10 Times WWE Destroyed Something Brilliant
6. The Summer Of Punk
The most irritating aspect of the legendarily botched 2011 Summer of Punk angle - worse than the Vince Russo-level Kevin-Nash-txts-himself swerve - was that the talent pool was virtually a puddle. R-Truth had just headlined a pay-per-view in the pre-Network era. The company sorely needed a new white-hot megastar. CM Punk helpfully made himself a megastar - and then WWE reduced him to a simmer. Great stuff.
CM Punk in his equally legendary Pipebomb promo, cut sans regulation to promote his WWE title shot against John Cena at the Money In The Bank pay-per-view, suggested that he wanted to leave WWE with the company's top prize and defend it elsewhere. Maybe in Ring of Honor. Maybe in New Japan Pro Wrestling. That didn't happen. He barely even left; Punk returned to WWE eight days after he departed. In the meantime, WWE more or less retconned the stipulation by simply debuting a new WWE Championship.
The dearth of talent is why the angle hit the skids. Bluntly, there was nobody in position to deputise with even a fraction of Punk's momentum or Cena's star power. That explained the sudden about-face, but not the subsequent disaster, in which Punk feuded with and partnered (!) Triple H (!) in the space of a month.
WWE could actually pull something like this off today, given their relationships with the likes of EVOLVE and PROGRESS - but even if they couldn't back then, transferring Punk's renegade act to WWE stalwart The Miz was unforgivable.