10 Things We Never Thought We Would See In WWE In The 2010s

7. CM Punk Legitimately Quitting WWE

Before the dawn of the decade, CM Punk was just another guy on the roster. Had you not been familiar with his work on the independent scene, you would have assumed he was a generic babyface based on his early WWE career. Granted, he was always a great wrestler, but nothing stood out about him, mostly due to how he was booked. He was set up to fail on ECW, especially after the departure of his good friend Paul Heyman, but he gave the office a reason not to fire him by getting over with the audience. His fluke of a World Heavyweight Championship reign in the summer of 2008 didn't help matters, but he did reinvent himself by preaching his straightedge lifestyle and targeting beloved babyfaces such as Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio. Had his WWE career ended there, he likely wouldn't have been remembered as an all-time great. But his work from 2011 and beyond was magical if nothing else, specifically the famous worked shoot angle in June. No one thought Punk was capable of cutting such a promo (with the exception of those who followed his indy career), but he turned a lot of heads that day when he almost immediately became one of WWE's hottest commodities in many years. That alone was shocking, but how he ultimately left the company in January 2014 was what surprised people the most. He had his final match at the 2014 Royal Rumble and didn't appear on Raw the next night before news broke later in the week he had walked out. He stayed silent on the matter until that November when he revealed on Colt Cabana's podcast he was fired on his wedding day. Perhaps he would have resurfaced on WWE TV eventually to give a final farewell (his contract was legitimately expiring in July) had things not unfolded the way they did?