#1 – CM Punk
Do I really need to say it? Of course it’s CM Punk. It was always going to be CM Punk, and there’s no more deserving person to be on this list, heralded as the #1 pro wrestler of 2012, than CM Punk.
In January, the WWE Champion kicked off the year in a great mini-feud with Dolph Ziggler, as part of the bigger picture with then-Raw general manager and executive blah blah, John Laurinaitis. If making Johnny Ace an entertaining facet of Raw programming isn’t enough to get you in the Top 10, I don’t know what is.
Punk then moved on to the returning Chris Jericho, winning the WWE Championship Elimination Chamber match, beating Y2J at WrestleMania, and proving once and for all that he is the “best in the world” at Extreme Rules in Punk’s hometown. Somewhere in there, he also pulled a fantastic No DQ match out of Mark Henry. Two title matches against Daniel Bryan sandwiched the Triple Threat also involving Kane (pre-Hell No, of course), all of which Punk won.
As if that weren’t enough, Punk turned heel at Raw 1,000 following a WWE Championship match against John Cena; even better, he did so by attacking the Rock. Shortly after, he aligned himself with Paul Heyman – I still can’t believe that actually happened – and retained the title in a mess that involved John Cena and Big Show, as WWE tried to figure out how to re-balance the Raw main event picture. This would eventually lead to the main event debut of Ryback, and the unexpectedly hot build towards Hell in a Cell. When Punk retained the title, and again at Survivor Series, another shake-up came in the form of The Shield months later.
An untimely knee injury has plagued the month of December, but the other 11 months of CM Punk’s year as WWE Champion easily make up for it. And we’re just talking matches; there’s an equal amount of amazing promos and in-ring segments that add icing to Punk’s proverbial cake. The “CM Drunk” segments, getting into a car with Paul Heyman, getting punched out by Bret Hart, and the legendary promo with Mick Foley, to name a few.
In just one month at the 2013 Royal Rumble, CM Punk will dance with the most charismatic wrestler of all time, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, with the WWE Championship on the line. His 400+ day reign as champ will all be put to the test in what will likely be his greatest challenge to date. Many expect him to drop the belt to the Rock, in order to promote another Rock/Cena collision at WrestleMania 29. But as this year in wrestling has shown us, anything can and will happen in professional wrestling. 365 days from now we may meet right back here and crown CM Punk, the best in the world, 750+ days the WWE Champion, and still the #1 professional wrestler of the year.
