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Despite every report saying it wasn't happening, CM Punk made his WWE return after over nine years away at the very end of WWE Survivor Series 2023, which took place in his hometown of Chicago. CM Punk-obsessed Oli Davis gives his review of the whole WWE show, and CM Punk's return. It's not as glowing as you'd think...

CM Punk WWE Return Confirmed. WWE Survivor Series 2023 Review | WrestleTalk
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Transcript
00:00 The biggest wrestling star on the planet just returned to WWE.
00:04 Will he main event WrestleMania?
00:06 Will he right the wrongs of his past?
00:09 Or will he rip another locker room apart at it seems?
00:12 Breaking News!
00:14 Our truth has returned to WWE.
00:16 That's all the returns that happened on this show.
00:21 Just one more thing…
00:24 Because Randy Orton came back too!
00:26 From out of… well, from out of being heavily referenced on the Go Home episode of Raw.
00:31 But yeah, our truth, Randy Orton.
00:35 What a show.
00:38 But just one more thing…
00:41 Closer…
00:43 CM Punk return confirmed.
00:52 I know, I know, we all just want to talk about one thing.
00:55 Mainly because the rest of Survivor Series was mostly filler.
00:58 No killer.
00:59 But there wasn't a kickoff match, and the show was a glorious 2 hours 54 minutes in
01:03 total, so it won't take long.
01:05 Just remember, keep checking WrestleTalk.com throughout the day for all the up-to-date
01:09 minute developments and reactions to that CM Punk news.
01:12 The show opened with War Games.
01:15 Women.
01:16 Where randomly assorted babyfaces Charlotte Flair, Shotzi, Bianca Belair and Becky Lynch
01:20 took on Damage Kinshru in a 4 vs 4 matchup.
01:24 Commentary pointed out this is Charlotte Flair's first ever War Games match.
01:28 She's presumably missed them so far because they require her to actually take bumps.
01:33 Her and Becky provided the faces' main story throughout the match.
01:37 The lifelong frenemies showed a lot of tension up until the end.
01:40 Remember, the last time they met was in that awkward month where they reportedly shoot-hated
01:45 each other following Charlotte's controversial belt drop segment on SmackDown, but they had
01:50 a cool payoff when they finally embraced, teaming together to take out their opponents.
01:54 Charlotte's performance, for me, though, feels so lacklustre these days.
01:59 She was nowhere near the fiery passion or intensity that Becky brought to those moments.
02:04 Even when Flair was doing a moonsault off the top of the cage, she looked kind of bored.
02:09 The main story on the heels side was that Bayley is to be trusted.
02:14 She was constantly saving near falls on her Japanese teammates, and even sacrificed herself
02:19 pushing Kairi out the way to take a Charlotte spear.
02:22 That led to the end, where all the faces hit their finishers, with Becky pinning Bayley
02:26 off a second rope manhandle slammed through a table.
02:29 I expect Bayley's theme song will soon become 'one of these things is not like the other'
02:34 because she's quickly becoming Sami Zayn in the bloodline.
02:37 The only other thing I wanted to note from this match is, you know, I was right.
02:41 I predicted a thing.
02:43 Main roster trashcan.
02:44 She's going to jump off the top of the cell in a trashcan.
02:48 This was a really good match to open the show.
02:50 With the tag titles currently held up in the main event scene, the actual tag division
02:55 is now being used exclusively for branded content integration.
02:58 Alpha Academy and Pretty Deadly promoted Ruffles, which is where R-Truth made his return, and
03:04 The New Day drove to the arena in a Slim Jim car.
03:07 After not being beaten for two years, Gunther then defended his Intercontinental Championship
03:12 against The Miz.
03:13 It was like two clashing artistic styles occupying the same screen.
03:17 Like The Miz had glitched into Gunther's dimension in Across the Spider-Verse.
03:21 I watched it again yesterday.
03:23 The King of Sports Entertainment Soft Style vs one of the hardest hitters of his generation.
03:30 And it was over relatively easily, barely an inconvenience.
03:35 Miz would target Gunther's left knee for his Figure 4, and he managed a babyface low
03:39 blow and exposed turnbuckle for one genuinely great nearfall.
03:42 But overall, this was a decisive filler victory in Gunther's longer reign.
03:47 He hit a lariat and a splash, and then made Miz tap in the Boston Crab.
03:51 A fun match, but it never reached that second gear to make it properly competitive.
03:55 Santos Escobar vs Dragon Lee had some good back and forth action, with Santos bringing
03:59 the intensity of his recent heel turn, but ultimately this was just another filler match.
04:04 It wasn't even a proper grudge match, as Dragon Lee was neither of the two people Escobar
04:09 actually has beef with - Carlito and Rey Mysterio.
04:12 And seven minutes long, this was just a way to give Santos a pay-per-view win ahead of
04:16 those bigger matches.
04:18 And then we got Rhea Ripley defending her women's title against Zoey Stark - the third
04:22 predictable pay-per-view filler match in a row.
04:25 Zoey's physics-breaking offence is always fun to watch, but she was never a believable
04:29 winner here, and the crowd only ever cheered Ripley.
04:32 Rhea won with a riptide.
04:33 In between these filler midcard matches, the night-long narrative was 'would famed kayfabe
04:38 dickhead Randy Orton actually show up and help his mates?'
04:42 Sami Zayn and Jey Uso said they'd have to have each other's backs no matter who turns
04:45 up, Judgment Day gloated that even if Randy does show up, he'll probably turn heel on
04:49 one of his teammates, and Seth kept shouting at Cody for updates.
04:54 The Jeopardy felt somewhat forced, but at least they didn't just suddenly announce
04:56 Adam Cole as his replacement.
04:58 For the men's War Games match itself, Seth started for the babyfaces, with Cody, Jey
05:03 and Sami waiting in the cage, with Orton still not having appeared from outta somewhere.
05:09 The ballot started for Judgment Day, recalling his long and recent history with Rollins,
05:13 while JD, Dominik, Priest and McIntyre watched from the ramp, with palpable tension between
05:19 Drew and Damian.
05:20 The heels had the advantage, a far better working of psychology than the women's opener,
05:24 meaning JD was in next, then Jey Uso, with yeet chants from the crowd and evils from
05:29 Drew McIntyre on every strike.
05:31 Damian stopped McIntyre going out next, so consumed was he by hate for Jey.
05:35 Then it was Zayn, then Drew, then Cody, then Dominik.
05:39 Where the Chicago crowd wanted to boo him so much, they didn't even do the countdown.
05:44 The match beyond had four faces against five heels, with still no sign of Randy.
05:49 Seth started to shout at Cody.
05:50 The numbers game got the better of the faces for Rhea's music to hit, trying to cash
05:55 in Damian's Money in the Bank briefcase for him.
05:57 But in an ingeniously plotted next beat, Orton's music hit, fittingly kinda from outta nowhere,
06:03 for his full return.
06:05 He, uh… he looks big.
06:07 He's a big boy.
06:08 Randy didn't really do much, but whatever limitations he has were protected by the spots
06:12 he did.
06:13 Last, by storyline tension with Jey, the man who injured him, hidden in a five person draping
06:18 DDT spot, and helped by Sami and Seth throwing JD off the top of the cage for Randy to hit
06:24 an RKO beneath.
06:26 Orton gave Priest to his legacy protege Cody, who hit a crossroads to win.
06:30 Because apparently it doesn't matter how many times you get pinned when you have the
06:33 Money in the Bank briefcase.
06:35 You have a perfectly good JD McDonough right there.
06:38 Now I didn't watch this live, so I could see there were five minutes left of the broadcast
06:43 while all the faces were celebrating.
06:45 Never trust a Triple H booked copyright logo.
06:47 I thought Randy might turn on someone.
06:50 Or maybe the Judgment Day would turn on Priest.
06:52 Or maybe, but very, very unlikelyly, unlikelyly, we'd get…
07:00 CM Punk return confirmed.
07:02 Michael Cole was getting ready to throw to the post-show press conference when Cult of
07:06 Personality hit.
07:08 The crowd exploded.
07:09 Then they exploded even louder when Punk appeared in the entranceway, looking like he borrowed
07:15 Bryan Danielson's AEW debut outfit of a simple white tee.
07:19 The whole place screamed 'it's clobbering time' and a fan embraced Punk, screaming
07:23 'CHICAGO, CHICAGO, CHICAGO' and staring right into the camera, while Punk himself
07:30 asked 'whose time is this?'
07:33 Coincidentally, at the same time, his old show Collision would have been concluding
07:37 on another station.
07:38 Here's how everyone reacted at our Watch Party livestream.
07:42 [CLIP]
08:04, I think we can rule CM Punk out from being the devil.
08:32 He then finished the broadcast by being cut off midway, going OOOOOOHHHHHH like it was
08:39 Gary Neville watching a goal go in.
08:41 Obviously CM Punk is my favourite wrestler.
08:43 I cried on air with overwhelmed joy when he returned to wrestling with AEW the first time,
08:49 not the second time.
08:51 I imagine a lot of you want to know my thoughts on him coming back to WWE.
08:56 And for you I say… I don't know.
09:03 It feels a bit too soon, so I don't want to really clarify how I'm going to feel
09:09 in stone.
09:10 But I'll tell you what I wrote in my notes as this was happening.
09:15 My notes said "What a sellout.
09:19 This doesn't feel the same as before."
09:21 Because a huge part of my love for Punk was how he stood in opposition to a system and
09:25 corporation I despised over that last decade.
09:29 He was the voice of the voiceless, speaking up for a number of badly booked, mistreated
09:33 wrestlers backstage, and hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied, frustrated fans at home like
09:38 me.
09:40 People change, companies change, and sometimes they do so inversely proportional to each
09:46 other.
09:47 While WWE under Triple H has become a hot promotion, Punk, with his backstage behaviour
09:52 in AEW, has been an increasingly difficult anti-establishment figure to follow.
09:57 And in this act, returning to WWE, the company he stood up to in 2014, it feels as though
10:04 Punk sold out.
10:05 The TV will still be great, his performances will be captivating, particularly if he goes
10:10 corporate heel, but the authenticity that I so loved him for right now feels compromised.
10:16 But Ryback also tweeted he'd officially retire from pro wrestling if Punk returned
10:20 at Survivor Series, so it's all good!
10:23 CM Punk!
10:24 CM Punk!
10:25 CM Punk!
10:26 Get us some Domus F***.
10:28 Survivor Series was a mediocre main card, especially by Big Four standards, with an
10:33 insanely hot closing angle.
10:35 This was 80%.
10:37 I actually predicted CM Punk coming into WWE to scrove at AEW last year.
10:43 Watch on to find out more.

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