Punk VS Rock Promo #1: Who Won?

[The Life Of Pablo Ren]

I think that Punk got the better of The Rock last week, not to say The Rock was bad, I thought he did a great job as well... but throughout the whole promo, in fact, ever since The Rock's return really... The same question floats around my head every time I hear him speak, are the PG guidelines affecting him?

I'm not the type that places all the blame on the PG content for how bad the product is at times, because you can still do PG and have it be great, but in this sense, I feel that the PG rating is holding him back to an extent, he has things that he can say that he just can't say. What The Rock does best are comedy type insults, and yes, did he give those to CM Punk? Of course he did, but they were more, I guess childish then they were in his previous stint with the WWE.

And I doubt, highly doubt that the writers are telling The Rock what to say, he's more than capable of carrying himself against anyone... I just wonder if the product being PG is preventing The Rock from saying what he truly wants to say.

 

[Da Solo]

No one "won". This was not the type of promo that was set up to be won. The Rock/Cena promos were set up like that for a while because no one got hit after the altercations (and because Cena sandbagged it, but that's another story...). Rock Rock Bottomed Punk afterwards, which was what it was all set up to.

In terms of performance, both performed very cooperatively. Punk was the perfect counterpart to Rock, contrasting his fun/seriousness switches with bitterness and an eerie seriousness. Rock played his character to the fullest and mixed in his usual comedy with a competitive edge.

Both had their high and low points though. I literally caught my breath when Punk dropped the boxing with God line (until I found out it was a GZA lyric he took, but he delivered it flawlessly) and his pipe-bomb before Rock showed up was initially captivating. However, Punk's promo showed some dependency on name dropping, and while talking through the commercial break was an interesting idea, it only had the crowd on ignore until he got interrupted. Rock was in rare form last night, and I love how he countered everything Punk said with a "No matter what you say, I'm GOING to take that title, and you know it". He did jumble his last line, the candy ass one, but it was still hilarious and understandable seeing as it was a mouthful.

All in all, it was a great promo, and better than any of Rock/Cena's face to face promos imo. Both men played into each other and were genuinely concerned with the storytelling.

 

[tan9000]

Punk. Hands down.

As soon as he said "it's time for me to drop another pipe bomb" I marked out. It's the first time in at least a year that I didn't change the channel during the commercial because I didn't want to miss what Punk had to say. It was worth the wait!

But then, when Rocky came out, I knew right away all I was going to hear was the same old crap. "FINALLY" and "IF YA SMELL" and what not. The problem was that I knew what to expect. Punk came out and verbally laid waste to The Rock and the WWE as a whole, while Dwayne came old and did the same old watered down act he's been doing since he returned.

Dwayne Johnson's arms are too short to box with god.

 

[NC Wrestling Nut]

Punks was much better. The segment with the rock was good but i didn't like the promo. I felt like he tried to pull the race card but no one else really feels that way i guess. The Rock set up Punk really nice tho it was a great exchange. The shield coming in like that was classic. The only thing is I don't feel like wwe is fully committed to them yet so it takes the sting out of their attacks a little bit from me but it was still a great exchange in promos.