10 Cringeworthy Worked Shoots In Wrestling History
5. "Phil Brooks And Paul Levesque"
Charles Montgomery Punk's pipe bomb is one of the finest examples of a worked shoot landing perfectly. With the right combination of talent, presentation, and subject matter, Punk's tell-all about his grievances with WWE captivated audiences and made them believe in something in wrestling again.
However, even Punk was not immune to a worked shoot not working. Months later, Chick Magnet Punk was embroiled in a feud with Triple H, owing to Punk's anti-authoritarian streak colliding with Hunter's position as Chief Operating Officer.
In the go-home segment before Night of Champions 2011, Punk and Hunter had a spirited verbal debate that, for the most part, was fairly good. The two traded rhetoric about whether or not certain types of people were allowed to succeed in WWE, as well as other topics fans debated for years.
However, they overdid it in the end when Punk flat-out said "This isn't CM Punk talking to Triple H, this is Phil Brooks talking to Paul Levesque."
By forcing a line that's meant to elicit an "Oh my god, this is a shoot!" reaction, all you do is hammer home the message that this is, in fact, a phony wrestling angle: which it was... well, sort of. Obviously, we know now that Hunter and Punk had actual tension in real life, but that was not communicated at the time. What was communicated at the time was WWE flying too close to the sun.