CM Punk: How Long Will It Take for the WWE Champion to Fully Turn Heel?

When CM Punk nailed The Rock with a big clothesline and a GTS on the 1,000th episode of Monday Night Raw, everyone assumed the WWE Champion had instantly turned heel.

Well, not so much.

Although all of Punk’s actions at the conclusion of that show were indeed very heelish and he’s continued to play up those heel antics ever since then, he’s not a full-fledged bad guy.

At least not yet.

Punk’s attack on The Rock wasn’t his heel turn. Rather, it was the start of one that will evolve slowly over time.

Much like Punk’s heel turn in 2009, the WWE isn’t trying to make him go from a fan favorite to a hated heel overnight. It’s a work in progress that is going to involve much more than just one attack on The Rock.

In fact, it has to.

This isn’t the same scenario we got with Big Show earlier this year, where his one lone assault of John Cena (and subsequent chastising of the fans) turned him into a top villain overnight.

Big Show was over as a face, sure. But he wasn’t the most popular star or biggest baby face in the company.

Punk, on the other hand? Well, he very well might have been.

He has taken the wrestling world by storm over the last year-plus, and along the way, he’s developed into arguably the most popular star in the company—in a way, becoming even more popular than the controversial Cena.

Regardless of what Punk did on Raw 1000 or who he did it to, you can’t expect him to go from beloved fan favorite to No. 1 villain overnight like Big Show did.

It just wouldn’t work for Punk because he’s still at his peak of his terms in popularity, and bad guy or not, a good chunk of fans are going to stick by his side.

That’s what’s so different about the WWE today. Heels used to be hated and booed, and the baby faces used to be loved and cheered without exception.

Not today, though.

It takes a phenomenal heel performer to get the fans to genuinely hate you, and given Punk’s tendency to be a rebel whether he’s heel or face, he’s going to have to do more than hit The Rock with a GTS and fail to help Cena to find himself getting booed out of the building.

Punk is going to have to do what he did in 2009 and even into 2010: Evolve as a heel over time, and gradually get the fans to hate him.

The WWE really has no other choice, because Punk is just too damn over right now to make an arena full of 15,000 or 20,000 fans drown him in boos.

Punk needs to get over, but not in a good, popular or “cool” way. He needs to get over like the Straight Edge Society Punk—the Punk that dressed up like Jeff Hardy or sang “Happy Birthday” to Rey Mysterio’s daughter.

And that’s not going to happen next week or even next month. It’s going to be a long, long time before the ever-so-popular Punk will be hated like he was two or three years ago.

Can I put an exact number on it?

Nah, not really. It’s going to depend largely upon the creative team.

But creative has its work cut out, and it’s going to be a tough task to take a guy like Punk from baby face heaven to heel hell.

It could be October, November or even December before Punk drops all of his baby face expressions/mannerisms and becomes a bona fide, fully-fledged heel.

At the very least, it won’t happen tonight.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring