10 Times Wrestlers Told You They Were FINISHED
The End is here, and these wrestlers weren't afraid to show you.
Wrestling doesn't work if the people performing the act don't adhere to the rules placed upon them by the unique universe they inhabit.
This truism should be obvious to anybody reading this article, but like most wrestlers and fans, you're most likely in or adjacent-to the wrestling bubble if you're here. You understand the art of the work and more importantly the magic of it. Immersion is key to all of it, and nothing breaks that more than somebody not going along with the bit.
It's why celebrities have to know what they're getting themselves in for before they physically interject themselves. Fear and/or hate the heel, back the babyface. Whatever you do, take the unreal place in front of you as reality as you now know it, especially if somebody hits you with one of their moves. It won't leave a bruise (and that's the point!), but make it look as if you've just endured the worst pain and suffering imaginable.
Let the wrestlers guide you, they do this for living! They know more than most how to keep the spell cast. And, on occasion, how to break it...
10. CM Punk (2023)
We’d been here before.
Not literally, of course. AEW hadn’t run Wembley Stadium before. Samoa Joe and CM Punk hadn’t had a three and a half star match in a stadium before. Punk hadn’t engaged in a full backstage fight with Jack Perry before. These things were new.
The rest? Sadly less so.
Punk had dropped a bomb or six on All Elite Wrestling in the summer of 2022, and unbeknownst to (most of) one of the largest wrestling crowds in history, he'd played his part in another undetonated going off just minutes earlier. The fight with Perry and whatever else the Wembley cameras caught resulted in the "cause" Tony Khan spoke of when he fired him a week later. The Joe match was going to be the end of the road, and only The Punker knew.
After playing heel to a crowd totally divided on his very presence, Punk turned the mid-match middle fingers into the "I Love You" gesture as he departed following an epic win. It was about as fitting a farewell as could have occurred in hindsight, even if nearly 80,000 people didn't know they were really saying goodbye.