5 Pre-WWE CM Punk Controversies You Need To Know About

3. Crowd Plants In OVW

Punk prospered in OVW under Heyman's guidance and became one of the former ECW owner's favourites. Heyman had watched Punk in ROH for years and was already a fan before he came to the developmental league. It should come as no surprise that Heyman tried everything he possibly could to get Punk over with the OVW crowd so that Punk would catch the attention of WWE bigwigs (he did make Punk OVW Champion after all). Apparently this included Heyman putting plants in the OVW crowd to start chants for Punk. Now, you might think that this is a pretty ingenious way for Heyman to make Punk look more popular than he actually was, but this didn't set well with the rest of the OVW roster who saw it as unfair and preferential treatment. Rene Dupree elaborated on this story in an RF Video shoot interview, saying that Punk was 'Heyman's boy' and calling it 'cheap heat'. It seems that Punk, as Heyman's pet project, pissed a lot of people off on his way to WWECW. Punk has complained about a lot of things and, while he wasn't happy to be going to OVW in the first place, he can't complain about how Heyman treated him during his stay there.