As WWE continues its international tour leading up to the Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia, fans in Northern Ireland were given a RAW to remember this past Monday night on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The main event featured countryman Finn Bálor challenging CM Punk for the World Heavyweight Championship.
Though some fans were confused with WWE's placement of the match in terms of relevance (outside of the Belfast angle), Bálor and Punk delivered with a dramatic and action-packed fight down to the wire. The home crowd was disappointed in the result, but they tipped their cap to the two professionals.
Punk put Bálor to sleep after a wild sequence and deprived his opponent of his second-ever world title win (and first since 2016 — when Bálor defeated Seth Rollins at SummerSlam but had to vacate the belt the next day due to an injury).
The loss was especially painful as Bálor fans remembered that sobering reality, and it didn't help that Punk sent a hilarious (but disrespectful) warning shot the day before on one of Bálor's Instagram posts.
Bálor, pictured with his 94-year-old grandmother, paid tribute to his home country as he prepared for his heavyweight title match with a message on IG, and Punk left a comment saying "Got a GTS for each of ya." Whether he hit granny with the GTS is still unclear, but Bálor got one on Monday night with Punk winning the battle inside and out of the ring.
This is the type of stuff that should spur longtime rivalries, but it's clear that the feud won't go beyond the last two episodes of Raw. Punk shook hands and acknowledged Bálor's valiant effort to the crowd, which was a wholesome moment after the deflating outcome, but everybody knows this was essentially filler to get the show moving on the road to Wrestlemania.
Bálor will return to his shenanigans with the Judgment Day and Punk will probably get wrapped up in some more nonsense with The Vision, with the Royal Rumble hopefully generating some better storylines after next Saturday. That's why Punk jokingly threatening Bálor's grandmother with a GTS holds greater weight here — it was a savage but temporary jab that allowed him the last word after he retained his belt.
And it's yet another blow to Bálor fans, who have suffered mostly heartbreak since his acension to WWE in 2014. It's genuinely unknown what's next for Bálor given how disjointed his storyline has been over the past year or so, but it's more than likely any upper-echelon titles will be out of the discussion, with Punk delivering the final blow on the mat (and on social media).