10 Wrestling GOATs With ONE Fatal Flaw
1. CM Punk
GOAT credentials:
With a mind as sharp as a diamond, Punk was a magician at getting over. How well wrestling ages as a form is hotly debated. Dave Meltzer holds the opinion that wrestling constantly surpasses itself, in no small part because wrestlers of a bygone time only worked for that crowd on that night, but Punk's matches and storylines will stand the test of time. Everything he did mattered and informed itself. When he sold a limb, you could study that limb frame-by-frame and watch, locked in, as he struggled through it. His episodic mastery will be missed hugely in AEW. The man knew how to tell a story - but he was never not the story, either...
Fatal flaw:
Being CM Punk, bluntly.
The total inability to not do things his own way is what drove CM Punk to and away from wrestling stardom. This is what made Punk Punk. His top-rope elbow drop looked like trash, but he had to do it. Nobody was going to tell him otherwise. If he didn't have that belief within himself, he wouldn't have changed pro wrestling. With Punk, a paradox of a man, the flaw is a strength and vice versa.
Yes, Punk could have played nicely and realised that Collision was as good as it was going to get for him and his prized freedom of expression and top star status - but without that boundless conviction and sense of mischief, he would not have sat cross-legged and told WWE down the lens that it sucked.