CM Punk: 7 Ways He Changed WWE's Future

6. CM Punk Opened The Door To The Other Side Of At-Will Independent Contractor Employment

For years, one of the negative points of being a professional wrestler in World Wrestling Entertainment is that you're an independent contractor who can be hired and fired at-will by WWE. The lack of insurance and other medical benefits is the evil in this of course, as well as the lack of unionized protections against the ills of being under the management of a corporate entity that isn't necessarily required by law to look out for your best interests. For the better part of five decades, WWE prided itself on a company where a motley crew of individuals who likely could only be professional wrestlers were employed. Can you imagine The Iron Sheik as a bank teller, or say, The Boogeyman as a college professor? No. Of course not. In employing people who sacrificed most other employment options for a career in pro wrestling, WWE had an incredible control on their market and those they employed. The choices for the average disgruntled wrestler in the classic age and for most of the Attitude era were to a) leave the only job you are more than likely equipped to ever successfully hold or b) suck it up, bitch, whine and moan, but abandon all desire of ever leaving for good. Unlike many of WWE's other recent hires, CM Punk does not have a college degree. However, he has amassed considerable wealth and became one of WWE's most unique and marketable personalities in recent memory. Furthermore, he has a breadth of interests outside of the ring, and in owning his own home and maintaining a low cost-of-living, is likely pretty much set from residual checks from his likeness being used in WWE broadcasting for the rest of his life. Thus, CM Punk is possibly a poster child for the 21st century wrestler who enters the industry as a "renaissance man" of sorts, and thus lacks the need to possibly solely depend on wrestling for paychecks forever.