When you are an outspoken and opinionated person, people might get annoyed or just flat-out ignore you. But when you are outspoken, opinionated and extremely successful, then youre bound to get under peoples skin. Its just human nature: If you have a colleague who shines at everything he does, brags about it and then tells other people why they arent as good or what theyre doing wrong, hes going to have people staring daggers at him. The same can be said about CM Punk the erstwhile WWE main-eventer who built a following of fans in the past few years that rivaled that of John Cena although it looks like there were more Fruity Pebble-clad kids than adolescents and adults with taped fists and tattoos. Still, Punk built his loyal following by dropping pipebombs speaking his mind in a layered way that everyday fans enjoyed in an Austin-like fashion and that smart fans got on a different level. He took shots at supposed sacred cows in WWE, called superstars by their real names and then backed everything up in the ring. But during his (to-date) nine years in WWE, Punks outspoken ways have surely riled his colleagues. There are plenty of stories floating around some validated, some rumored, some from just good old-fashioned common sense about WWE personnel who have been p****d off at Punk at one time or another, and if his WWE career is indeed winding down with the calendar, then its worth looking at some of those whose skin Punk crawled under.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
