Source: The Post and Courier, Charleston SC
WWE is rolling into town Monday night fully loaded with a nationally televised Raw and star power galore. The event, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the North Charleston Coliseum, will feature performers from both the Raw and ECW brands.
Among the many stars on the show is an ECW grappler who, while not yet exactly a household name, is one of the most promising performers on the entire WWE roster.
Twenty-eight-year-old C.M. Punk is one of the newest shooting stars on the wrestling horizon, although he’s made quite a splash working for independent promotions over the past several years.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Punk took a riskier route to the mat business, getting his feet wet in a backyard wrestling federation in the mid-’90s before being trained in a more conventional manner.
“I wanted to be a wrestler ever since I was very, very small. It was all I ever wanted to do,” says Punk, whose real name is Phil Brooks. “My dad was an electrician, so I guess I was supposed to go to trade school and do that, but I never wanted to. I thought it made a lot more sense to try to do something I loved, or at least give it a shot. I didn’t know how to do it, so me and my friends would jump around in the back yard after pay-per-views and beat each other up.”
Punk eventually found mainstream success in the Ring of Honor promotion where he became one of that company’s most respected and accomplished performers.
Punk spent less than a year in the developmental Ohio Valley Wrestling territory, where he won the OVW heavyweight title, the OVW TV title and a share of the OVW tag-team title. He made his ECW debut in June and hasn’t looked back.
Punk, signed to a WWE contract in 2005, says it was a major step toward achieving a lifelong goal.
“Getting signed was just a process. I think the dream-come-true part happened at Survivor Series, hopefully again Sunday and eventually at Wrestlemania. That’s what I’m here for … to get those moments.”
Punk showed he belonged by making an immediate impact in ECW and earning the support of some of the toughest, most demanding fans in wrestling.
“That’s what a lot of the ECW originals say. I’ve been accepted at the old ECW Arena, the Hammerstein Ballroom and now Philadelphia seems to like me. From Tazz to Paul Heyman to Rob Van Dam, Sabu and Tommy Dreamer, they all say I’m the only guy they’ve seen so far who would actually fit like a glove in the old ECW.”
Punk realized when he signed with WWE that he was finishing up one chapter only to begin another.
“It was bittersweet, but I knew that I had to move on. That was totally my choice. I had done everything that I could possibly do there (Ring of Honor), and I needed more challenges. I like to be challenged on a daily basis. I wanted to see if I could make it here in WWE. I got in the best shape I possibly could, and I got a bunch of bookings for extra work in dark matches. I just tried to give them no excuse why they shouldn’t hire me.”
Ticket prices for Monday night’s show at the North Charleston Coliseum, are $41, $31, $26 and $21 (plus applicable fees). Tickets are available at the Coliseum box office, all Ticketmaster outlets (including select Publix grocery stores), online at ticketmaster.com or charge at 554-6060.
–George’s Sports Bar, 1300Savannah Highway, will air ECW’s December to Dismember pay-per-view at 8 p.m. tonight. Cover charge is $7.
–Pro wrestling icon Roddy Piper has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was scheduled to begin undergoing treatment immediately.
Piper recently was pulled from WWE’s European tour and sent home after experiencing back discomfort. Doctors later found a cancerous tumor on a disc in his spine. Piper will be undergoing radiation therapy in the coming weeks to control the malignant cells that are causing the cancer.
“It seems like I have been fighting someone, something, someplace, in some manner, my whole life. But this fight is one I am gonna win,” Piper, 52, wrote on his Web site.
Piper, who has been wrestling since he was a teenager and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, is married with four children.
Lymphoma accounts for about five percent of all cases of cancer in the United States.
–Ric Flair’s brutal beatdown last week on Raw spells bad news for his legion of fans who looked forward to his local appearance Monday night.
Flair won’t be at the Coliseum for this week’s Raw (“That’s sort of like Christmas without Santa Claus in my book,” laments local Flair fan Jack Hunter), but faces a bigger battle – the settlement portion of a nasty divorce case – beginning at 9 o’clock Tuesday morning in a Charlotte courtroom. The proceedings could last as long as two weeks – a week in front of a judge followed by another week in front of a jury of 12.
–WWE diva Candice Michelle, who suffered a nose injury as a result of a kick from Victoria at Raw Monday night, underwent surgery to repair a deviated septum.
—Batista and John Cena will meet King Booker and Dave Finlay in the main event of WWE’s Armageddon pay-per-view Dec. 17 in Richmond, Va.
The current plan is for The Undertaker to put his undefeated Wrestlemania streak on the line against Batista at next years’ event.
