CM Punk just quit the WWE.

[DevilRising]

He is one of my favorite wrestlers, but honestly, I cannot blame him, and neither can any of you in good conscience.

The WWE product is absolute drizzling shit, and has been for years. That point was only further driven home by one of the absolute worst PPVs I've ever seen in my life, Royal Rumble 2014. The mere fact that Batista, a muscle-bound head-case who has been gone for 3-4 fucking years, gets to come back, win the Rumble, and automatically main event WM30, is both disgusting and pathetic.

I was a huge WWF/E fan from 1996 through, easily, 2007-2008. It was somewhere around there that I really started getting tired of their stale product, and after being the kind of fan who wouldn't miss a Raw or Smackdown for a solid decade, I gradually started watching less and less. My favorite wrestler, Undertaker, is long past his expiration date, I love the guy, he WAS amazing. But I'm ashamed that even if it's just once a year, he keeps dragging his aging, injured body into the ring for "one more match", even though he said back in 2001 that he didn't want to be one of those guys like Hogan or Flair that hung on too long, that became a shadow of their former selves in the ring. Yet that's exactly what he's done. He should have at least retired after going 20-0. At this juncture, it's just getting ridiculous, and he looks out of shape and awful with a shaved head. It's just very hard to see him anymore, I wish he would have retired with some grace while he was still "on top".


Another of my favorites, Edge, was forced to retire because of his neck. Others like Christian are barely used, or used badly, many like MVP, John Morrison, Shane Helms, Carlito, Mr. Kennedy, etc. are long gone.

And while Punk and Bryan have been the two wrestlers who have honestly kept me even remotely interested in the current WWE product, they have really fucked up with both of those guys big time. It's as if Vince and Co. literally don't know or don't care what the audience wants anymore. The whole point of professional wrestling, is for a promoter to pay close attention to how the audience reacts to certain wrestlers. If they start cheering a lot for one in particular, it behooves good common business sense to push the shit out of that guy, because that is the guy the fans want to see. That's what originally happened with Hogan. It's what happened with Bret Hart, and (sadly) Shawn Michaels. It's what happened with Undertaker, even though they didn't keep him near the top in his prime nearly enough. It's what happened with Austin and Rock and even Mick Foley. It's what happened at one point with Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, as well as Chris Jericho, and Edge.

But the real problem here, is that going into WM30, the biggest show they'll have done since WM20 (which by the way was actually a great PPV), the top three guys they're pushing, are Orton, Cena, and a just-returned Batista. The same fucking three guys they had on top literally a decade ago. The same three guys that between them have 32 world title reigns. To put that in perspective, Austin, Rock and Foley between them had 19, 17 if you don't count Rock's two WCW/World title runs during the Invasion storyline, and 15 if don't count the last two times Rock has held the WWE championship, once coming back to hold it for a month just to put Brock Lesnar over, and the other just to have to lose to Cena at WM29. Regardless, 32 world championships between three guys is pretty fucking ridiculous, and it gets even more ridiculous if you want to include HHH's, the guy who is now running the show, own world title runs, most of which happened in that same decade.

There's a serious problem when you've utterly shit the bed and wasted THE two most over stars your company has had in the past few years. CM Punk was red lava hot after his infamous "pipe bomb" promo, and they had a real opportunity there to have their next "Austin" type figure, a guy the fans loved no matter what he did, an anti-authority figure who bucked the system and didn't give a fuck. They could have and should have pushed Punk to the fuckin' moon for the next several years after that promo. Instead, they pushed him for the next few months, before pushing him to the background. Yes, he had an over year-long WWE title reign, but that's the biggest joke of all, because while that is a major accomplishment, you wouldn't know it the way WWE treated their champion during all that time. He was rarely ever on the main event of Raw, let alone PPVs. Instead, he was pushed to the midcard defending the belt, while the programs WWE pushed to the forefront were Brock Lesnar vs. Cena, and Lesnar vs. HHH, etc. Then they turned him heel just so he could lose the belt to Rock, just so Rock could face Cena (pre-advertised a year in advance, for the second year in a row), at WM.

They totally shit the bed with Punk, and then they did the same thing with Bryan. "Daniel Bryan" has been one of the most popular, over stars they've had over the last couple years, especially this past year, and yet did they do the right thing, and cap off this stupid Corporation rehash storyline by having Bryan eventually overcome getting constantly screwed, and beating the bad guys, winning the belt back, and having his day in the sun? Nope. In fact they had him lose clean to Orton, and then quickly pushed him into the background so that Orton could feud with Cena, the guy he's feuded with 113 times in the past.

So...............yeah. I know I'm on a rant. But the bottom line is, I don't blame Punk one bit. And honestly, even though it's not really in his personality, I wouldn't blame Bryan Danielson for quitting either. In fact that'd be funny as fuck, for WWE to lose it's two most popular young stars, because Vince and HHH are so goddamn shortsighted that they can't see fan reaction for what it really is: People want to see Punk and Bryan on top. People would go APESHIT if Punk and Bryan got what they deserved, and main evented WM30. But that's not going to happen, because now apparently Punk has quit, and WWE would rather force the same stars from ten years ago down fans' throats, because, ironically enough, they do literally seem to think that that is "what's best for business".

Except maybe not..........fans seem to be reaching a breaking point. They rightfully booed the shit out of Orton vs. Cena, and booed the shit out of Batiasta winning the Rumble. Wouldn't that be something, if 70,000+ fans booed the shit out of the main event at Wrestlemania? And with Punk gone, it's not as if fans aren't going to know he's gone, and aren't going to know why. If Bryan continues getting fucked, or worse, eventually also walks out, there just may well be a sizable contingent of fans that walk away from WWE with them. And honestly.....THAT would be best for business. Perhaps that is what it would take, for WWE to finally stop taking their fans, and their hardest working young stars, for granted.