CM Punk’s Wacky Week

OK, I’ll start off by admitting I am not a big CM Punk fan.  I enjoyed his in ring work when he was still wrestling but since then I’ve pretty much soured on him.  I didn’t celebrate when he lost Saturday night, but I didn’t chastise anyone who did, either.  But before that went down we had the court case that was brought by the doctor he’d ripped a few years ago.  The trial itself was pretty stupid, but there were a few things that came out that I found interesting.  One, the doctor admitted that he hadn’t actually suffered in his career because of what Punk said about him.  But second Punk admitted under oath that he’d never been diagnosed with either MRSA or a staph infection as he said before.  And for me, that was a final straw.  I had him figured to be a stubborn jerk and all, but I thought all his self righteous talk about integrity and hypocrisy was at least somewhat based in truth.  Turns out it isn’t.  Now if you’re glossing over this because Punk’s your guy and all, let me dig in a little more.

Punk essentially said that the WWE physician said he was ok to keep working and either misdiagnosed or completely blew off his concerns, and that he went to another doctor who properly diagnosed him.  That is a damning accusation to make against a doctor.  And he never corrected that even while his supporters used it to bash the WWE, Vince McMahon, and hold Punk up as some kind of martyr in the struggle against the WWE’s creative team.  Now I don’t think he had some grand deception in mind, but instead he was in his feelings about all that was happening and popped off about it to a friend on his podcast.  And he never figured he would end up in a courtroom over it.  But even though the final ruling came in his favor, probably because the doctor had no proof he’d been adversely affected by it, that doesn’t change the fact that he misrepresented how his employer treated him and put them at risk for legal action (if it was true then any number of guys and gals who worked there at one time could be bringing suits of their own).

To me, that’s pretty crappy.  Vince McMahon is no saint and deserves a ton of criticism for a whole lot of things, but if you’re going to go public like that after working for him you should stick to things that actually happened.  I don’t doubt for one minute that Punk and everyone else who works there gets the same kind of slapdash medical care that most professional athletes get; if it’s not something that makes it impossible for you to work then they patch you up and send you back out there.  No it’s not good but we as fans tolerate it and we continue to demand that the big name players and performers show up for us no matter what, so it is what it is.  When some major malfeasance happens and someone goes public with it, the potential implications for everyone involved and affected are huge so you better be telling the truth.  And he wasn’t, so I got nothing for that dude.

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