WWE: Kane/Punk/Bryan and the Direction of the WWE Title

At the upcoming No Way Out pay-per-view, CM Punk will be defending his title against Kane and Daniel Bryan in a triple threat match.

Logic would have it that CM Punk—being the awesome character that he is—is going to retain the title, but logic often has no real place in WWE’s booking. In addition, given rumors and the current state of certain characters in WWE, taking the title off of Punk might make sense in the longer term.

It has been posted on numerous sites online (such as this article by B/R's own Mazusa) that Paul Heyman is promising that this is going to be “one wild F’n year,” that CM Punk agrees with him and that WWE is working on major a “knock your socks off” storyline for this summer to try and match CM Punk’s breakout last June.

Mazusa postulates that Punk might join Heyman and—very likely—Brock Lesnar in a coup d’état of WWE in a possible storyline. This storyline would likely start with Punk being somehow screwed out of the WWE Title by John Laurinaitis or some others, leading to Punk becoming an Austin-esque thorn in the side of management with Heyman (and Lesnar) at his side.

This would be an awesome feud, which would combine two outstanding talkers (Punk and Heyman) with two awesome in-ring guys (Punk and Lesnar).

The main issue I have with this storyline is the alignment issue. Lesnar and Heyman are currently heels, and to do this feud, they would need to turn face. Lesnar has shown in the past that he can be an excellent face when needed, but both he and Heyman (who, to my knowledge, has never been a face outside of ECW One Night Stand) are far better as terrorizing heels.

Also, Lesnar is currently in a feud with babyface Triple H—while Trips could turn heel and become a corporate suit character (we know it’s in his wheelhouse), I can’t see him going that route at this point in time.

The other option would be to turn CM Punk heel again, but putting him in a feud with management would make him a super-antihero-babyface (like he was initially last summer), and he is currently WWE’s top drawing good guy, so turning him heel would be bad for business (kind of like why Cena will never turn heel).

So, with the CM Punk portion of the storyline, we’re looking at one of two options. First, Punk turns heel and joins Heyman and Lesnar (likely against Triple H instead of Laurinaitis). Second, Heyman and Lesnar turn face and take on Big Johnny and a heel Triple H. Both would work, but it remains to be seen which one WWE would go with, if this were the direction they planned to take.

Now, back to the WWE Championship piece of the puzzle. If Punk is dropping the strap at No Way Out, recent booking would have us believe that Bryan takes the belt. However, given the way each character has been developing, I almost think that putting the belt on Kane makes more sense.

Bryan, since the advent of the “Yes!” chants and his surging popularity, has become more of a tweener character, and I wonder if WWE isn’t planning on capitalizing on this popularity by doing a double-turn with both Bryan and AJ.

Bryan—providing they keep his “Yes!” chants and edginess—is in line for a big face turn when facing Kane, and they could have AJ go full-on crazy heel and aid Kane in winning the title (which gives WWE their beloved monster heel champ and a great mouthpiece for him, though Kane is perfectly capable of cutting good promos).

In this scenario, Kane gets one last big run at the top, the IWC gets Bryan as a babyface that can feud with AJ and Kane (though Creative would have to somehow fix the fact that AJ started going crazy because Bryan was a pig to her,) and Punk gets to return to his anti-authority character (which is what got him so over in the first place). The storylines reset for the summer and beyond, with Kane/AJ feuding with Bryan and perhaps someone else (Ziggler? Ryder?) and Punk being a thorn in the side of “the man.”

Naturally, this means that the match at No Way Out is going to be a hot mess: we’d have to see a run-in from Laurinaitis to screw Punk (or, on the heel track, Punk loses and Triple H doesn’t grant him a rematch) and a run-in from AJ to give Kane the victory over Bryan. However, if done right (and if anyone can do it right, it’s these three,) then we could see some awesome storylines moving forward.

All I can say is: “Yes!”