CM Punk has talked about Money in the Bank 2011 so many times he’s actually tired of talking about it. The match he wishes got that kind of attention? His WrestleMania 29 match with The Undertaker.
Speaking on Games With Names, Punk admitted he believes his match against The Undertaker has quietly become one of the most overlooked bouts of his career, despite taking place at WrestleMania and centering around The Streak.
“Believe it or not, I think this one’s kind of overshadowed a little bit. You guys gave me a list—me and Brock, I feel like that’s always talked about. Me and Cena, and we’re on the 15th-year anniversary, I think, of me and Cena at Money in the Bank. I’ve talked about that one I don’t know how many times. I’m almost sick of talking about it.
This one with Undertaker, and it being at WrestleMania, I honestly feel like it’s not talked about enough. So I figured, WrestleMania and Undertaker—two huge things in the world of wrestling. Why not talk about this?”
That doesn’t mean CM Punk believes it’s the greatest match ever wrestled. In fact, he says that’s impossible to answer.
“Is this the greatest match of all time? Well, that’s subjective. I don’t even think I think this is the greatest match of all time. I think that’s way too subjective. It’s like cereal. You don’t have a favorite cereal. It’s too subjective. Sometimes you’re feeling cocoa, you go with Cocoa Puffs. Sometimes you want a little fruitiness, you go with Fruity Pebbles. Sometimes I want to feel healthy and go with Honey Nut Cheerios, even though it’s not healthy—but you think you’re getting healthy. So this is subjective. I think this is one of my greatest matches. I’d be interested to hear what Taker thought of it because he had such a long, prolific career, did a great many things and had all these cool moments.”
For Punk, though, the hardest part wasn’t having a great match. It was convincing fans there was even a chance Undertaker could lose.
“The Undertaker’s undefeated. The big thing was The Streak, right? At that time, you could probably argue it was a bigger moment or spotlight on the card than a title match or anything like that. When you talk about undefeated streaks, most people watching feel a certain way. They want to see it. ‘I want to see him go 21-0,’ or, ‘I need to tune in to see when he loses.’ I think it’s very difficult to wrestle somebody of the stature of The Undertaker and muddy the waters—really blur the line between reality and our world—and get people to really buy that you have a chance of beating this guy. I think, on paper, a lot of the time, if you’re wrestling Taker at WrestleMania for The Streak, a lot of people know what the outcome is going to be. So, in my mind, what I had to do was get people to believe that I had a shot. Being a smaller guy, that’s not always easy to do. But I think I beat him up like he owed me money.”
The Second City Saint said the Paul Bearer storyline became a huge part of making that happen. Instead of playing it safe, he deliberately leaned into the discomfort.
“That was my game plan going into this. We also had some extracurricular stuff. Paul Bearer died. You take those real-life things and insert them into our world strategically. If you do it wisely enough, you get people going, ‘Oh, no. Wait. That’s too far.’ My job was to get people to pay money to see him absolutely destroy me. Harping on his dead friend and manager—sometimes in this world, you go a little bit too far, but I like playing in that uncomfortable territory. That’s where I thrive.”
The Undisputed WWE Champion admitted there was another reason he pushed the rivalry so hard. He’d already lost to Brock Lesnar and The Rock, watched both disappear after beating him, and knew fans had probably noticed the pattern.
“I felt my star kind of dimming as it went on because… I needed to get people to believe that I could beat The Undertaker. Otherwise, they’re just going to be sitting on their hands. If they don’t buy into it—if they don’t believe that I can achieve this—then we’re going to lose a lot of the drama in the match. Again, wrestling Brock and losing, and then he’s not there the next day; wrestling Rock and losing, and he’s not there the next day. To me, even if it’s subconsciously, I think the fans recognize the pattern. I didn’t want that. So I just turned it up. I turned up the disrespect and the Paul Bearer stuff. I turned up the aggression, and I turned up the nastiness to make people believe, ‘Oh, s***, I guess they’re really going to do this. This is the time.’”
Using Paul Bearer’s death wasn’t something Punk took lightly. As it turns out, he didn’t have to ask for permission. Bearer’s sons came to him first.
“They came to me and said, ‘You know what? You have our blessing. Go ahead. Use his name. Do what you’re going to do. He would have loved it.’ So I just said, ‘Are you sure? Because I can get pretty offensive.’ They said, ‘No, go for it.’ So we went for it—stealing the urn, Paul dressing as Paul Bearer… Then we made the urn talk and pulled out all the stops.”
Looking back more than a decade later, Punk believes Paul Bearer deserves far more credit for helping create The Undertaker than many fans realize.
“I don’t think it can be understated how important he was… They went 100%. They said, ‘Okay, we’re going to travel together. We’re going to dress in black at all times. We’re not going to take pictures with fans. We’re going to look crazy and scary.’ They were all in. His commitment to the act was infectious. It made you believe. Even if they were only 90% committed, it would have fallen apart around the edges. They committed 100% to that gimmick, and it helped the entirety of his career. What Paul Bearer put into the character helped me that night. I only hope I did him justice. He gave me the ability to be a great villain that night and helped me do my job—to get people to think, ‘Oh, this is it. Taker is going to lose. He doesn’t have Paul Bearer. This is it. This is the end of the road.’ That helped us tell the story we needed to tell.”
More than 13 years later, Punk still believes the WrestleMania 29 classic deserves to be mentioned alongside the biggest matches of his career—and maybe a lot more often than it is.
Do you think CM Punk vs. The Undertaker at WrestleMania 29 is one of the most underrated WrestleMania matches ever? Let us know in the comments below.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
