10 Wrestlers Who Stopped Trying (But WWE Pushed Anyway)
5. CM Punk - 2013
To bring into focus the extent to which CM Punk abandoned all of the f*cks, consider that, on a day off, he was so in love with professional wrestling and its future that he wrestled Dean Ambrose in Florida Championship Wrestling in 2011. Punk desperately wanted change, and he put the next generation of WWE talent over before they even entered WWE proper.
Just over two years later, Punk was pitted against Ambrose once more as part of a three-on-one handicap match at TLC '13. This was a Punk divorced from himself. He was no longer driven, or even interested. Depressed and battered, he entered a drab performance in which it was abundantly clear that he had accepted his lot. Positioned somewhere between the true main event and “B+ Player” territory, the defeats to The Rock, the Undertaker and Brock Lesnar clarified everything for him.
Though promised an elusive victory over a part-time headliner at WrestleMania XXX, Punk, in total unappeasable defiance mode, read the gesture as more beneficial to his opponent: Triple H. To Punk’s mind, the title of this list is only half accurate.
Punk saw the writing on the wall - on which K E E P R O M A N S T R O N G was written - and “quieted” WWE months later.