10 WWE Superstars Who Lost WrestleMania Main Events

1. CM Punk Never Going On Last – WrestleMania 29

The main event for WrestleMania 28 John Cena and the returning Rock was heavily advertised and promoted as ‘Once in a Lifetime’. They broke records as fronting the highest grossing PPV event in professional wrestling history and the match was well-received from fans/critics. The issue with the tagline was WWE replicated and repeated the same match the very next year at WrestleMania 29 when Cena once again went 1-on-1 with The Rock. There were plans to switch this match up though with CM Punk.

Rock and Punk have gone on record as saying there were at one time plans for the main event to incorporate Punk into the mix where it would be Rock vs. Cena vs. Punk in a Triple Threat for the WWE Championship. This was vetoed by WWE higher-ups though. Punk would have fitted in perfectly, given his storied history with Cena and his months-long feud with The Rock over the title at the time. A riled-up Punk instead went on to wrestle The Undertaker at the event.

One of the reasons Punk left the company less than a year later was because WWE refused to book him in a WrestleMania main event. Punk said on the situation at his Starrcast 3 panel: “The WrestleMania main event, I look back at it now, it was like a mechanism in my head. Like, it doesn't f***ing exist. To me, that last WrestleMania I worked, it was evident that I was never going to get that last match.”