10 WWE Stars That Benefited From Changing Brands
5. CM Punk To Smackdown (2009)
Smackdown spared Punk a summer and fall of working with disinterested guest hosts that only served to make Raw more unwatchable than a Faces of Death video.
By being saved, Punk would reinvent himself on Smackdown as another savior of sorts. Drawing upon his "I'm straight-edge and better than YOU" mantra of his indies past, Punk almost immediately feuded with Jeff Hardy over Hardy's questionable lifestyle in an angle that would hit close to home following Hardy's September 2009 arrest.
Punk made himself over into a bearded deity, providing brilliant wide-eyed sermons about the virtues of a vice-free life. His crazed speeches cast away his lifeless babyface run with the company, and set Punk on a course to become an undisputed main event rival to John Cena by 2011.