The Summer of CM Punk or How I Learned to Love Wrestling Again For 3 Weeks

**Mike** (0:20)
Wrestling, for three weeks, in 2011, it was good again.

**Jake** (0:27)
What?

**Mike** (0:29)
Impossible. Yes, yes. Now, listen, I am the resident wrestling fan of the three of us. I know that people that listen don't love when we do wrestling episodes sometimes. I get at least one a year.
And this time, I wanted to talk about modern wrestling, and by modern wrestling, I mean July 2011

**Holden** (0:52)
Don't worry, Mike. I got you on this one. He makes us do it.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:55)
We want to do video games.

**Holden** (0:57)
We want to do anime.

**Mike** (0:58)
He makes us do it. Yeah, I do.

**Jake** (1:02)
You don't understand. He, when we say we don't want to do a wrestling episode, he grabs us very gently by our waistbands and then lifts us up and then puts us down gently on a kind of bouncy surface and then, oh, how we struggle and make funny faces and go, oh, owie, owie.

**Holden** (1:19)
Mike somehow uncovered my audition tape back in New York City when I tried to join Puppetry of the Penis on Broadway. And you sit against me.

**Mike** (1:26)
What would you like to do an episode on? It doesn't matter what you want to do an episode on.

**Holden** (1:33)
Can you smell what the Mike is making us do an episode on?

**Mike** (1:39)
You know, I just want to, behind the scenes there, I trusted Jake to fall for the thing and play with it. I didn't trust you to. You got to know the opponent you're working with. It's true.

**Jake** (1:50)
You're really playing to the podcast smarks right now.

**Mike** (1:54)
Yes, yes.

**Holden** (1:55)
Now, I love doing wrestling episodes. I think wrestling is so fun and nerdy.

**Mike** (2:00)
This will be the only one of the year unless Ric Flair or Bret Hart die.

**Holden** (2:05)
Which, honestly, yeah.

**Mike** (2:07)
So, we might get two. Yeah, we might get two more.

**Holden** (2:09)
We might get two more. You're throwing a couple out there on the hot emerge. But yeah, for me, and especially in comedy, I mean, if you are to do, to be in the comedy scene world is to be friends with so many wrestlers. Yeah, so many wrestling fans.
But it's really everything. I recently was on a project that involved a very prominent lead singer of a very popular punk band, and he is a massive wrestling fan, and so many musicians. It just is, to me, such a big fandom to explore and pick apart, and it's full of endless, fascinating stories.
I think that's, and this is one of those, and I had not, this is the dark days of wrestling for me. I have not, I'm not connected at all to wrestling personally. I don't even know, you know, the friends I have that are watching and aren't watching it with me at this time. So for me to go down and really explore this storyline, this character with CM Punk has been wonderfully fascinating. I really enjoyed this this week.

**Jake** (3:21)
Yeah, Mike, I honestly, I know only from being friends with you that this was happening back in 2011

**Mike** (3:27)
Yeah, yeah.

**Jake** (3:28)
So the entire, the idea of the, you know, the Attitude Era giving way to the, what was it called, Unyielding Violence Era?

**Mike** (3:37)
No, Ruthless Aggression.

**Jake** (3:39)
Oh, my mistake.

**Mike** (3:40)
No, no, no, no, no, that was theirs.

**Jake** (3:42)
To the PG Era, and then this moment where everything kind of shifted fundamentally, like I had no idea. I just knew like, oh, something's happening, and all my wrestling friends are excited. And Mike, I really want you to lay the table out for us.

**Mike** (3:56)
Yeah, for me, I was watching, this was a lot of us, this was our guy, and we never felt like he got his moment up to this point, and this was his moment. And we're going to be going through CM Punk in 2011, mainly is starting at the pipe bomb. We will be playing the pipe bomb, and we will pause it when you want, or when I want, to give context to a line, and then we will talk about the match and program that goes after it, and how quickly it fell apart.
But for three weeks, it was this incredible time. That feeling that, you know, but by the time this airs, the NBA finals will have been done, but that feeling that, like, Knicks fans have right now, as we record it.

**Holden** (4:53)
Yes, in the finals.

**Mike** (4:54)
You know, June 12th is when we're recording right now. And, you know, like, I watched this Money in the Bank match at a friend's house, and we hugged and we cried.