WWE RAW 1000 Results: CM Punk Steals Show After Retaining WWE Title

CM Punk has spent the past six months playing second fiddle. Even though he's held the WWE Championship since last November, the fan favorite has never been portrayed as the top guy. At the 1,000th episode of Raw, however, he took a backseat to nobody.

His title match against John Cena, who has been main-eventing all of the pay-per-views despite not having a belt, won't go down as one of the most memorable matches from the first 1,000 Raws, but what happened afterwards more than made up for it.

Big Show continued to assault Cena following the match after causing him to win by disqualification, which obviously doesn't lead to a title change, and it looked like Punk was going to get overshadowed once again.

And then The Rock's music hit and he stormed to the ring. As they show Rocky making his way down the ramp, Punk is shown heading toward the back in a perfectly-timed camera shot.

The Rock starts showing off some vintage moves while laying the smackdown to Big Show and he sets up for the people's elbow. At this point, it seemed like the People's Champion was going to stand tall to end the broadcast like he had so many times in the past.

Moments later, Punk stole the show. He jumps back into the ring and hits The Rock with a tremendous clothesline and leaves the WWE Universe stunned. After it happened, you could almost hear a pin drop throughout the arena.

That's tough to do under that scenario, because the crowd was hot all night after seeing legend after legend get involved in the historic show. So leaving an entire audience flabbergasted was nothing short of perfect booking.

It was the ideal way to end one chapter of Raw and begin the next. Laying in the ring are three superstars who had a major impact on the first 1,000 episodes in The Rock, Big Show and Cena. Standing tall is CM Punk, the newest megastar.

In the short-term wrestling sense, it's likely the start of a heel turn that will carry Punk to new heights as champion. One of the most common criticisms with Cena was the lack of character changes during his time at the top. That clearly won't be the case with Punk.

As he walked slowly up the ramp there was still hardly a noise being made aside from a few scattered cheers and boos. For wrestling fans, it was hard to ask for anything more. It was an awesome segment and Punk finally got his chance to shine on a major stage.

And he took full advantage of it.