As mentioned earlier, former WWE Champion CM Punk was a recent guest on Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast.

During the interview, Punk took credit for the idea of The Shield, stating that the idea was for a trio of Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Kassius Ohno (Chris Hero), however Triple H shot down using Hero as part of the Shield and replaced him with Roman Reigns. Punk noted that he was frustrated with management at the time, but decided that it was not going to be his hill to die on pushing for Hero and said that he understood that the company had big plans for Roman Reigns and figured that it was a chance for Reigns to learn and grow while working with Reigns and Ambrose and said that the original storyline idea was for The Shield to be paired with him as his protectors, but that also did not materialize.

Punk noted that in a further reasoning to his frustration with the creative direction in WWE, he wanted to face The Rock and John Cena in a triple threat match if the plan was for him to drop the WWE Championship, but instead, he dropped the title to The Rock at the 2013 WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view and that the company booked John Cena vs. The Rock to complete the story of their feud while he was shifted into a match with The Undertaker, but noted that he was left without anything after WrestleMania once The Undertaker left and that his idea gave him wrestlers to work with after WrestleMania, as he would have shifted into a program with the members of The Shield after dropping the WWE Championship.