[quote name='SEH']Oh...wait...you actually thought those "shooty" promos he cut last summer were real, didn't you? It's all making sense now.[/QUOTE]
It fit with his persona - both in front of the camera, in interviews with the press, and dirt sheet reports of his behavior within the company. Since there's ample evidence to suggest, yeah, this guy does have legitimate gripes with the company, and they seem to jive with my own, and there's zero evidence to suggest otherwise - a person should reasonably come to the conclusion that he is legitimately that way.
If a person is "working" you 24/7, are they ever illegitimate?
Look, the guy is a superstar, he's an excellent wrestler. I'm not knocking his talent. But for everything he promoted last year, he made himself a WWE Sooperstar™. Great, congratulations.
Problem with that is one or two things:
1) He hasn't changed an iota of his complaints from the summer of punk angle, and thus he's shown himself to be someone who I, as a viewer, can't believe. If I can't believe someone at their word, I can't get behind them as a babyface. Fool me once, shame on you and all that nonsense. He's been the champ, he's at the top of the card, he got a giant raise, he got a private bus, he got his own music, and t-shirts galore. He's got it made. Which is why this whole idea of him being a "pipebomb" is so laughable - he's got his, so now we don't expect any pipebombs anymore. But the angle was about WWE's flaws more than it was about Punk saying "gimmie gimmie gimmie."
2) Part of why people got behind him was because he exposed the product - but his character has become emblematic of the problems he discussed in the first place.
Punk is, in short, the charismatic young politician who is elected to high office because voters are disgusted with the Way Things Are™. Upon being elected to office based off a campaign where he promised to change things, he is quickly taken in by the machine and becomes a part of the problem. By the time his reelection campaign comes around, he's just another aww-shucks good ol' boy. He is that which he despised.
So, yeah, wrestling's fake, and you can always tell if a wrestler is lying by seeing if their lips are moving. But liking a wrestler doesn't mean that they are above scrutiny. Get over yourself, guy. Nobody is perfect - and Punk is a great example of that.