WWE SummerSlam 2011: Why CM Punk Will Shock the World and Jolt John Cena

To be honest, the title of this piece is a bit of a misnomer. Punk won't shock the world, exactly; he'll just continue to shock the world as he has been doing to such incredible effect for the past six weeks.

That is, if anything Punk does now can constitute a "shock." When you're expecting the unexpected, and the man has that "pipe bomb" in his hand, are you going to be shocked by anything?

Linguistic knots aside, he's going to unify the titles at SummerSlam.

For starters, he's the rightful title holder. I don't care how much they try to make me think that John Cena's quasi-championship is legitimate, I'm not having any of it. Punk is the WWE champion. Cena's ridiculous "but he only beat me once!" argument, as wheeled out on Monday Night Raw, needs to be shoved down his throat.

Triple H may not like CM Punk, but head of talent relations John Laurinaitis dislikes John Cena even more. Laurinaitis's recurring presence over the past few weeks makes me think there's a storyline developing whereby Cena's sense of entitlement gets smacked out of him.

Punk's so over with the crowd at the moment he's in an odd hybrid place, where he's not a heel exactly but is certainly not a face. It helps that he's feuding with the ever-polarising Cena, of course, but Punk is carving out his own niche.

And having the title is a vital part of doing that. Punk without the belt loses his power and raison d'etre, and is shunted back down into the ranks of the also-rans (it also sullies the magnificence of Money in the Bank's epic drama—not even WWE would sell themselves out like that).

Thus, Punk keeps the belt (the real belt, but also gets the made-up one as well). Cena begins to feud with authority, and develops a new slant to his character. Those indie wrestlers Punk keeps mentioning? They'll be heading in soon, as Punk's troops now that the new Nexus is well and truly over.

We may well be in a new era of wrestling under Triple H, but the man who's triggered this revolution and will continue to lead it is CM Punk.