It was a little over six years ago that WWE ran a storyline revolving around CM Punk, Kevin Nash, and Triple H but while the signs back then pointed to Punk battling Nash, we ended up getting to see the Best in the World take on The Game at Night of Champions in a match which both Punk and many wrestling fans believe killed his momentum dead when he came out on the losing end.
During a recent interview, Nash weighed in on the angle and revealed that while Nash may have cost Punk his WWE Championship, it was never actually the plan for the two to square off.
"I don’t know if [WWE] wanted it to happen. When I came back … I had never been there when it was ‘this is your script and you have to follow it.’ So I get there, and I’m reading [Punk’s lines] and he’s burying me, and I don’t have any rebuttals. It’s one of those situations — and you know, [Triple H] is one of my best friends on Earth.
"If you remember the scenario, I came down and stuck Punk, and then [Alberto] Del Rio came down and [used] his Money in the Bank [contract] and took his belt. So [Punk] comes out the next Monday, and cuts this promo about, ‘Laugh out loud, I heard you were dead, Kliq Kliq Kliq, your knees,’ and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Let me get this right: I just cost you the world title, and you’re just going to do standup up here, and bury me because I’m old?’ … If it was 1997 right now, you’d be with the marks, out in the crowd, not standing up here. Because we didn’t let the marks wrestle back then.
"[I would have preferred to say] I’m old? Okay, it’s probably going to take me a minute and a half to get out there, so … I’m gonna give you three [options]: you go in the back, call it a day; you wait til I get out there and say ‘I apologize, Mr. Nash’ and then go in the back; or third, we’re off script, let’s see what you’ve got.
"I would’ve liked to see what he would’ve done if I would’ve just went up there and just bear pawed him in the side of the face. But Paul was the boss. They asked me to come back … they said, ‘Will you stick him at SummerSlam?’ I said yeah. That’s all I was supposed to do. I wasn’t supposed to stick around."
If you've been a wrestling fan for long, this level of disorganisation from WWE probably won't surprise you. Punk vs. Nash definitely had the potential to be a fun match, of course, but he was out of his prime back in 2011 so the now UFC Superstar battling Triple H probably was the better option (even if it didn't work out particularly well for Punk). What do you guys think of these comments?