Raw 21/04/08 CM Punk vs William Regal
Uploaded by Theragman72. – More professional, college and classic sports videos.Conceptually speaking, WWE’s formerly annual King of the Ring tournament is a great idea. If used correctly, it can be the launch pad for a wrestler’s rise to the main event. Before King of the Ring, Steve Austin didn’t have Austin 3:16 and was the stale, boring Ringmaster. Before King of the Ring, Kurt Angle was a goofy heel, Edge was a tag team specialist, and Billy Gunn hadn’t squandered his 1000th singles push. Speaking of Billy Gunn, the tournament has been squandered at times (Bret Hart probably didn’t need to win twice, Triple H was well on his way to being a main eventer without it, Mabel shouldn’t have been in the tournament and Sheamus didn’t really need a win to legitimize himself), but in 2008 it was used to great effect: the start of a long-term push for William Regal.

Regal, I should say, is one of my all-time favorite wrestlers. In WCW, he worked a stiff, technical style that was unlike anything I’d seen as a kid, and I had a blast watching him rough up cruiserweights and stretch people for fifteen minutes at a time. Beyond a short feud with Ric Flair over a stupid trophy, he never quite got the push he deserved, which is a shame because he was probably one of three non-nWo heels who got any reaction from the crowd. He was fired eventually (for trying to drag a green-as-hell Bill Goldberg to an actual wrestling match when he was to be squashed like a grape) and joined the WWF, where he was given one of the most hillariousy misappropriated gimmicks of all time: Steve Regal, Real Man’s Man.

He had his ups and downs in WWE, but always seemed to be on the low end of the totem pole, regardless of his talent. He had a feud with Chris Jericho where he drank Jericho’s urine, was the first member of the Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club, and mentored Eugene. Not that two out of three of those things were bad, but the whole time he should have been doing what they had him doing in 2008: Roughing up dudes and being the most unlikable guy on the roster. Regal, simply by wrestling during his tenure as Raw’s GM, became an absolutely monster heel. Once, he got angry and cut Raw’s live feed fifteen minutes early, sending us directly into a re-run of Law and Order. It was a great, unexpected finish to the show, and it had fans screaming bloody murder. Were it not for his getting busted for steroid use, Regal probably would have found himself in contention for a major world title for the first time in his career.

CM Punk, on the otherhand, was just on the upswing here after two years in ECW. He’d just won Money in the Bank at Wrestlemania and was starting to stray from the Tuesday night C-show. Nobody was particularly happy about Punk’s direction in WWE, as glass-ceiling shattering moments saw him come up short again and again. This match was no different, though him losing to a guy like Regal for a designation he didn’t need was probably better than having Punk win the title by less-than-honorable means with no plans besides a quick transference back to the midcard.

But the match. It’s good. Like, real good. Punk and Regal would have a feud over the Intercontinental Title later, but there’s nothing quite like the first time. Regal is the fresh heel (he beat Hornswoggle and an injured Finlay to get here), and Punk the exhausted, plucky face (he beat Matt Hardy and Chris Jericho). I think this was the first time I saw anybody counter Punk’s corner bulldog, and it’s about as brutal as PG WWE got. A damn shame about those steroids–Regal’s main event run was a long time coming and had the potential to be truly great.