CM Punk won the World Title that Seth Rollins vacated by defeating Jey Uso at SNME XLII in November. Although he did not have the opportunity to beat Seth Rollins for the title, he technically redeemed himself from that 5-min title reign at SummerSlam. Despite how many times he lost on PLEs in 2025, Punk was untouchable with his superior storytelling abilities in his feud with The Vision.
Punk is a true locker room leader who brings the best out of the stars around him, including Seth Rollins, Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed, Jey Uso, LA Knight, Logan Paul, and even Roman Reigns. He is currently in a feud with Finn Balor, who will merely be his final roadblock, rather than a threat, before his Mania match against Roman Reigns. Here are three major threats to CM Punk’s title reign.
Roman Reigns
Roman Reigns is already the planned WrestleMania opponent for CM Punk, so anyone would be remiss not to include him as a major threat to the title. He had a major promo battle with Punk that struck a chord in the pro wrestling community. It would be asinine for WWE to book Balor to ruin those WrestleMania plans at Elimination Chamber, especially when he has a bigger story with Dirty Dom.
Punk is merely the catalyst for Balor’s story while he continues his momentum as a fighting champion before his bigger title match with Reigns. Since Reigns is a part-timer, he really should not win the World Title from Punk, but he has defied logic in WWE before. Also, the fact that he has lost his matches at the past two WrestleManias means he has a highly probable chance of winning this year.
Gunther
Gunther was confronted by CM Punk a few weeks ago on Raw. They had a tense stare-off because Gunther was still gloating about making John Cena give up, as Punk was a very close friend of Cena. He even retired AJ Styles, who was also very close to CM Punk and even had his last match on Raw against Punk. Gunther lost his shot at Rumble and Chamber, but he does not even need them.
Since Gunther never invoked his rematch clause after losing the World Title to Punk at SummerSlam, he could always invoke it on the road to Mania to get his revenge on Punk and continue his momentum after retiring some of the greatest wrestlers of all time. Punk has his number for now, but Gunther rarely loses to the same wrestler twice. This could be a major roadblock for Punk before Mania.
Seth Rollins
Whenever Seth Rollins returns from injury, he will get revenge on the Vision and target Punk to reclaim the title he never lost. He could even show up in the box at the Elimination Chamber in Punk’s hometown of Chicago. Rollins cashed in on Punk at SummerSlam to win the title in the first place, so he won’t be too happy sitting at home and watching his arch nemesis with his title.
Rollins is expected to return by WrestleMania 42, so he can definitely invoke his rematch clause against Punk without even winning the Royal Rumble or the Elimination Chamber. Is Seth Rollins the mastermind behind the masked man invasions? Is Seth Rollins in that box? Is Seth Rollins about to move the needle once again on the road to WrestleMania? There’s only one way to find out.
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