8. Winning The Extreme Elimination Chamber
Commonly cited as one of the first major mistakes that WWE made with CM Punk, his showing in the Extreme Elimination Chamber match at the new ECW December to Dismember pay-per-view was Vince's way of telling him that he was the boss. Going into the match, Big Show was the ECW Champion and Paul Heyman's plan was to have Punk quickly eliminate Show with the Anaconda vise and then go on to win the title. It was a great idea, Punk was the most over guy in ECW and the people wanted to see him get a world title push. Vince saw things differently. After Punk went backstage and complained to Vince about the choice to have Bobby Lashley win the match, despite being on the WWE roster, Vince punished him by having him be the first one eliminated in the match. The fans reacted negatively and Punk's momentum was killed for a while after that. December to Dismember would go on to have the lowest buy rate in WWE history and is considered to be one of the worst wrestling pay-per-views of all time, Punk winning wouldn't have helped the buys, but it would have certainly helped lessen the critical backlash.