10 Times WWE Dropped The Ball On CM Punk

9. Intercontinental Champion Punk

CM Punk Triple H
WWE.com

CM Punk’s first World Championship reign was a bit of a bust, although the use of ‘a bit’ there is somewhat superfluous. Punk got the "lucky champion" treatment, facing challengers whose entire reason for feuding with him was "you don’t deserve to be champion" before he eventually dropped the title without actually losing it. A shambles, in short.

Punk wasn’t entirely in the doghouse though, and the 'Straight Edge Superstar' was never far away from championship gold. He eventually managed to win the Intercontinental Championship, defeating William Regal for the belt on an episode of RAW in early 2009. A workhorse holding the workhorse title? An excellent idea.

CM Punk and the Intercontinental Championship should have been a match made in heaven. This was a chance to truly establish Punk as a credible in-ring threat, and having him defend the title in a series of competitive matches against other midcard challengers would almost certainly have achieved that most mythical of WWE holy grails; restoring the credibility of the Intercontinental Championship.

Alas, it wasn’t to be, and Punk held the title for all of two months before dropping it to JBL, ostensibly so the big Texan could drop it in record time in his WrestleMania retirement match. A chance missed, for all involved.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.