Posted in: Doctor's Orders
Doctor's Orders: Dear Fan Who Got Hit by CM Punk
By The Doc
Oct 9, 2012 - 4:52:43 PM

Dear Fan Who Got Hit by CM Punk,

I write you today with one simple request:

Don’t do it, brother.

I know that you are mad and you have every right to be, but do not be like most of the people in our age range and think that your best course of action is to whine and complain to police and lawyers. Please, do not be that guy that jumps at the chance to take advantage of another person’s mistake and tries to turn it into something far bigger than it is. Be above that.

If you want to sue the WWE and its champion for getting hit in the face with less velocity than you might absorb by being hit with a basketball during a pick-up game with your friends, then go right ahead. But, be decent about it, will you? You spent, what, fifty bucks or less for that seat of yours? Do you think you’re entitled to thousands of dollars, now? At most, you should ask for the WWE to refund your money and maybe give you some Wrestlemania tickets, but don’t go overboard, here.

You ARE a wrestling fan, right? Do you understand how much worse this can be if you go all “victim” on them? Some people are talking about CM Punk getting released or suspended or ending his title reign because of you. Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t be happy about what happened either, but people make mistakes. It’s not like he pushed your pregnant wife over and she lost the baby, for God’s sake.

I don’t know if the anger has worn off yet for you to understand how important you could be to the future of the WWE. They’re on the doorstep of something incredible and you hold the keys to get in. If you go the route of the whiny jackass, then you keep the gate locked that could have led to something awesome for all of us. You could also let bygones be bygones, tone down the media attention by not fanning the flames and giving those vultures more to feed off of, and be the catalyst – the HERO, dude – of what undoubtedly could be the start of some big business. Read me out…

CM Punk is about to get reamed by the media. He’s going to garner a lot of negative press for the WWE, but what you have to remember about wrestling is that they are not the NFL. They may have a public image to uphold, but its shareholders aren’t exactly getting much bang for their buck lately. I’ve lost several hundred bucks on the WWE stock since the beginning of the year and I’m not looking to condemn their public image so much as I’m looking for them to do something that will get ratings up so that people start buying this crap NYSE commodity of mine and increase its value. CM Punk could very well grab some headlines and draw some unique viewers in if the WWE plays to its history and embraces the media firestorm instead of pandering to it.

There’s this movement I’ve been championing for months called the “Reality Era” in wrestling and I think this incident, of which you are the central figure, has the potential to launch it into a new stratosphere. Talk about adding an edge to the product without any trace of something non-PG. All that happened was you got smacked and pushed. Far worse happens in the ring; far worse happens in the stands or in the parking lot between fans at 25% of the shows. Mark my words – you could be the lit match that ignites the next boom. How more real does it get than what happened to you? How exhilarating must it have been, no matter how much it hurt you physically (or, with your tainted pride, emotionally), to actually be in the action?

Your reaction could force extreme actions by the WWE. Mainly, you’d be taking away the one guy on the entire program that is actually entertaining and doing something worthwhile. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Turn the negative into a positive and demand a punishment that fits the crime – like what I described above. Do not, however, think that you are owed more. If you do, you will go down in history as one of the biggest farces of a fan in the history of professional wrestling.

Are you from Sacramento? Let’s presume that you are. Do you remember those awesome Kings teams from ten years ago? Would you have forced the Maloof brothers into giving you all kinds of money and put them in a position of potentially suspending or firing Chris Webber if he got angry during a timeout, got slapped numerous times by a fan, and then turned around and smacked you? If your answer is “yes,” then you’re the worst kind of fan – the type that says they care about a team but then jumps at the chance to squeeze some nickels and dimes that you’ll probably piss away in a few months, simultaneously magnifying the media scrutiny over the situation so that your star player that could’ve brought your team something special gets shat on to the point where he’s never the same. SHAME on you if you go that route in this situation with CM Punk, fan. Shame…on…you…

I swear to God, if the same thing happened to me, I wouldn’t press charges and I wouldn’t get lawyered up. Look at the context of happened to you, man! You’re at a professional wrestling event, surrounded by fans that are antagonizing the heel that the entire arena is jeering. He turns around and hits you. Get over it. Who cares? Get mad, demand an apology and the aforementioned combo of refund and WM tickets, and go about your life. You can claim to be the guy that CM Punk struck in the face en route to mega stardom or you can be the guy that buried CM Punk (and, perhaps, adult male interest in the WWE).

Signed,

A Concerned Fan