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Punk was basically the first "indy" guy they signed, and so my expectations of him were quite low coming in. I figured Vince would stick him with a shitty gimmick (remember the rumors that he'd debut as a deaf wrestler?) or otherwise not be interested in pushing him at all given that he wasn't created by the WWE machine.
They made him a focal point of the ECW brand straight away but that didn't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. He floundered after going to Raw and getting a cup of coffee with the title, but that was par for the course with how the brand split worked at that time. Up and comer goes to Raw, languishes in the midcard, then goes to SmackDown to be a big deal. That's how it worked. And boy did it ever work here. His heel run as the Straight Edge Savior was brilliant and then of course you had the pipe bomb a couple of years later.
Personally, I felt his 14 month title run really should have been extended to WM29 where he could have dropped it to Cena in a triple threat with The Rock rather than simply re-doing the supposedly "once in a lifetime" match from a year ago, but I understand why WWE did what they did. Also being at WM29 live watching Punk/Taker in person was a huge joy. Knowing what we know in retrospect after his podcast with Cabana I wonder if Punk had gotten the WM29 main event and got that huge chip off his shoulder if he still would have left when he did, but there were a lot of other factors at play.
Say he's a bellend all you want (by most accounts you wouldn't be wrong), but for my money from that 3.5/4 year stretch from his 2009 heel turn until his WM29 match with Taker there wasn't a superstar on the roster I was more consistently entertained by than CM Punk. Any and all expectations I had for him going in were blown out of the water.
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