10 Times WWE Dropped The Ball On CM Punk
8. CM Punk And The Shield
CM Punk’s influence in bringing Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns to the main roster as The Shield is well-documented. It was the then-WWE Champion who lobbied for the three developmental standouts and they were eventually brought up as Punk’s mercenaries, helping him retain the WWE Championship in several matches, and The Shield was quickly established as a main event act.
The three went on to be undoubted success stories in their own way, but it is difficult to look back at the group’s beginning and not feel a sense of frustration with how the Punk side of it all played out. The teased relationship between Punk and The Shield lasted from Survivor Series to Royal Rumble, after which it was revealed that it was, in fact, Paul Heyman who had been paying the Hounds of Justice. The Punk side of things was just sort of dropped.
Even more frustration builds when you take into account that it was the eventual feud with Punk that led to cracks starting to show in The Shield. All of this would have been so much more powerful if the relationship between the four had been more detailed from the get-go, as opposed to the half-baked whispers that we got.