Survivor Series 2011: Why CM Punk Needs to Regain the WWE Championship

At WWE’s Survivor Series pay-per-view, controversial star CM Punk will take on current WWE Champion Alberto Del Rio in a bid to reclaim championship glory.

Punk’s match at the event came after the ‘Voice of the Voiceless’ rushed to the ring after Del Rio’s match with The Big Show and managed to torture an agreement out of the weakened champion with an Anaconda Vise.

While this is hardly virtuous babyface behaviour, it is worth noting Del Rio had earlier in this night cost Punk his No. 1 contenders match with Mark Henry, so he probably can’t complain too much about being forced into a match.

Who will walk out of Madison Square Garden the champion? Well, the result can probably go either way. Knowing the extremely fickle and erratic nature of WWE’s creative team, it is questionable whether even they know yet.

However, in this writer’s view, CM Punk absolutely needs to regain the WWE title at Survivor Series. Undoubtedly, Punk had a great summer: he famously tore the WWE house down with his edgy and shocking work/shoot promo on the June 26 Raw.

He also got one of the best crowd reactions in WWE history at Money in the Bank (which took place in his hometown of Chicago) and won a superb bout with John Cena at the event, before walking out of the company with the title belt still in his possession.

He was then brought back just a week later, a move which was widely criticised and has heavily speculated to the beginning of the end for the “Summer of Punk.”

Many critics felt that Punk should have stayed away longer to give his return more of an impact and accused WWE of hot-shotting one of their most promising angles in years.

He went one to defeat John Cena at Summerslam, before falling to Alberto Del Rio who cashed in his MITB title shot right after the bout (Punk had also been attacked by Kevin Nash, leaving him even more vulnerable).

Regrettably, Punk then found himself stuck in dull, interminable feuds with Kevin Nash and new COO Triple H over suspicious text messages. Working with the achingly boring Nash and the egotistical HHH, his once-fascinating character also lost a lot of its previous spark.

Punk also strayed from the core principals of his character over the autumn months. Indeed, as time went on, Punk seemed more concerned with bringing back WWE ice cream bars than actually changing the WWE power structure.

To make matters worse, the rebellious Punk character may have permanently damaged on the Oct. 10 Raw after the walk out when Punk sided with WWE management and Triple H against the rest of the roster.

Losing in the three pay-per-views in a row (Night of Champions, Hell in a Cell Vengeance) has not helped him, either.

After such shoddy on-screen treatment, Punk desperately needs to regain the WWE title. A win over Del Rio here would help restore faith in his fast-disappearing credibility as a main-event babyface.

Additionally, a fourth consecutive pinfall on pay-per-view would perhaps permanently damage his main-event stardom and should not be a logical option for the booking team either.

There’s also the fact that Del Rio is hardly setting the world on fire as champion and a change of champion might be just what the lukewarm Raw product needs. 

While Del Rio had been heavily pushed for well over a year before finally winning the title at Summerslam, he has failed to catch on as champion.

Many critics have blamed WWE for taking so long to put the strap on him and allowing his character to get stale.  They may have a point. No doubt losing the title to Cena at Night of Champions so soon after winning it couldn’t have helped, either.

But regardless of the reasons, Del Rio’s flaws as champion were made extremely clear during his long, boring match with The Big Show on Raw this week, which played out to utter silence from the crowd in attendance. 

It was almost frightening how little reaction the WWE Champion got. Certainly, a Punk victory here could aid the flagging product and give Del Rio time to regroup from his two botched title runs.