He was always going to be number 1 on this list, wasn't he? The exact details of his departure are still unknown, but it's looking more and more like CM Punk has retired for good. Well, at least for now. And while it's true that WWE have coped with his departure better than most expected, there's no doubt that adding CM Punk to a wrestling product will inevitably improve it. It has been said that Punk lost his momentum when he dropped his WWE Championship to The Rock at the 2013 Royal Rumble, but that's not true. The rematch at Elimination Chamber was excellent, and he and Heyman's work in the build-up to his match with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania was incredible. What really knocked his momentum was that, after taking some time off to heal up after Wrestlemania, Punk returned at the Payback event in his home town of Chicago. Which meant that he had no choice but to return as a babyface. The resulting few months of him feuding with Paul Heyman ended up being underwhelming as, once the amazing SummerSlam match with Brock Lesnar was over, he had no real opponents left. Ryback and Curtis Axel were never going to be threats to Punk. So he had to hover there in the upper mid-card, stuck in his own little world separate from Daniel Bryan's Authority story. Stuck with no hope of realising his dream of main eventing at Wrestlemania. When CM Punk left, he robbed us of the next phase of heel CM Punk. He revels in the heel environment. Whether singing to Rey Mysterio's daughter, or preaching between every entrant of the Royal Rumble, or mocking Jerry Lawlor's heart attack, or emptying out Paul Bearer's ashes, or The Pipe Bomb. Perhaps the greatest heel in modern wrestling is now getting the most heat of his career by simply depriving us of his work. All that's left for us to do is to hope that he's happy enough and healthy enough in whatever he's doing right now that one day he'll want to come back. And that when he does, we must hope that it's not long before he's doing something so despicable that we can't help but boo him out of the building. Let us all raise a glass of Pepsi and toast the Best In The World. When you're ready Punk, please come home.
Michael Palmer is a contributor at whatculture.com and thelineofbestfit.com, and he probably likes WWE slightly more than most people would call "healthy".
