A dream match!
A stellar watch live, but this match has dropped off for me somewhat on repeated watches, similarly to Gunther V Sami at WM40, but not as if the match I watched prior had suddenly shifted on me, with the prior match remaining in my memory, but rather rot gradually revealing itself.
Punk vs Sami was the match Ive always wanted, and it finally happened with good context as two wrestlers at a believable enough caliber to both go inside the Elimination Chamber. It is the same dynamic with Sami vs Randy qualifier last year, but it is a good template for Sami. The live experience was fantastic, Sami taking Punk's swinging neckbreaker was surreal to witness, the Anaconda Vice stretch had me worried, only seconds long phases of peripheal vision. I was that into it.
But for a dream match this match is somewhat lethargic, as there's not much natural "flow" or "chemistry" here, but it instead relies on a moment by moment basis of interactions that a fan, someone who's not in the ring, could easily sketch. There are moments here that remind me of how I use to do naive matches with my toy wrestlers when I was a kid (not following Bret's rule stating there's no need to have to attempt every single signature move of yours in a match), like Punk's hand-to-hand wristlock on Sami that Sami easily turns into a rope assisted tornado DDT. There's a childish charm in seeing 2 dream match wrestlers taking each others moves (Punk's knee into the bulldog reversed into the Blue Thunder Bomb), but that comparison to me comes up in moments of uninspired work. It even has a little bit of WWE's mix-n-match-spots match structure problem, and the dream-match angle can be oriented to soothe, or emphasize this issue, as a three-way trek that always circles back in on itself. It is like a cat toy they play with so a treat pops out.
Another perspective is it has a modest, TV match wavelength. There's a 101 both-were-thinking-the-same-thing spot. Another example of this wavelength would be Punk hitting the swinging neckbreaker for a mini comeback and taking a break before climbing the ropes for an elbow drop, but Sami gets up at the last moment, punches Punk, then hits a superplex. A very modest interaction. Similar spot with Sami on the top rope, Punk climbs up to stop it, but Sami chops Punk off, who gives a perfect sell of his whole body cascading from the chop, and the "OH! " to it, and Sami jumps off but Punk dropkicks him. The physicality and the psychology of these interactions are baseline and there's a meta line running through it all, that is to keep both wrestlers on an even playing field. But all together, I am growing pale and sweating.
Later on, there is a sudden arm attack and rollup attempt Punk settles for to stagger Sami enough for an Anaconda Vice after he took a tornado DDT, and the aforementioned Knee-Bulldog comeback failing into a Blue Thunder Bomb, that soothes the latter issue, as I assume it's the interaction that contributes to Punk's handshake offer to Sami after the match. The rollup comes in a transition sequence where its flow comes across as cobbled together, as a "good enough" filler track from the last checkpoint to the next, but with a line running through that part of the match colors it and acts like a safety net. Thats the teetering this match has: is it lovely, simple wrestling, or too pale?
(Also a lot of seperate shoulder thrusts to a cornered Sami by Punk in this match, to possibly give his own part, and by extension the match, even more stability -->>> modesty)
This part seems exemplary of the match:
This bit incurs after Punk chops Sami, but Sami immediately chops back harder and Punk retreats to this corner. Sami continues the chops, but then chooses to let it dissipate into a forearm, and then turn towards the crowd? After a source of momentum is found to hold onto, it is then let go of and dissolved into air. This keeps the alleged modestly afloat, but most momentum or energy is denied.
So the only potency of this match lies in the interaction of these 2 personalities and their histories finally colliding.
The beginning of this match precedes any paleness while keeping the modesty through the basic maneuvers used, and it sets up such emotional dynamics that will hold up the later portions of this match. The first one immediately, is a headlock takeover battle Punk intiates and baits Sami into, that smoothly, efficiently, and logically escalates into an Anaconda Vice attempt, which is right next door to the headlock. Sami squirms to a rope break and Punk immediately stands over Sami, completely sidestepping the refs hold-on-ropebreak leniency to intimidate Sami, clearly trying to get in his head that he's "not his level".
And Sami reacts perfectly to all of this, a vet like him dealing with this specific line of attack from another vet, whose one of the only wrestlers from that scene they're both from, but who has slight seniority in age, era, and influence, the latter which has a biggest gap; Sami's own is protected and nothing to scoff at, but Punk's this century is nearly impossible to top. Of course as of 2026, in dynamics outside of kayfabe, such a gap exists because Sami is a useful idiot slow at recognizing tide changes in crowd sentiment,* and Punk is an extremely counterphobic person who spins himself to the crowd standards of every company he's in.** But within my still memory of this match, it's the perfect balance, the "just enough" edge to everything to force Sami's response to be "yes, he's manipulating me, but I'm gonna cave in anyway". I love it!
And so Sami pushes and face pies Punk, and in my favorite moment, Sami makes a shit-eating smile that I adore.
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| Of course, the genesis of the kitschy 2026 arc for Sami, of being too naive and goody (forcing away the actual reality of him in a tasteful grey area) was a farce for morons and useful idiots all along. |
I keep going back and watching this match and I smile every time I see it. There is the catfight that Punk makes with his missed slap, and them the aforementioned chop exchange, which is where the arm work meant to illustrate their differing personalities, in a general heart vs Brains dynamic, begins.
For the latter it colors Punk especially, as his aggression in the beginning is turned off like a switch once he begins working the arm, becoming modest like the match, taking his time between spots (which in the meta gives the crowd a chance to recalibrate, to stabilize, again another usage of bringing things back down to Earth) which can cost him like that Elbow Drop attempt. He establishes a power play of being above Sami's pure emotion, his aggression hinted at being exaggerated and completely in his control. Is his aggression a ruse? In one moment a kneeling Sami's riled heart rallies the crowd and worries Punk, who glances at the crowd, when he's in control. This moment is accentuated by the prevous exaggeration being an act, as Sami's emotion causes Punk to lose the control he just had over his own, and in the meta, all of these moments from Punk show his generosity to prop up Sami. The equalizing moments keep Punk's heel moments from the crowd taking it too far, keep a reminder that in the end, they're both top faces.
In one case it gives a reason for that aforementioned tornado DDT spot (Sami raising the armlink height slightly more after each chest slap is a great touch), as a fast track to more important beats. Sami can't turn over Punk for a followup pin because of his arm, underlining the match with just an extra touch of his tragedy that I love, but in a purely functional spot, where there is no typical enchantment of Sami's.
But this could've been redeemed by Sami with the dynamic between these two.
It couldve been the greatest finishing touch as the reason Punk kicked out of the roll up, Punk getting ahead of himself in underestimating Sami's heart, with the earlier arm work he'd forgotten saving his ass, or if you're rooting for him, a smart backup: Punk is always one step ahead. It's the biggest lost opportunity this match had. Just 1 more linking thread to drive home, to cap off THE biggest in ring contrast between these 2 that stretches back 2 decades, gone forever.
What an idiot! But what am I actually saying about both? What I praise about Punk is conscious, as it always pertains to continuity, and what I praise about Sami is seemingly unconscious, considering the useful idiot ego of his, yet the actual depths he can reach. This is different from the small, but clean delineation of simpletons that wrestling fans yearn for, for it is the pervasive leaking of primitive memories in Sami's movement, as if pamphlets from an overhead plane, that I am aware of, that allows Sami to be a harbinger of gore, despite his useful idiot ego and the company he's in.
Thankfully, a litany of Sami's will follow.
The rest of the final stretch, through hooking the crowd, is the closest restoration of energy and momentum, and my color returns. Punk turns the switch on to amplify his heel act again and mocks Sami to his face, with Sami's dazed, tired, expression glancing at the Wrestlemania sign Punk taunts him with in the common great individual moment of Sami's, following with his downwards look evoking the tragic underdog once again, as a kid yells "COME ON SAMI!".
Sami's riled up emotion with a roll up attempt almost costs Punk the match, Sami shocking the crowd's and Punk' heart in one sweep; an actuality of Punk's emotion stabs through again. In the punch exhange, Sami's riled up heart recovers first with a superb war charge that Punk catches into a fireman's carry, in one more great moment that accentuated the dynamic/contrast. And Sami's sell for the GTS was perfect and lovely: without much edge to it, wide round arc, catching and riding the surface wave created by the crowd's investment, which these 2 completely exceeded at, I forgot to mention.
But watching this back, Punk simply picking up Sami to reverse the Helluva Kick delivers an earthquake to the whole match before it, as it's such a simple, un-thoughtful counter it puts an exclamation point on Punk controlling the whole match, but it's also patronizing in that in kayfabe, it says Punk pretty much just let Sami have his control segments and reversals, rather than having him earn it.
It can also be unintentional since it occurs in the final heat of the moment, where the crowd investment is at its highest so the details are allowed to fall through the cracks. But Punk has phone number wrestling IQ, and that includes the subtle politics, so it could easily be him pulling the rug out from underneath at the last possible moment, and stealing the whole collaboration piece from Sami's hands.
But what is here by far, not even close, the most inspired booking of HHH's stint in a 3 segment main event stretch with Sami as the sun everyone orbits around, accentuating the stakes inherent to him, and the big comedown to follow.
And it is lucky this fan made music video exists to restore the momentum dissipated by this match's insistent modesty, which compacts the emotional dynamic with a fitting melancholic song.
*The failing of such a wrestler as Sami to keep a compromise with the crowd, an archetypal promise in exchange for sneaking in the alien frequency of enchantment, results in either two paths: 1. such selling becomes ectoplasma without any shape, somewhat of a mess, or 2. a retreat to archetypal kitsch, at best flattening; 2026 Sami has obviously fallen into the latter.
**This is the main component of CM Punk's secret role as the UV blacklight of 2020s wrestling, baring the artistic orientation of the company he's in.
EXTRA:
Punk's first control segment over the arm is another example of simple but lovely. Furthers the debate on if the simplicity of this match is great or underwhelming.
The chop ending it is really tasteful.
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Sami has a great look of defiance and a great silent scream sell for a roundhouse kick to the arm that makes it look especially painful. Both moments being right next to each other contrasts and accentuates them.
The silent (important with the 2026 boos from people with bland manospheric taste who say he looks like every hobo, a kitschy touch like saying a long blonde hair person looks like Kurt Cobain... Sami's hooded puppy dog eyes are immediately striking and seperate him from any impersonators) gif captures that truly capture the true peaks of Sami. It is not just him being an emotional underdog, as many of his defenders can only grasp! But it is moments of visceral beauty like these that are infused with the emotional underdog and make it worth more than just a functional gimmick... which are what his haters AND defenders can only process him through seemingly.
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