Well, I guess I got to give Punk a 10/10 since he's probably my all-time favorite, he's at least in the top three with Shawn (who was number one until the Saudi match) and Asuka (who I miss being pushed legitimately deeply). He was actually an early favorite of mine too, since I started watching a couple months before his debut. I still remember the vignettes and watching his debut against Justin Credible. I immediately attached to his character, probably because the Straight Edge lifestyle was something I basically already established, and in a way, he was kind of a formative experience for me. Like, I was already in that direction anyway, but I definitely didn't know there was a buzzword like "Straight Edge" I could say to immediately let people know I wasn't going to be fun at parties, and it was helpful to reaffirm my decisions. I even quickly became more Straight Edge than Punk himself since I ditched caffeine pretty quickly after finalizing on living drug free, because yeah, caffeine's a drug.
Also, probably my favorite moment as a wrestling fan revolved around CM Punk. So it was 2011 and I was not caring about wrestling but I still stayed on wrestling forums because I need distractions so my finger was slightly on the pulse of what WWE was doing. I even checked out some of the R-Truth stuff because his heel run was getting a lot of praise and my god, I hated every second of it. So that didn't help me get back into WWE, but then Punk was going to be the number one contender for the championship, and Raw Roulette was coming up with Shawn Michaels. My interest was piqued but I didn't plan on watching it because I didn't sleep the night prior so I just went to bed after school. For whatever reason, I woke up about five to three minutes before Raw started, and since my guy was in the championship picture, along with Shawn & the Roulette, I decided "What the hell?" and watched. It was a decent show until the ending minutes where CM Punk lit the entire wrestling world on fire in a way I could've never anticipated, and in like six minutes he sparked my passion for wrestling at an all-time high. With that context, I don't think it'd surprise anyone that I consider that my favorite promo ever.
Outside of that personal context, he's one of the greatest on the mics, he does have a tendency to stumble over some words (he even does this in the aforementioned favourite promo ever) which is a problem I don't feel is ever really acknowledge but his strengths on the mic far make up from that. He was one of the most believable and real on the mic ever, and he did a fantastic job expressing any of his character, from the straight edge cult leader to the straight shootin' rebel we got in his peak. In-ring wise, he's honestly probably the worst out of my all-time favorites, but he's still great. He's had several great matches, my favorite being the Extreme Rules Street Fight with Jericho. The biggest problem was his booking, it's a damn shame that they basically never let him go over clean on Cena (Cena lost to him once because Kevin Nash came out to the stage and Cena got distracted enough for Punk to hit his finish in win, which is a dirty victory although personally, Cena's the dumbass who had Punk beat then looked away for a good amount of time so that feels pretty clean to me but whatever), at least considering how Cena would start losing clean more regularly just like two years later. CM Punk could've and should've been handled a lot better, the only reason I wasn't raging as hard over his booking because around the same time WWE was making it their mission in life to destroy all the popularity Ryder worked his butt off for. But him losing the WWE Championship to The Rock always stung too, and I think that was the moment both of us kinda tuned out of wrestling. Echoing my experience getting in before Punk, I ended up completely detaching from WWE like a month or two before he left, since after Mania XXIX (which was an awful show overall) my interest completely evaporated but I kept watching the PPV's just because I decided I was going to review all the PPV's that year on here and I'm stubborn. I completely tuned out of the product for like years after that.
So yeah, gotta give him a 10/10.
