CM Punk's "pipe bomb" promo in the summer of 2011 may have been the best thing to happen in WWE for a decade. It was completely unscripted, honest, reality-based, and it caught almost everybody completely off guard. Punk's promo got himself, and WWE, a ton of mainstream attention. When Punk then defeated John Cena to win the WWE Championship at Money in the Bank 2011, it felt like he was the hottest star that WWE had seen since the days of the Attitude Era. WWE continued to build upon Punk's momentum until the fall of 2011, when he ran into Triple H. It was public knowledge that the two didn't exactly like each other, and because of that, there was a sense of realness to their promos leading up to their one-on-one clash at Night of Champions. Originally, Punk was supposed to wrestle Kevin Nash, however, according to the Wrestling Observer, once Nash found out that he was scheduled to lose to Punk, he decided he didn't want to do the match. At the time, Triple H hadn't wrestled in roughly five months, so when you add that onto the fact that Punk was the hottest star in the company, that would tell you that CM Punk should be walking out as the winner. That was not the case. Triple H ended up defeating Punk for no apparent reason, and then he just went right back into semi-retirement, not wrestling again until WrestleMania seven months later.
Aaron Sass is a professional writer living in Corvallis, Oregon. He has previously done work with The Inquisitr, Examiner, and The Portland Tribune, covering the NBA, professional wrestling, and mixed-martial-arts.
