10 Times WWE Dropped The Ball On CM Punk

7. Royal Rumble 2014

CM Punk Triple H
WWE.com

Okay, Daniel Bryan should have won the 2014 Royal Rumble, we all know that, but the reality is he wasn’t even in the thing.

Who was the next best option? CM Punk.

Forget the fact that this was Punk’s last appearance in WWE, that this was the straw that rendered the camel’s back inoperable. Forget his own words, that he was done by this point. If not Daniel Bryan, CM Punk was the only logical winner of that match.

In hindsight, the 2014 Royal Rumble suffered from a severe lack of star power. The returning Batista went on to win the thing but the crowd had lost interest in 'The Animal already, so changing things up and having Punk win the Rumble was the only solution. Heck, you could have had Bryan win the title from Orton in the build-up and then headline WrestleMania XXX with CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan.

Perfect world scenarios of course, but this was WWE’s last chance to make amends with one of its most popular and influential performers. That he was illegally eliminated by someone no longer in the match merely adds salt to a wound that will never close.

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.