Let’s talk about November 2023. Survivor Series. Chicago. CM Punk walks out to the most deafening pop of the decade, the crowd loses its collective mind, and Seth Rollins throws a genuine, expletive-laden temper tantrum at ringside. But remember who stormed out of the arena entirely? Drew McIntyre. That was not just a work. That was the birth of the greatest professional hater of our generation.

Fast forward to right now. We are exactly 25 days away from WrestleMania 41 at Allegiant Stadium in Vegas. This feud has consumed over two years of television time. It survived torn triceps, bloody Hell in a Cell matches, and more stolen friendship bracelets than a middle school summer camp.

But as we stare down the barrel of April 19th and 20th, a terrifying thought is creeping into the minds of wrestling fans across the globe. What if WWE actually books CM Punk to win?

If you are rooting for the Second City Saint to hit a GTS and pin the Scotsman in the middle of the ring, you are actively rooting against good storytelling. You are asking for the easiest, cheapest nostalgia pop available. Drew McIntyre losing this match would not just be a mild disappointment. It would completely nuke the best, most organic character arc WWE has produced since the Bloodline started crumbling.

The anatomy of a generational hater

Let’s look at the cold, hard facts. Drew built an absolute masterpiece of a persona directly on top of Punk’s fragile real-life reputation. When Punk tore his right triceps at the 2024 Royal Rumble, Drew did not just capitalize on it. He weaponized it.

He printed t-shirts with meme gravestones. He brought his absolute sickest jokes to national television every single Monday. He literally sat cross-legged on the announcer's desk and prayed for the man's downfall.

We also have to acknowledge the digital warfare. Drew did not just beat Punk up in the ring, he absolutely dismantled him on the internet. He turned his Twitter account into a daily weapon of mass destruction. He was posting photoshopped images, making videos, and hijacking Punk's own catchphrases.

If you build your entire brand around being the guy who speaks the uncomfortable truth about a returning, self-righteous legend, you have to eventually back it up. A hater who constantly loses is not a badass. He is just a very tall internet troll who cannot win a real fight.

If Punk beats him in Vegas, what was the point of all this? Drew goes from the apex predator of Monday Night Raw back to being the guy who complains to Adam Pearce in backstage segments. We have already seen that version of McIntyre for years. Nobody wants it back.

The workhorse versus the glass cannon

We need to have a very honest, uncomfortable conversation about reliability. Drew McIntyre is a Clydesdale. He is the guy who stared down Brock Lesnar in an empty warehouse in Orlando at WrestleMania 36 to win the WWE Championship.

He carried the company on his massive shoulders during the absolute worst era in human history to be a professional wrestler. There were no fans. There was barely a roster. Drew just taped up his boots, cut intense promos to an empty room, and hit Claymores in total silence for a year.

CM Punk returned, sold a billion t-shirts, and immediately got hurt taking a basic DDT. That is not a knock on Punk’s legacy, but it is a biological reality.

Punk is pushing fifty. He has the structural integrity of a damp graham cracker. You do not sacrifice your bulletproof, six-foot-five monster just to give a nostalgia act a feel-good WrestleMania moment. Punk is going to get a deafening reaction in Allegiant Stadium regardless of whether his hand gets raised.

Drew actually needs this. He needs the ultimate vindication that his obsessive crusade over the last two years was entirely justified.

We have seen this exact mistake before

If you think WWE is above ruining a perfectly good storyline just to stroke a veteran's ego, you have a very short memory.

Remember WrestleMania 19? Booker T was the red-hot babyface who had clawed his way from WCW irrelevance to the main event. Triple H cut promos completely belittling him. It was a feud built on pure, unadulterated disrespect. The entire wrestling world knew Booker had to win.

Instead, Triple H hit one Pedigree, waited an absolute eternity to make the cover, and pinned him clean. It took Booker T years to recover his main event momentum.

Or how about WrestleMania 31? Sting finally arrives in WWE. The ultimate WCW loyalist steps into the ring against Triple H in California. It was the easiest booking decision in the world. You let the icon have his WrestleMania moment. Instead, D-Generation X interferes, Triple H uses a sledgehammer, and Sting shakes his hand afterward like a total chump.

If Punk beats Drew in Vegas, it will join that exact same list of baffling, ego-driven booking decisions. It tells the audience that no matter how good your character work is, no matter how hard you carry the company on the endless house show loops, you will always play second fiddle to a guy who made his name fifteen years ago.

WWE's weird obsession with humiliating McIntyre

Here is where I have to get extremely critical of the current creative regime. For all the endless praise Triple H gets for his supposedly brilliant long-term storytelling, his handling of Drew’s major moments borders on outright masochistic.

Go back to Clash at the Castle in 2022. Cardiff, Wales. Over 62,000 fans singing his old entrance theme. It was the perfect, undeniable moment to dethrone Roman Reigns. Instead, a guy in a hoodie pulled the referee out of the ring. Solo Sikoa debuted, Roman retained, and Drew awkwardly sang an Oasis song with Tyson Fury while the live broadcast faded to black.

It was arguably the worst booking decision of the decade. They had lightning in a bottle and they poured it straight down the drain.

Then we got WrestleMania 40. Drew finally wins the big one in front of a live stadium crowd. He beats Seth Rollins. The confetti falls. What happens? Punk attacks him with an arm brace, and Damian Priest cashes in his Money in the Bank briefcase exactly 5 minutes and 46 seconds later.

Then they went back to Scotland for the next Clash at the Castle. Drew has his home country behind him again. His wife is in the front row. Punk dresses up as a referee, hits a low blow, and screws him out of the title. Again.

WWE has conditioned us to expect Drew to choke or get screwed whenever the lights are brightest. It is a tired, frustrating, lazy trope. If they pull the rug out from under him one more time in Vegas, the fanbase is not going to boo Punk. They are going to groan loudly at the writers.

The Chicago savior does not need the rub

Think about the actual mechanics of a CM Punk victory. What does he actually gain?

Punk’s legacy is set in stone. He is the voice of the voiceless. He dropped the pipebomb in Vegas all those years ago. He is a guaranteed Hall of Famer who can show up on any given Monday, grab a microphone, and hold three million viewers in the palm of his hand without breaking a sweat.

A win over Drew at WrestleMania 41 does not elevate Punk to a new tier. It just maintains his comfortable status quo. But a clean, decisive victory for Drew? That permanently elevates McIntyre into the stratosphere.

Let’s talk about the ripple effects on Monday Night Raw. The main event scene is a shark tank right now. You have Gunther chopping chests into raw meat. You have Seth Rollins constantly lurking. You have Bron Breakker throwing fully grown humans around like lawn darts.

If Drew loses to Punk, where does he fit into that picture? He falls right back into upper-midcard purgatory. He becomes the guy who can reliably main event a B-level pay-per-view in October, but can never quite get the job done when WrestleMania rolls around.

Allegiant Stadium is going to be packed. Vegas crowds are famously smart. They know when they are being spoon-fed a predictable ending. If Punk’s music hits, and he hits his tired sequence of moves to finish the match, the energy in that building is going to completely flatline. Vegas wants violence. They want a shock.

WrestleMania is supposed to be where feuds end and true stars are cemented. Let Punk have his cool entrance. Let him hit an elbow drop, smile for the hard cam, and lock in the Anaconda Vise. Let the crowd chant his name until their throats bleed.

But when the dust settles in Vegas, there is only one acceptable outcome. A Claymore kick that nearly takes Punk’s head off his shoulders. 1, 2, 3. Anything less is an absolute insult to the fans.