WWE Hall of Famer Booker T recently shared his thoughts on CM Punk’s massive star power in the pro wrestling industry.
Despite a seven-year absence from the industry, Booker T took to his Hall of Fame podcast to explain why CM Punk’s powerful ability to convince an audience he is actually “The Best In The World” is one of the things that makes him a huge star.
“He’s talented. You know what I mean? And the thing is, CM Punk, you know, looking at it however you want, CM Punk made you feel a certain way by the way, he went out and performed in the ring. He made fans feel a certain way about CM Punk because he had that never say die mentality. And the thing is, was CM Punk the best wrestler? In my opinion, no,” Booker stated. “But dammit, he believed it. And he made you believe it.”
Booker T went on to reference The Rock as a similar example of a performer who had the skill to find what worked and got the fans to buy into it.
“You know, guys like frickin [infamous cult leaders] Jim Jones’s and the David Koresh’s of the world, their talent is to make you believe in them. Are they better than everybody else? As far as, you know what they’re talking about, are they talking about anything different? No. But they make you feel that they are different than anybody that you have ever heard it from. And that’s what wrestlers do. And I take nothing away from the talent that’s out there today. But in order to be that megastar that we’re looking for, it’s not going to be anything that these guys do in the ring at all. We’re missing a lot of that.
“And the thing is, go back and look at The Rock’s career. Go back and look at it because at one point the fans are going, ‘Rocky sucks, Rocky sucks’ and they were serious…. And it was real. You go back and watch Rocky’s character when they were saying that, they could they could see right through The Rock at that point in time. They could see he was fake and phony as he could possibly be. And then when they flip the script on that dude, he took that character and he ran with it and he became frickin what The Rock is today.”
Booker looked back on his own career and said that he wasn’t the best wrestler either, but he learned to be an entertainer and that’s what got the fans to rally around him and embrace him.
“I just look at it from those perspectives, man,” The WWE Hall Of Famer noted. “I’ve been in the position myself when I got the ball. Was I going to run with it or not? My wrestling was–I was okay as a wrestler, but I had to figure out how to be an entertainer. All right. I knew how to make the fans feel a certain way. That was something that was always on my radar, making the fans feel, because I always felt like, man, it’s like kissing your first girlfriend in a certain song was on and now you’re 50. And that song, come on, and what do you think about? It’s because you felt a certain way about it, you know what I mean? So I’ve always looked at wrestling to try to make people feel that way, as opposed to looking at me just go out there and wrestle.”
CM Punk battles “Hangman” Adam Page for the AEW World Championship on May 29 at AEW Double or Nothing in Las Vegas.
Read More: Evil Uno Believes Hangman Page Is The Best World Champion AEW Has Had
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