10 Things I Hate About CM Punk
3. He Never Gave Us A Proper Goodbye
CM Punk inspired fan fervor like few pro wrestlers before him or since. It might not be particularly fair to think it, but his spontaneous decision on the afternoon of Monday 27th January 2014 to walk out on the WWE left a lot of those fans in the lurch.
Sometimes, wrestlers get invalided out of the business without getting that final, career defining match or angle. Daniel Bryans only the latest guy not to get the send-off he deserved - Christian appears to have wrestled his last match two years ago, and his fans don't even have the closure of knowing whether he's genuinely retired.
Then theres the guys that choose the manner of their departure. For all that hes p*ssed on it since, Ric Flair had the greatest retirement angle a wrestler could hope for, and no one could claim that Shawn Michaels didnt go out on a high, his awkward appearance at WrestleMania 32 notwithstanding.
Punk chose the abrupt manner of his exit, and clearly didn't consider his wrestling legacy or his fans at all when he did so: thats a lot of the reason why people still fantasy book CM Punk returning, why people still daydream about him coming back to save WrestleMania every year.
Despite the rumour mill trying to keep the flame alive, wrestling fans don't tend to hold out much hope that Shawn Michaels will come back to work one more match. However, every year Stone Cold Steve Austin is mercilessly harassed about the possibility of making a comeback. Thats because Michaels essentially booked his own final match to give him and the fans the perfect closure on a legendary career, whereas Austins retirement was a long, drawn out hodge-podge of poor creative and worked firings before his WWE career spluttered to a halt.
Punk never even gave the fans that. He just vanished from TV with no explanation, and then ten months later delivered two podcast appearances in a week in which he set out the true circumstances of his departure in what amounted to a series of angry rants.
I'm not suggesting for a second that he owes the fans that perfect send-off - I'm just offering an explanation as to why it is that he's still a part of the pro wrestling conversation, over two years after he left the industry. His fans never received closure on the mans wrestling career, and that means that many of them refuse to accept that its genuinely over.