00:00So, yes, a reminder, Living Room Lariats, the new wrestling brand from Couch Potato Diary,
00:28we're still going to have wrestling breakdowns on the flagship Couch Potato Diary,
00:32but if you just want wrestling, Living Room Lariats is going to be the place to be working on getting in on other platforms,
00:37but right now, it is a Spotify exclusive.
00:40So, WWE Night of Champions.
00:43We may as well focus on the big championship belt at the end with CM Punk taking on John Cena.
00:52Firstly, I think you could make the undisputed belt an actual undisputed belt,
00:56but we will get into that later. That is a discussion again for another Living Room Lariats.
01:00Punk seemed genuinely surprised that the crowd was with him on this one.
01:05It felt like there was a lot during the build-up that might turn this crowd on him,
01:09but I think that for that crowd, Punk handled things very well
01:14and tried to do damage control as best as he could at the kind of kickoff event that they had out in Saudi on Friday.
01:20The John Cena sucks chants were loud, but they definitely faded as the entrance went on.
01:27This match didn't really hit the level of their past matches at all,
01:32but it was far better than I expected.
01:35This is easily the best match John Cena has had in this 2025 retirement tour.
01:40You play a bunch of the hits the way that you would expect them to,
01:44and you have some shenanigans toward the end,
01:47but even the part where you don't have the shenanigans,
01:49I thought this match was quite good.
01:51You then, you get into all the craziness,
01:54where Rollins comes out with Bronson Reed and with Braun Breaker
01:58and everything happening with those guys.
01:59They come out and attack CM Punk.
02:01Rollins looking for something,
02:03and then Charles Robinson comes sprinting down with another callback to WrestleMania 24,
02:09I believe it was,
02:10and instead of him sliding into the ring,
02:12John Cena hits the old alpha male Monty Brown pounce on that guy,
02:17and he goes flying away.
02:19And then it's where it gets a little convoluted,
02:22where Cena comes into the ring,
02:24and Rollins says,
02:25this has nothing to do with you.
02:27Which, look, I get like Rollins' whole big thing
02:32is that he wants to be in complete control
02:37and everything like that,
02:38and so it is all bigger than wrestling,
02:40but you have the Money in the Bank briefcase in your hand.
02:44You called for a ref to come down to the ring.
02:47John Cena is the only champion in the building at that point.
02:52How does it not have anything to do with him?
02:54And so that, it is, I want to get behind Seth Rollins so much,
02:59but there was always all these times where it just,
03:01it's this whole, it is bigger than me,
03:03it's bigger than wrestling and all this stuff,
03:05and I get annoyed by it at times,
03:08but this one, it just seemed at another level,
03:10where it's, oh, this is not about you.
03:11How is it not?
03:12It is literally almost entirely about him.
03:14He's the champion you would be cashing in on.
03:16Are you cashing in your Money in the Bank briefcase
03:18to make sure that Punk doesn't win the championship?
03:21Because that seems weird.
03:22Like, well, I pinned him, and so the match is over.
03:25So I'm not the champion, but neither is he.
03:26And so, mission accomplished.
03:28Obviously, that's not what's happening here.
03:29So that just, that felt like a real, like,
03:31ugh, type of a moment that just added to a little bit of the craziness.
03:35And then you get the WrestleMania 40 type of a finish, right?
03:39Where you have Penta comes out, and he takes care of one guy.
03:42Sami comes out, takes care of another guy.
03:44Um, and then it is just these two left.
03:47Um, and, uh, you have Cena hit the AA onto Bronson Reed as well.
03:52And so it's starting to feel like, hey, maybe babyface, whatever.
03:55You wipe it away with the look from John Cena again.
04:00Um, I thought you were able to kind of turn that away.
04:03It did feel like, again, we are telling a bit of a story
04:05that some of the babyface tendencies are starting to creep back in
04:09with John Cena a little bit here.
04:10But, you are able to erase it at the end, um, with all of that.
04:16And then the finish, picking up the win, over CM Punk.
04:20It, um, there are some parts of this that worked,
04:23and there are some parts of it that didn't.
04:24And some parts of it where you can understand, again, the motivations,
04:27and some parts where you couldn't.
04:29As far as the match goes, Cena, he still gets to be a heel,
04:33and he is still the champion.
04:34Uh, Toxic in the chat saying,
04:36Cena is washed as a wrestler, LOL.
04:39Yes. Yes, he is.
04:40This was, this was the best match he has had,
04:43and it is, quite frankly, I think the best that you thought
04:45you would be able to get out of him.
04:47So, kudos to them for being able to do that.
04:50But, um, yeah, it is not pretty.
04:53And you're going to need a lot of these bells and whistles to get it done.
04:55I think a huge credit to Punk for being able to get that type of a match
04:59out of, um, out of John Cena as well.
05:02But even that, like, it wasn't like it was this Matt Classic.
05:04The reason it got to the levels that it kind of got to was it was just finisher
05:09after finisher after finisher after finisher after finisher after finisher.
05:11And we're kicking out of, like, five different finishers that all these guys have.
05:14And it was kind of like the first match of the night.
05:16They did that with Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes,
05:18and that feels like what this crowd kind of wanted.
05:21Um, so, you are able to get the most out of it.
05:25But yes, no, this is, we are not going to look back on this retirement tour
05:28as some of the greatest work of John Cena's in-ring career.
05:31That is for certain.
05:32Even by his standards, that is for certain.
05:34Um, you do get Rollins able to cost CM Punk the title.
05:37So there is that.
05:38But that felt like almost a bit of an accident, um,
05:41the way that that all played out.
05:42So I'm interested to see what the follow-up is for that coming up on Monday Night Raw.
05:46But, um, overall, the Rollins thing where it's the whole it's not about you,
05:52that just, it turned me off in a way that it shouldn't.
05:54And I think it is just specifically because I'm not a fan of that performer
05:58and that character that I just, it, it just, it irked me.
06:02I'm, I'm, honestly, if I'm to put biases on the table,
06:05I'm probably looking for ways for that character to irk me.
06:08And then he gave it to me and I couldn't get unirked.
06:10But I, I do still think, like, overall,
06:13you have a few stories you can tell coming out of this.
06:16It is an easy transition of Punk away from John Cena
06:19and into some kind of a Seth Rollins thing for SummerSlam, um, and, and all of that.
06:26So I think that there is a lot that you can do coming out of it.
06:29It was just a couple of the details that I didn't necessarily love.
06:32Overall, this show was okay.
06:34Some of the matches were great.
06:35This crowd was strange.
06:37Um, it was really quiet for stretches.
06:39And I don't know if there was just something going on,
06:41but they felt they had to make the crowds quieter
06:44or if there was a technical problem or what was happening.
06:46But it was quiet during a lot of these stretches.
06:50And you would get big pops for big moves and stuff like that.
06:53But aside from that, this crowd was there to pop for a couple of entrances
06:56and then pop for some big moments.
06:58And that was it.
06:59Uh, when the heels were going, there was no booing.
07:02There was nothing negative.
07:03It was just silence for a lot of stretches.
07:05And it felt like it took away from a lot of the matches at, uh, this particular show.
07:10So there are some interesting stories that can come out of it.
07:14And we will get into those at a later time.
07:18And we will get into those at a later time.
07:18OK.
07:22There are some more precipitation.
07:23Let's go!
07:24Let's go!
07:24Let's go!
07:25This is time.
07:26Let's go!
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