8 Incredible Ideas WWE Abandoned IMMEDIATELY

In the pantheons of "what if..." dream matches, they don't come much bigger than The Voice Of The Voiceless vs the Texas Rattlesnake. Two of the straightest shooters in the history of wrestling promos, a hell-raising drinker vs a straight-edge superstar, works on just about every conceivable level, and for one glorious moment in time, it felt like a viable possibility.

Having already had a tense and enjoyable face-to-face on an All-Star Night episode of Raw back in June 2011, Stone Cold and CM Punk were paired together for a sit-down interview with Jim Ross to promote the WWE '13 video game from 2K. The fallout of this pulsating clash of eras was so nuclear that it's still spoken about as a sliding doors moment to this day. 

Steve Austin was 48 at the time of this interview, and that's less than a year older than CM Punk is right now. It felt like a plausible encounter, and there's every chance that it courted as much interest (and money) as The Rock and John Cena. If Vince McMahon had believed in Punk as much as he did Cena, you have to think he'd have made Austin an offer to get this job done, but instead, it's left to rot in the "what could have been" pile forever.