Sorry about this, but it's bugged me since last night. And it will sound awfully mark-ish. Prior to the following, I know it's all just a show and I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief up to a certain point, but two things really bugged me about the whole thing:
1) No. Saying one letter pair the wrong way around was not a disqualification for sobriety. I say "was" because many police forces have dropped this test for a couple of reasons: a) it's difficult even for a sober person to remember the alphabet backwards; b) typically an intoxicated suspect will have just as much trouble saying the alphabet forward as they would backward, so it's unnecessarily difficult for the sober to prove their sobriety when there's an easier way to prove intoxication.
2) Even failing a field sobriety test does not conclusively prove intoxication. A person failing such a test would be requested to provide a urine, breath, or blood sample, with blood being the preferred medium for testing, with a breath test being the least desired as it is the most inconclusive. Even at that, a person could not be required to provide such a test without a warrant (note: this is law in the United States; I'm not nearly so knowledgeable on law outside of the borders of the U.S.). If such a provision existed in WWE policy (no idea if it does or not, mind), the use of alcohol would have to be conclusively proven, therefore requiring a blood, urine, or breath test that showed what I'm guessing to be merely the barest trace of alcohol. Even then, it would be difficult to prove that said alcohol was imbibed in the preceding 24 hours. (Oh, and just put the memory that Stone Cold Steve Austin used to down between 6 and 12 "Steveweisers" on live television during WWE events during his career out of your mind.) The main idea here is that it is almost impossible to prove that a person took in alcohol "in the 24 hours prior to a WWE show" as the provision that Eve brought up mentioned. Had the title been stripped (and if it were all real, of course, which we're supposed to suppose), CM Punk would have had an extremely actionable claim against John Laurinaitis (as his supervisor in both his roles of GM and Executive Vice President of Talent Relations), Hunter Hearst Helmsley (as COO), Vincent K. McMahon (as Chairman of the Board of Directors of WWE, Inc.), Linda McMahon (I believe she's still CEO, but I could be wrong about that and thence her liability), the members of the WWE Board of Directors (both individually and collectively), and the WWE (as a corporate entity; interesting thing about U.S. law is that corporations are treated as "people" in both legislation and legal liability). Not only could such a suit have been filed due to his being made to surrender the title, he would have also won and been entitled to a large financial reward, or at least settled the case out of court to, again, great personal enrichment.
And for those who want to discuss the "witnessing of Punk's drinking", neither witness apparently actually saw what Punk put in the red plastic cup prior to drinking from it. We did not see what Alex Riley (is he turning heel again? About time.) saw, but all Jericho saw was Punk drinking from said red plastic cup, which he took to be alcohol due to Riley's report to him. By the way, Jericho becomes an easily-impeachable witness given the fact that he had been ordered to receive the title after Punk's surrender of said title.
So, in short, this is probably why Otunga did not appear in the segment. If a Harvard attorney didn't realize the above realities of the case (especially when a simple, old University of Texas-graduated government teacher does), they would take his Harvard degree and slap him across the face with it, work or shoot.
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