Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
CM Punk appeared on the MMA Show yesterday with Ariel Helwani. Highlights from the conversation:
Where the tricep injury recovery is:
"I feel really good. I think there's part of me that doesn't want everybody to know. I want to keep it a bit of a secret, but I feel way better than I think I should. It's giving me a false sense of security. And there's very much the hockey player in my head, wanting to tape it up. Yeah, they're protecting me against myself though."
"Like I said, they're protecting me against myself, which is a welcome change. Yes. A hundred percent. I love it. I'm the one that's trying to push everything based on protocols for, ruptured tricep tendon, but, they're telling me to pump the brakes and I'm just sitting back, listening to them as best I can."
The previous tricep injury vs. this one:
"No. This one didn't feel like anything. It didn't hurt at all. Just felt like a rubber band snapped in my arm. This one I rarely, seldomly use the word agonizing. This was very painful. Wow. Yeah, hurt like hell. And it happened in the Royal Rumble match? Yep. It made me optimistic because I was like, Oh certainly I didn't tear it off the bone. Like the other one, like maybe I just, I don't know, because it hurt. Like I knew immediately. Wow. I was just like, oh, this isn't good."
"You make split second assessments, I think in situations like that, and I have famously been in Royal Rumbles before where I, probably should have been taken out of them. But this wasn't a concussion and this was one of those things where I grabbed my arm, dig my finger right in there where my triceps supposed to be. And there's just a big hole and I just go, okay, all right. It's gone. It can't get any worse. Just, you just kind of power through. That's a situation where I think it's acceptable to make the call as a wrestler. Like most other times, I just I want everyone else to make the call."
When the process to return to WWE began:
"Slight percentages, I think over the years, start that ball rolling, but to really get in the action, it started the week of, I think, Thanksgiving, maybe. I'd have to look at a calendar to figure out dates exactly. I remember times and places of where I won, where I was when I would get phone calls and such. I had a CFFC show coming up, I think. So I got a call from Nick Kahn. And he was just like, 'Hey, we want to talk to you.' and I was like, 'Cool. I'm on my way to the gym and I got this coming up. CFFC. I'll be back there. You're cool. You want to talk Monday? Great. So it was the week of Thanksgiving, Monday. I spoke to him. [Five days before the return.]
I think the call...I'm always so nervous about pulling the curtain back on stuff, but I think the call was more of a hey, we want to talk to you about coming back. We'd love you for Royal Rumble, and because they assumed that I probably had some sort of non-compete or something like that and we're floored when I was like no man ready to go Nick said, I really wish I knew that. Sorry, man. I didn't make the, I didn't call or tell anybody. I just laid low for a minute."
"Every single minute of all those days it really ramped up because it was like, Hey I'm going to talk to you about coming back. Okay. This is how I feel. Oh this is what how I feel. Okay. Great. I'd really love to talk to Triple H, and it's funny now because everybody calls him Paul, right? So I'll go to Barclays after this later today and somebody will come up to me and they'll be like Oh, hey, I was talking to Paul about this and we need you to do this and blah blah blah and for the entirety of the conversation I'll be like, 'Why is Paul Heyman?' Oh, They mean Paul so I...That's a generational thing. I always call him Triple H or Hunter. That's, that's what it is. And then when I spoke to him, that's when the ball really got rolling, because it was a very like, I asked him if he wanted to talk on the phone and he said, no, I would actually rather I would like to FaceTime you so I can see you. I was like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' We just talked about a whole lot of stuff about, stuff that was at one point serious to probably both of us. That is like silly now. And we just laughed, buried a hatchet. Then we started talking business and I was like, man, this is like Thanksgiving. I don't want to bother you. You're with your girls. We can talk about it later. But then I was just like, Oh Friday. And then the show's Saturday. It all got done very fast. My lawyer was not stoked to be working OT on on Thanksgiving, but he gets paid handsomely."
The conversation with Paul Levesque:
"I think there's a world where It very much didn't have to happen. I think we're both men and I think we're both, you know I'm gonna talk about stuff, especially when it comes to business, but you know I do think it was important knowing where we wanted to go to talk about stuff and get it all out of the way."
"The initial FaceTime call. Oh God, I don't know, Ariel. We chatted for a while. I actually, I saw him I don't know when it was where I went to the building to visit people and I got thrown out. So I saw him for a heartbeat there. I think, obviously, things happen behind the scenes in sports, and they take on lives of their own, and people run with it, and people might not know the details, and of course, everybody thinks, we, oh, we hate each other and light on sight, fistfight hate each other and I don't know if that was ever the case, but that's what we needed to talk about. I saw him back in May and and then I think he had to make a phone call and somebody was like now get him out of the building "
How he ended up backstage at Raw in Chicago in May 2022:
"Yeah, I was, again I love plugging CFFC. We have a show coming up, by the way April 12th in Atlantic City. I did a CFFC, I want to say May, Orlando or Tampa, I can't remember. I was on a flight back to Chicago, and I was sitting next to a guy named Jason Jordan, who was, he was a wrestler, got a neck injury, now he's been a producer for WWE for quite some time, and the last time I saw him was every bit of a decade ago, when I was doing some charity stuff for Steve Kern, pre-NXT, it was called FCW, and I see him, and I'm looking at him. He looks at me and he says hi, and I'm like, Oh s***, dude doesn't recognize me, okay. Then all of a sudden he turns and he looks and he's Holy sh**, what are you doing here? I'm chatting with him, and I see all these other wrestlers getting on the plane and stuff like that and then I, there's a whole gap, there's a generation of people that I never met that started pretty much right after I left 2014, 2015. Nice lady by the name of Liv Morgan helped me find my earbuds that fell out of my pocket while I was sleeping on the flight. She was a sweetheart. Like the whole plane empties, and she's like on her hands and knees, like looking around. She's got small hands. She's like digging under the seats and, and looking for stuff.
Then my friend Bayley messaged me and she's oh my, my friend Liv was on the flight with you. She says, you were so nice to her. I was like, Oh, yeah, she's yeah, we have a show in Chicago. It's all her fault. Then I laughed because like I landed, got on the train, went home and I was, no wife, no dog. I don't have anything to do. And I'm just like, yeah, I'm going to go visit. I'm going to go visit my friend Bayley.
I went to visit people. I was, there was no ulterior motive. I was I'm the old timer in the business and there's a show in town and I wasn't trying to get a job or anything. I literally went and I like the few people that I saw before I got thrown out, like it was all I saw Miz, saw Bobby Lashley, Baron Corbin, like everybody was just so nice and kind, that's the only reason I went,maybe for free catering."
Being asked to leave:
"I expected it, I expected that. I wasn't sure if Vince was there for, he was...I think he was doing stuff remote via Zoom, because this is in between like Vince has gone, now he's back and I didn't know the politics of things. I literally just went to go say hi to Bayley and a few other people."
Whether AEW was mad he went to Raw:
"Yeah. I don't want to talk about that. I think the word betrayed was used and I was just like, all right, man, like as a company, you're allowing guys to go on their television show to do things. I went backstage to say hi to friends. It's two completely different things. If you're going to be mad about it, okay."
More on Page 2!
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Bang On Casino
