The BEST Wrestling Moment Every Year (1989 - 2026)
16. 2011 | Pipebomb
CM Punk’s ‘Pipebomb’ promo changed everything.
He articulated every frustration shared by WWE hate-watchers. CM Punk had credibility. The lapsed fans who wanted WWE to be good and different before NXT and AEW brought back wrestling to large arenas actually thought that he could enact change - and that he ultimately could not bring about that change acted as an epiphany of sorts. Well, bugger. WWE sucks and is always going to suck. Great.
The Pipebomb could not be shaken because Punk’s words became more prescient and more insightful with each passing week and every infuriating burial. Daniel Bryan in the end was, like Punk, just another spoke in the wheel.
As a piece of business in and of itself, it was amazing. Punk, always a time traveller of a heel capable of casting the old magic, said the things he was not meant to say and said them with the hypnotic, stirring conviction of a revolutionary.
The Pipebomb was a work of fiction ultimately designed to sell a pay-per-view, but in an indirect way, it drove many people to venture outside of WWE. This stuff did not actually fly with hardcore WWE fans, who were obviously happy with the product. Ratings dipped. The Nexus was hotter in 2010 week-by-week because fans were supposed to jeer their attempts to destroy the company. The civil culture war of 2011 didn’t work for WWE. That’s actually a huge understatement, given the altered course of modern history.
A good promo creates a fan for life; the Pipebomb, in time, created an entire market.