CM Punk, Professional Wrestling Studies Association

Before They Were Superstars: CM Punk and Samoa Joe

June 16, 2017 by prowrestlingstudies_21lb3c

One would become the “Best in the World” and the other the “Samoan Submission Machine,” but before all of their nicknames and accolades, they were simply CM Punk and Samoa Joe. In 2004 they had a trilogy of matches that would make them legends and help make Ring of Honor one of the best independent wrestling promotions in the world.

Samoa Joe was in the midst of a dominating run as the world champ of ROH that spanned most of 2003 and showed no signs of stopping in 2004. He had turned away such challengers as Christopher Daniels, Jay & Mark Briscoe, Homicide, AJ Styles, and many others.

To be honest, Ring of Honor seemed to be running out of challengers for Joe. This is where CM Punk comes in. He and Joe had a non-title match on August 16th where both men were in pretty rough shape. The match ended with Joe beating Punk. Punk had yet to have a world title shot in his time in ROH and in Dayton, OH on June 12th, 2004, at World Title Classic, that would change. Punk and Joe had a match that ended in a 60 minute draw.

Smarks and Convergent Wrestling

January 31, 2020May 27, 2017 by prowrestlingstudies_21lb3c

As part of the project on understanding professional wrestling through the theoretical lens of convergence (i.e. convergent wrestling), I recently wrote out an explanation for how Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I see this concept of convergence being able to describe various aspects of professional wrestling.

Now, being that we are academics, one way we advance our scholarship and our knowledge is by attending and presenting at academic conferences. In order to test out this idea of “convergent wrestling,” we organized two panels that would bring together different researchers whose work on professional wrestling could be considered as using this theoretical lens. We presented the first such panel at the 2015 Central States Communication Association conference. At this panel, I presented this argument for seeing professional wrestling as an example of various convergences, as presented earlier on this blog. Along with my introduction to the idea, several researchers presented their analyses of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), its fans, and its business practices. With their permission, here are these presentations.

The Co-Construction of Kayfabe

January 31, 2020May 27, 2017 by prowrestlingstudies_21lb3c

This blog post expands on the ideas of the co-construction of kayfabe, an idea I presented at the Popular Culture Association 2016 conference in Seattle. For this post, I reflect on a live wrestling event I attended in an attempt to define what my partner, Christopher Olson, and I mean by “convergent wrestling.”

The entire presentation can be heard on Soundcloud, but I will sum up the idea here to address a recent experience with a live wrestling event: AAW‘s “Take No Prisoners” on May 6th, 2016.

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