CM Punk and Wrestling Nostalgia: How WWE Has Co-Opted its Most Radical Star

Inevitably, CM Punk was going to let us down. We had all our hopes pinned on him, not as the next great wrestler but as a world-altering event; he wasn't so much our Messiah as our Rapture. And like so many cultists foretelling the end of days, we wake up the next morning only to find that everything is exactly the way it was yesterday. No holy fire from the sky. No bright new era of professional wrestling.

The real question, however, isn't what happened to the reckoning, but how much did Punk ever really want a new era? As he emerged as the WWE's top star over the past six months, Punk's character seemed in conflict with himself. He was a progressive figure — an agent of change, as he'll frequently say — but remained fixated on the past. He billed himself (functionally, if not explicitly) as wrestling's savior, the man who would rescue WWE from its monotonous, outmoded ways. Yet he spends more time rhapsodizing about the wonders of WWF ice cream bars than plotting an inspired path for the future...More?

source: grantland.com