10 Times Wrestlers Told You They Were FINISHED

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.