15 Wrestlers That Got BANNED From WWE

Not many have the balls to walk into a room with Vince McMahon and Triple H, look them in the eyes and tell them they've had enough and need to go home. In that sense, you have to respect the courage of CM Punk. He was a knackered shell of a performer 24 hours removed from a 49 minute shift in the 2014 Royal Rumble, and he badly needed both a physical break and a mental reset.

So, Punk 'took his ball and went home'. Typically, WWE's reaction to anybody daring to say they needed a breather was to lash out and portray him as a selfish git who spat the dummy big time over creative direction. There's surely some truth to that somewhere, but Punk was out of wrestling as a full-timer for over 7 years after leaving WWE; there's no doubt he needed to get away from it all for his own sanity.

Cruelly, which McMahon would later apologise for, they sent him his termination papers via FedEx on his wedding day. That was twisting the knife, and Punk saw through it. He'd make a shock return on Backstage in 2019, but then debuted in AEW come 2021. Things got...dramatic under Tony Khan's watch, and Punk eventually made a surprise WWE comeback at Survivor Series 2023.

That once seemed inconceivable. Indeed, Punk and Hunter snapped a wide-eyed 'surprise' picture backstage at Survivors to hammer home just how stunning this jump from AEW > WWE was. There was a time when neither man liked the other, but times (and people) change.

Punk's ban was lifted. Incredibly, he pretty much had his own ban on WWE for years too!