These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
It's also possible to interpret him as the truly good guy who has to put up with fans and fellow wrestlers who are misled - the Jeff Hardy feud that turned Punk heel, and ended when Jeff left the company (and was arrested for drug trafficking soon after), helped.
From his final heel turn before leaving Ring of Honor: who was the real snake, Punk or the ROH fans?
Punk's NewNexus feud with John Cena. It's really not that hard to interpret Cena's actions in the past as horrible. Using childish names like "CM Sucks" doesn't help, but one of the real kickers was on the 1/17/11 edition of RAW, when John Cena is walking to the ring to face Punk, randomly grabs a guy's cell phone, hangs it up, and tosses it at him.
In late 2010, Punk suffered a hip injury just as WWE started teasing the Bryan/Punk feud... But then the IWC rejoiced again when Punk spent some of his recovery time doing color commentary.
Punk and Bryan getting Numbers 1 and 2 in the 2011 Royal Rumble seems like WWE's way of apologizing for that missed moment, complete with Fandom Nod from Matt Striker mentioning how the Internet must be loving this small taste of the once-promised dream match.
Punk's now infamous worked shoots during his July 2011 feud with John Cena and Vince McMahon, which not only addressed a lot of the complaints leveled at the company by the IWC, but also kicked off a highly anticipated angle that culminated in a classic match in front of a crazed Chicago crowd at the 2011 Money in the Bank.
As of TLC 2011: CM Punk and Bryan Danielson are currently the WWE and World Heavyweight Champions.
May 2012's Over the Limit PPV will feature Punk vs. Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship.
"Complete Monster" Punk: His most extreme heel runs portray him as a manipulative, sociopathic jerk with a god complex, who wouldn't shy away from physically abusing his own followers.
Becomes more evident in his fight vs Orton on the 4/18/11 edition of Raw it had fans cheering the both of them in a similar fashion to "let's go Cena", "Cena Sucks" chant.
Evil Is Sexy: That crazy smile? Licking his own blood off his wrist tape on the February 7th, 2011 episode of Raw? The way he demonstrates complete and total authority over The Nexus?
Holy Shit Quotient: Punk getting Vinceto APOLOGIZE will probably go on to be remembered as his greatest achievement in the industry. Yes, it's a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but goddammit it deserves to be here too because NO ONE thought it was ever going to happen.
And also a promo in which he calls both himself and Triple H by their real names on live camera. *
They're both known to hate this, even among wrestlers. Hunter's one half of the Trope Namer for Do Not Call Me Paul, in fact
. And then ends the promo by braining Trips with the mic out of nowhere and doing a crotch chop over his prone body.
Hype Backlash: Some wrestling fans may not understand quite why he was so hyped by the internet wrestling community prior to his WWE debut.
"My dad was an alcoholic and my parents...we didn't have any money and I grew up really poor. I watched them spend all of their money on cartons of cigarettes and stuff like that and I didn't understand how if we were broke and we couldn't afford Christmas presents, why could you smoke all of those cigarettes? It's not like they are making you better...they are killing you. It seemed real idiotic to me."
On the January 10 2011 Raw, he did a promo on top of the TitanTron and said he was going to jump in order to initiate himself into the new Nexus. He made it seem like he would. And, surprisingly, the crowd wanted it. He then revealed he was hooked on a harness and two people were spotting him, saying that anybody that thought he was really going to jump was an idiot.
On the February 7th, 2011 Raw, he revealed his reason for leading Nexus to attack Randy Orton during Orton's title match at the Royal Rumble, thus revealing the real reason why he took over Nexus. He'd been plotting Orton's downfall since Orton and the Legacy attacked him and cost him the world title. Keep in mind that this happened back in 2008. The person who had wronged him that he mentioned back at the Slammy Awards had been Orton all along, and Punk had close to three years to plan his revenge.
Memetic Sex God: The rumor that Punk was dating Tracy Brooks, Daffney, and Maria at the same time is simply one example; you could say Punk is sleeping with anybody and you'd have people that'd believe you. That said, he has made the rounds of the WWE Divas and is currently attached to Beth Phoenix. It would not be out of the realm of possibility if their sex amounted to Big Ball of Violence.
Narm: When he finally got his hands on Laurinitis and gave him the GTS, good ol' Johnny Ace gave absolutely zero reaction to his predicament. No Oh Crap expression, no panicked screams, no pleas for mercy, just a dull, blank stare. Totally not Punk's fault, though.
Rooting for the Empire: He got a pretty good ovation when the crowd realized he was the new leader of Nexus. They even started chanting his name. "CM Punk" chants have happened fairly regularly since then.
To give you some perspective on this one, The Boston crowd chanted his name over hometown hero John Cena, even after comparing Cena to their most hated enemy, the New York Yankees.
Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Punk's speech on the 7/11 RAW to John Cena. Cena mentions that Punk is a hypocrite and Punk gets mad at him for him suggesting that. He talks about how Cena was always thought of as the "underdog". Like how his city's teams (save for the New England Patriots), were always underdogs. He goes on a small rant after this, ending it with comparing John Cena to the New York Yankees (The Red Sox's biggest rival) and showing how Cena is no longer the underdog, but has become what he's claimed many times to fight against.
Strawman Has a Point: A lot of people sided with Punk during his feud with Jeff, feeling that Jeff's "live life to the fullest" philosophy really wasn't justifying his notorious drug use and that cheering Jeff for being a "free spirit" was really irresponsible.
His recent feud with Cena has this as well with Punk calling Cena on a lot of the immoral crap he's pulled over the last year.
Pulls the same thing with Orton, but this is less effective since Orton's made it perfectly clear in the past that he knows his actions have no excuse, but doesn't care and does them anyway.
The one with Orton might have been aimed at the people who root for him despite even at his least evil, still being a Designated Hero.
CM Punk: But Vince McMahon's gonna make money despite himself. He's a millionaire who should be a billionaire. You know why he's not a billionaire? It's 'cuz he surrounds himself with glad-handing, nonsensical douchebag yes-men like John Laurinaitis, who's gonna tell him everything he wants to hear! And I'd like to think that maybe this company will be better after Vince McMahon's dead, but the fact is, it's gonna get taken over by his idiotic daughter and his doofus son-in-law and the rest of his stupid family!
Becomes a Lampshade Hanging when Trips told Vince the board fired him and he was replacing him at least in kayfabe
Another Reason You Suck Speech to John Cena on July 11th's RAW. While John Cena had a point about Punk claiming to know what the fans want but still going to leave them all the same, Punk's retort that Cena has become a dynasty and that Cena can't call himself the underdog anymore struck home harder.
Cena didn't help his case by not giving Punk a real retort. Instead, he punched Punk in the face.
Cena didn't have a point. Punk's "Voice of the Voiceless" statement referred to the guys who lost their jobs unjustly because they didn't fit Vince's mold of a wrestler. Not the "WWE Universe" exactly. Also, it is not like fans are incapable of watching Punk in any other promotion.
Ironically, Cena ends up standing up for him when Vince suspended him and tried to cheat him out of his title match...
Somewhat inverted with his recent feud with Triple H. It's... honestly kind of hard to get behind Punk when Trips has been extremely lenient with Punk and his constant verbal abuse and accusations. Not helped by the fact that Punk is accusing Trips of stuff that has been made fun by everyone in the company for years, including Triple H himself. The only thing he really has any real point about is the possibility that Triple H was the one who sent Kevin Nash the text to Jackknife Punk at Summerslam, and as time goes on evidence shown makes it increasingly less likely that Trips really was the one who sent it. As a result, Punk comes off as less of a corporate rebel advocating change and more as a bully throwing a temper tantrum that things aren't going his way.
Well, his point is that Triple H is basically the same guy as Vince McMahon; no matter what Trips says, he's still stuck in the past and content with a boring product. Punk is playing a jackass revolutionary opposed to Trips respectful traditionalist.
Less like a bully throwing a tantrum, and more like him being his usual smug self. He later claims that his verbal abuse was just him testing Trips to see how he handles being COO. Punk feels that he failed. Of course it seems more like it's to echo Steve Austin's early days in his feud with Vince.
To be more accurate, neither Punk nor Triple H seems to really be a face or heel in this situation, both of them seem to be somewhere in the middle. Since Hunter is the man in charge of the company, he could probably be placed as the heel by default, however he's still more in the middle.
Possibly Taking A Third Option here. Punk is being an expy of the internet fan vs Triple H's WWE thought process. Nothing will make him/them happy. He tantrumed into a title match at the end of his contract, got the main event build, threatened (and did) walk out of the company with its title in a Home Field Advantage scenario, and proceeded to bitch his way into the next few pay per views. Now who/what does that sound like?
Vindicated by History: A Kayfabe meta-example. We all know that CM Punk's heel Smug StraightEdge EvilTeetotaler character from 2009-2010 ranged somewhere between having a sensible moral point to his position and being a complete asshole, which made it tough at times for some viewers to really evaluate how they felt about him. But then in 2011 his straightedge became deemphasized in favor of becoming a cult leader for The Nexus, then the Voice of the Voiceless, then cementing his place as the Best Wrestler in the World. Enter 2012. In his "Best in the World" feud with Chris Jericho, the former Y2J takes it upon himself to expose the dirty laundry about Punk's father's alcoholism to the WWE audience for the first time and then make up even more about Punk's sister and mother just to piss him off. When this doesn't work, Jericho decides to stoop so low as to try and step on Punk's core by letting/helping Mark Henry leave Punk floored and prone for two weeks in a row only so he can pour and/or smash large quantities of whiskey and beer all over Punk. This is extra notable because R-Truth had poured whiskey and cigarettes from a trash can all over Punk once on Smackdown during his smug zealot days and back then was actually Played for Laughs. Between this and the later fates of the Hardybrothers (Punk's first enemies in his heel turn all those years ago, who are not big fans of his in Real Life either), most fans could look back and easily understand and sympathize with what drove Punk to that place he'd been in back then if not outright agree with his cause in retrospect. And almost certainly no more laughs are being made about R-Truth dumping intoxicating trash over Punk's head.
Averted back in his indie days as Punk acknowledged his father's issues somewhat more freely in promos then.
