A Confederacy of Assholes: An American Story

 Photo stolen from Bleacher Report because it was the first one that came up when I image searched.

The world of combat sports (and fake combat sports, although who can really tell the difference anymore?) is seedy and degenerate, filled with hucksters, carnival barkers, fuck-ups and reprobates, misfits and wild souls who can’t live amongst decent folk. They are the descendants of freak show geeks, traveling the highways of America looking to astound the next town full of rubes with a touch of blood and a whole lot of good old fashioned ritualized violence. In short, that shit is about as American as it gets.

Of course, that’s why people love it so much, even the weird fake shit that no one will admit to in public. But fuck all that, it is a sad pose by sad people too afraid of being made fun of, and . . . you know what? This wasn’t supposed to turn into this so let’s just start over, shall we? Okay? Okay.

CM Punk, pro-wrestler extraordinaire and renowned curmudgeon, signed to fight professionally for the UFC on Saturday, and . . . yeah, I don’t blame you for being confused. I mean, that shit’s just weird. It would sort of be like Tom Cruise bursting into the Pentagon and announcing that he’s got this shit just because he whipped up on some Russians in Top Gun. Of course, Tom Cruise is just insane enough to actually try something like that, so maybe that isn’t the best analogy. Hail Xenu.

Or maybe it is. After all, if there is a fake fighting dude with that sort of irrational self-confidence it is CM Punk. You see, CM Punk is a gigantic asshole. I say that almost in admiration. Almost. The dude walks around with a gigantic chip perpetually on his shoulder, and it’s not really all that hard to imagine him bursting into Dana White’s office and announcing “I got this shit, Dana!” while White immediately begins calculating the best way to make the most money before Punk gets his head removed like a Pez dispenser.

I mean, let’s face it, people are going to tune in to see this freak show. You might scoff at that, but never underestimate how many people love pro wrestling and will want to watch Punk either succeed or fail. Pro wrestling is hard to understand if you don’t grow up watching it. That’s because it’s essentially a passion play for children, old people and idiots. No offense. I’m one of those idiots. But that’s because I was one of those children.

It’s hard to explain the appeal to people and that’s largely because I can’t explain it to myself. I could get defensive and start bellowing bullshit about Shakespeare or “You don’t understand how athletic these dudes really are!” but that is largely posturing. The truth is that it is a cartoonish theater of the absurd, and even when it is at its worst, I can usually enjoy it ironically. At its best, I get swept up into it like a water-brained idiot. And usually, I reside in some weird purgatory between those two extremes, mostly hoping that maybe, just maybe, that something will catch fire and I’ll lose myself to the rhythm of the beat. That’s because at its best, there might not be anything better than pro-wrestling.

I know that sounds hyperbolic and insane, but it’s true. When it gets it completely right, pro-wrestling taps into something primal and ridiculous and child-like, and again, I could get really obnoxious here and start talking about universal themes and human nature and narrative structure, but I am not a completely loathsome asshole and so I’ll just say that sometimes pro-wrestling is just really fucking fun.

So people will watch this CM Punk fiasco, and Dana White will light cigars with burning $100 bills and laugh as Punk is concussed and taken away to receive speech therapy. And that’s the irony of this whole goddamn thing. You see, CM Punk is escaping Vince McMahon and his WWE empire largely because Vince McMahon is a notorious asshole. Just like Punk. And assholes, well, they tend not to get along with each other. That shit is just inevitable.

And so it was between Punk and McMahon. Punk’s litany of complaints is long and occasionally ridiculous, ranging from the almost hilariously petty to the “holy shit, that’s fucked up.” Whether it was bitching about how he was used as a performer, or getting fucked over by shady doctors who failed to diagnose a dangerous staph infection, Punk wasn’t having any more of that shit. The last straw came when he says he was fired on his wedding day via Fed-Ex (which is fucking hilarious in a Mr. Burns kind of way), which came months after he said “fuck this” and walked out of the company.

The whole thing is a huge “he said/he said” fiasco and the one thing that seems obvious is that it is a natural result of assholes trying to work together. Assholes gonna asshole, you know? But, like I said, that’s what makes this move so ironic. You see, Dana White is just as big an asshole – if not more – than Punk and McMahon. Basically, Punk quit his job because his boss was an asshole, and then went to work for another asshole. That’s pretty much the most American story there is. It is at the heart of our collective identity. We are constantly trying to escape one asshole and throwing ourselves into the embrace of another, all the while overlooking one horrific truth: we’re assholes too.

That still doesn’t make this any less ridiculous. Or hilarious. I mean, come on, the Punk/Dana White blowup is inevitable. Within a year, these two will probably be cutting dueling promos on each other via podcast about money, health issues and god only knows what else. I predict that by December of 2015, we’ll get Dana White calling Punk a “fucking faggot” while Joe Rogan babbles about aliens in the background. And don’t yell at me for that, either. That’s just what Dana White calls everyone. He probably greets his gardener with a pleasant “Howdy, faggot!” each morning. He is a vile and wretched dude who says vile and wretched things.

That should mix nicely with an asshole like CM Punk, a dude who’s so far up his own ass that he is basically an Ouroboros of a human being. You just can’t tell where head and ass begin or end. It is all just one terrible loop of head-ass. Any affront to his dignity – any at all – and he will declare holy war on Dana White.

And that shouldn’t take long to happen. After all, Dana White is notorious for turning on his fighters, especially when it becomes clear that they aren’t going to make him any more money. And while Punk will probably get people to tune in out of morbid curiosity, that is largely a one shot deal that ends with him knocked the fuck out or writhing in pain after some bro with neo-nazi tattoos catches him in a legit version of his own pro-wrestling finisher.

That’s what makes this so hilarious. Punk seems to be the sort of dude who almost fetishizes MMA. He has a white belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which is the lowest rank, but that’s because he refuses any other belt because he subscribes to some ridiculous Mr. Miyagi vision of belts and the martial arts. He thinks he’s being noble, but really he’s just insulting his own sensei. It’s indicative of a dude who wants so very badly to believe in a myth, an idea of what martial arts and MMA represent. It’s totally ass backwards. He’s trying to find himself and nobility and dignity in a sport whose most recognizable public figure and advocate calls everyone a faggot, whose fighters are adorned in those jailhouse white power tats, and whose fans are as ridiculous and horrible as the worst pro-wrestling fans.

This is not a hit-piece on MMA or the UFC. I just wanna get that straight. I’m not judging that shit. Well, I am, but not any more harshly than I judge pro-wrestling, which is just as ugly, just as seedy and just as ridiculous. I just want to point out that it is not the bullshit Shangri La that Punk probably fetishizes it as. It will turn on him and it will spit him out and it will disillusion him just as much as the pro-wrestling world did. That’s just what happens when you’re constantly looking for something from the world. It just kicks your ass and mocks you until you are left with no other alternative than to admit that you’re just a bitter asshole.

But ain’t that America? That’s what we do. We race from one end of life to the other, desperately trying to cling to anything that validates our own hyper-idealized self-image, and then we reject and are rejected by those very same things as they fail to live up to our expectations until we end up either old and bitter or old and wise. We either learn or we don’t. We either come to terms with and accept that we’re just assholes trying to make our way in an asshole world, or we keep fighting it and believe that we’re somehow the Last Good Dude in that asshole world.

This particular stop in CM Punk’s own asshole odyssey of self-discovery will probably end in asshole recriminations sooner rather than later. Aside from all the psych 101 bullshit, there’s also the fact that he looks like a beaten down heroin addict. He’s not. He’s actually straight edge, which means he doesn’t drink or do any drugs or anything fun. Still, he constantly looks like a dude who’s coming off a major bender, whose body is constantly on the verge of tapping out and whose bags under his eyes are ready to gain sentience any day now. He is a dude who looks like he has lived life, who’s suffered physically and mentally. The dude always looks worn the fuck out, like life fucked him and left him lying in the bed. I’m not judging him for that. I’m just saying, that is not really conducive to beginning a career in which you’re going to be fighting dudes who have been training to whip ass their entire lives.

Dana White himself says this is not a Brock Lesnar situation, and, well, no shit. Lesnar was a physical freak who made the transition from pro-wrestling to the UFC, and in between he stopped by for a lark with the Minnesota Vikings even though he’d never played organized football. No one is like Brock Lesnar. And even Lesnar ultimately failed! He flashed bright, beat up an old man 75 pounds smaller than him, won a title and then got his ass kicked and ended up back where he started, fake-fighting for WWE. Lesnar also had a championship amateur wrestling background. Punk doesn’t. He has experience rolling around the mats with the famed Gracies and hanging out with Al Bundy himself, Ed O’Neill (yeah, Al Bundy has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and no, I am not even fucking joking) but that’s about it. This won’t end well.

Sure, White seems to already be managing expectations, which is a sign that he’s willing to be patient with this, but I’m guessing that patience extends only so far as people still are willing to pay money to see WWE Superstar CM Punk either shock everyone or get his ass beat by real fighters. That is a novelty that goes away pretty quickly, and once that does, he can either fight or he can’t. That’s all that matters, and if he can’t . . . well, then we’re into Dana White calling him a faggot territory while Punk rages on podcasts about how he was mistreated. Again.

But that’s what makes this story so fascinating, you know? Fascinating and ridiculous. It is the most American of stories. It is a story of an asshole convinced he’s surrounded by assholes out to get him, and today’s savior is just tomorrow’s asshole. That is how we operate as a people, as a culture. It is ingrained in our collective identity. We are a nation of rejects and misfits. Seriously, all of us are here because our ancestors were fuck-ups and/or wild stallions that couldn’t be broken. In short, assholes. That gives us a perpetual chip on our shoulder that we can never shake, and so we bounce between Vince McMahons and Dana Whites and we bitch and we moan and we try to prove to everyone – but most of all to ourselves – that we are actually Righteous and Good, even when we’re making complete fools of ourselves. Especially when we’re making complete fools of ourselves. It’s who we are, and that’s who CM Punk will always be. Good luck to him.