediately began to dominate anybody in the United States Championship picture. However, he has been nonexistent since. He disappeared for a few weeks, then came back just in time to have Matt Hardy beat the crap out of him. At this point, putting the belt around Helms (however desirable that may sound) would seem nearly as convoluted as just throwing Big Show into the World Heavyweight Championship picture. Oops.

The third concern is what this would do to poor CM Punk. Should this feud take place, he's stuck in Wrestling Hell. If he holds off JBL's IC title grab, he'll be virtually guaranteed to not win the MITB match—and what then? He continues to feud with JBL?

If he loses the title and wins the MITB, he can't come out a winner either. Assume he loses the title, wins the MITB, and then drops his chance at a belt. (It's currently looking like that would be the WWE championship.)

Where would he be then? He'll have lost his shot at the big time, and returning to the IC title would not only make him look weak—it would mean feuding with JBL too.

If he were to cash in on a MITB victory, he'd still be screwed. Nobody would think of him as “CM Punk—WWE Champion.” We'd think of him as “CM Punk—that guy who dropped a title to JBL.”

That brings us to the fourth (and greatest) problem: He's set to feud with JBL. JBL has been trying to get something meaningful going for months, and the importance of what he's been trying to get going has been significantly decreasing.

First, he essentially bought the rights to use Shawn Michaels as a slave in an attempt to win the World Heavyweight Championship. That failed.

Then, he turned that failure into a fight with Shawn Michaels for who would get to face Undertaker at WrestleMania XXV. That failed too.

Now, word on the street is that he's going to go for CM Punk's belt. I say again, JBL couldn't beat Doink the Clown right now—if he feuds with CM Punk, nothing good would come of it.

Again, assume he beats CM Punk. The means Punk just dropped a title to somebody who has spent the past few months looking like a wannabe DiBiase Sr. If he doesn't take Punk's title, it means CM will more than likely lose the MITB match and (shudder) have to go back to possibly engage in an actual storyline with JBL.

So what is WWE to do? First, they should at least take Punk's title from him for the MITB match, if not the U.S. Title from Benjamin as well. The latter seems a bit trickier as for who it should go to. MVP would be the legit No. 1 contender, but as he's also in the MITB match, it would preferably go to Helms or R-Truth. However, with no back story, both of them would seem like forced champions.

As for the former, Raw actually has a few names that could have been thrown out. We could either see if Dolph Ziggler would be able to handle a real push, or finally give Kofi Kingston his due. I'm a bit more partial to the latter, but the former wouldn't upset me as we need to find out what Ziggler is made of.

Whether any of this is true or not will be made clear Monday night—if the rumors are true, JBL should be granted a non-title match against CM Punk. He'll win by disqualification, setting up a title match.

B/R's own Josh Swell reported that WWE has been leaking false rumors in order to stop storylines from getting out ahead of time. For the sake of CM Punk and the IC Title, let's hope that's the case here.

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