10 WWE Careers That Were Transformed In One Year
9. CM Punk - 2011
CM Punk was a made man the second his microphone was cut out midway through talking about WWE's "Be A Star" campaign, so powerful were the words he'd spoken before that.
The "Pipe Bomb", much like Stone Cold Steve Austin's King Of The Ring coronation speech, didn't flatten every hurdle for the 'Voice Of The Voiceless' despite the instantly iconic moments it made in its aftermath.
Blind and deaf to the magic of Money In The Bank in Chicago or even the magnificent verbal sparing between Punk, John Cena and Vince McMahon that formally set their July 2011 match up, the political wheels within the organisation began moving in the opposite direction to the new WWE Champion just days after he won the belt.
But Punk won the year, no matter how many intelligence-insulting times he lost along the way. Wrapping 2011 with the title yet again, his November victory mostly erased the obvious attempts to bury or marginalise him in the months prior.