10 Sweetest Examples Of WWE Payback
6. I’m A Paul Heyman Guy
“You see it's our style to keep it true, I've had a bad year, a lot to go through. I've been knocked out, beat down, black and blue…” - Rancid, ‘Fall Back Down’
In July 2013, Paul Heyman, CM Punk’s representative/best mate, turned on the former WWE Champion to cost him the Money In The Bank ladder match, and therefore a guaranteed shot at the title he’d lost earlier in the year.
As schisms go, that’s your generic heel-turn-into-grudge-match play… except that it’s not, context applying a couple of extra layers here. It was Punk who’d been turned babyface when he returned at Payback in June after three months off: he and Heyman had been nasty, grandiloquent heels together during his epic run at the top.
Heyman was still a villain, through and through, and proved it at Money In The Bank. More than that though, Punk’s backstory made it clear that he was ‘a Paul Heyman guy’: that this was his mentor, the man he owed his WWE career to. What’s more, Punk was a former two time Money In The Bank winner, and the clear kayfabe favourite. That all combined to make the betrayal far more personal, and the stakes that much higher.
The rivalry got even more personal in the lead-up to the big matches: each man was one of the best of his generation on the mic, and the promos were like hot fire. At SummerSlam, Punk found his way to Heyman blocked by Brock Lesnar: the two delivered a blistering near half hour of no disqualification action. Lesnar went over, but the following Monday Punk was back behind the wheel and gunning for Heyman again, with the sneaky rationale that WWE couldn’t afford to keep Lesnar coming back just to save Heyman from a whupping.
Curtis Axel was the next ‘Paul Heyman Guy’ to get in Punk’s face, and then Ryback was next. Punk was forever getting Heyman just where he wanted him, and then being blocked and knocked back. Finally, at 2013’s Hell In A Cell pay-per-view, Punk cornered Heyman on the top of the Hell In a Cell cage. There was nowhere to run: Punk obliterated his former friend and delivered the GTS on top of the cell. Two weeks later on RAW, he'd deliver a post script to a rapturous reception.