Had to return to rep for one of my favorites:
Mic Work: 10
- The best of his generation, hands down. Despite the 5 star matches and all of the other critically acclaimed ring work he gifted us with, this was his calling card. When he said that "all I ever really wanted was this little microphone...this, this is power," he essentially distilled his entire philosophy and the main element of his appeal into two sentences. He, moreso than any other wrestler of his generation, understood how powerful his words were when he had center stage, whether it was in IWA-Mid South, ROH, or WWE. He knew how to get the absolute most out of his mic time and how to use it to transform feuds and get just about anything over. So he had his style and largely stuck to it, so what? Besides the fact that people are vastly underrating what he did with his worked shoots (they ALWAYS made sense in kayfabe, go back and check), it comes down to a simple question: are you more captivated by somebody who's pretty good at a few things, or transcendent at one or two. I put a lot of value in the latter, myself.
In-Ring Work: 8
-Never the crispest guy, and I have to take into consideration just how badly he deteriorated after the Lesnar match (seriously, the guy looked horrible in the ring after SummerSlam 2013), but he had match construction and drama down pat. He knew how to get the absolute most out of his abilities, and knew how to do it without stretching your suspension of disbelief. Has a laundry list of excellent matches to choose from in both ROH and WWE. I don't know how you can objectively deny how good and how smart he was as a worker, even if he couldn't hit a moonsault correctly or drop a decent elbow.
Personality/Gimmick: 9
-Something I very rarely say about a wrestler: I never once didn't believe in CM Punk's character. He always moved and presented himself with conviction, he always knew how to tweak and adjust his character in order to either get hemself, someone else, or his feud over, and he was always someone that the fans could invest in, face or heel. Bonus points for keeping his character's motivations internally consistent, for the most part (the 2013 Pipe Bomb is a wonderful example of this in action). Shave a point off for his bland 2006-2007 character, and the utter lack of motivation shown at the end of his run, but the highs here were extremely high.
Overall: 9
-Punk's probably the overall best of his generation, with maybe Bryan as his primary competitor. He paved the way for the current "Indy Boom" in WWE and was almost always captivating when he was on screen. When the book is written on this era in wrestling history, CM Punk will figure very prominently in it. People underrate just how influential he really was in the North American scene. He's sorely missed in WWE, but then again, we might be talking about his fall off if he stayed. Maybe it's better that he left us with so much good material and so little bad material to evaluate.
I'll be interested to see how people evaluate Lex Luger, especially how people weigh his 80s work against his mid-90s to 2000s work.