Never going back. Would be extremely surprised if he ever wrestled again.
And why should he? Net worth estimated about $7.5 million. Going to be over $100k a year easily in interest and dividends alone. Gets to do Comic books, podcasts, TV shows, go to major sporting events as a celebrity and hang out with other rich and famous people. Nice life if you can get it, and he got it. More power to him if he decides to sit back and enjoy it.
Heard about this too.
Not surprised by any of it and with AJs impending ending date with WWE looming, he’s gonna be able to sit back and enjoy married life
So, anybody get their hands on Colt’s shoot interview with Punk yet? It’s killed his podcast feed–I suspect he went through a month’s worth of bandwidth in an hour, if that, and apparently he shot straight to #2 on the iTunes podcast charts. The upshot, near as I can tell, is that we’d better give up any hope of Punk coming back any time soon. Never say never, but I think we can say “not in this decade” unless Punk manages to run out of money.
NXT tonight was solid. Highlights included HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT BRAINBUSTER AND THEY ACTUALLY CALLED IT in the main event, the Vaudevillains video, which I think has to be on the shortlist for video segment of the year, and Tyson Kidd wearing a shirt made with a skull made out of cats. Also, some top quality heelin’ from Tyler Breeze on Marcus Louis, the Hunchback of Notre Full Sail, and excellent chants from the crowd–I think my fave was “THIS IS AWKWARD clap clap clapclapclap”.
Low points included… well, the name of the next “PPV” is stupid. R-Evolution? Really? I would’ve preferred Takeover 33-1/3: The Final Insult.
Just read highlights. Don’t care if he runs out of money (unlikely), it seems clear he’ll never go back with Vince and H in charge.
That chant SO made me want to be there. 
In fact, it made me think about possibly planning a trip for next year to go to the tapings.
Someone with WAY too much time on their hands transcribed it:
Apparently Ryback is none too pleased with Punk’s comments:
Wasn’t he Ron Killings’ tag partner back in the '90s?
I didn’t read the whole interview (or listen to it) but it’s certainly changed my view on Punk.
What an entitled, whiny, self obsessed asshole. He sounds like such a baby in everything and makes himself sound like he’s the…well…Best In The World.
Whatever, I don’t care if he comes back now
I dunno, I have to give him a pass on the ego bit. If you don’t have that ego and aren’t willing to fight for your spot in that world, you won’t make it.
I didn’t listen to the interview (I tried but it wasn’t downloadable on iTunes, there are several different sites that are hosting their own streams but I wanted something I could download and listen to on a road trip I had to make this week), but read the transcript. Since I actually missed the entire CM Punk era and only have seen a few of his matches on the Network I don’t feel I have any preconceived notions about Punk.
My opinion on his comments
-Ryback is obviously on steroids, if Punk is truthful about being injured by Ryback then it sounds like he’s another Goldberg type that is too dangerous to be in the ring
-Maybe Triple H does dislike Punk and Triple H is a dick, but I disagreed with Punk’s assessment that Triple H “needs to wrestle Punk.” I didn’t know who CM Punk was until I started watching WWE again at WM30, so honestly his visibility is zero to a non-wrestling fan (which I was for about ten years.) I knew Triple H from before then and he periodically was in pop culture. Love him or hate him Triple H has worked Wrestlemanias with the biggest names ever, he doesn’t “need” Punk for anything.
-Seems to confirm what I’ve always heard about Vince, Vince is usually conciliatory or even nice in person, but is ruthless when he has to be. The supposed “tears in his eyes” moment is reminiscent of how others who have had fall outs with Vince talk about it, namely that Vince seems one way in person but then fires your ass or sets you up to lose to Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series.
-What is the relationship between WWE’s doctors and the wrestlers would be something I’d like to know. If they have a true doctor-patient relationship then Punk was done a huge disservice by not being treated for a serious infected abscess in his back, and it sounds like he’s also got legitimate concussion concerns as well. But without knowing how such a relationship works, it could also mean that Punk was really supposed to have his own physician and for some reason didn’t. I know when Steve Austin has gone into detail about his medical issues (his neck, his health scare before his final match), he’s typically talked about various private doctors he was working with, not WWE doctors. When I saw a documentary on Triple H that detailed his treatment for his quadriceps tear, again it was physicians and rehabilitation trainers totally unassociated with WWE. So it’s quite possible that Punk was assuming WWE physicians were his personal doctors, when perhaps their only real legal function is to just sign off on a wrestler being healthy enough to get in the ring or not. I know that team doctors on say, a baseball team probably wouldn’t be cutting out abscesses or serving as the player’s PCP. They would refer the players to their doctors if they saw problems, though.
-It sounds like Punk viewed his economic value to WWE as larger than WWE viewed it. I suspect this is because (from what I can tell) he has a passionate fan base, but this passionate fan base may not be as big a part of the WWE universe as Punk might like (for example in comparison to all the little kids and their captive parents who have to like John Cena.)
-It sounds like Punk hated being a pro wrestler as of 2014 and has enough money and wherewithal to live off of it indefinitely, so it only makes sense he would quit. Medically if he’s really had as many concussion problems as he claims he probably shouldn’t be in a ring.
Figure Four Daily is reporting that the locker room, including those who were happy to see Punk leave, we’re glad that Punk said everything he did about the way things run in the company. Vince is upset with Punk, and Triple HHH is fuming and wants to kill Punk. Punk didn’t burn that bridge, he nuked it from orbit.
Yeah, Punk’s never coming back.
Just like how Steve Austin, Bret Hart, the New Age Outlaws, Booker T, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, X-Pac, Christian, Warrior, Mick Foley, and Hulk Hogan never came back after all the bridges they burned.
If Bret can come back, anyone can. WWE literally killed his brother and screwed him on a live PPV in his home country, he responded with probably several of the most anti-WWE/WWF screeds in history. Including several documentaries and a book of his that talks about Vince being pretty much all around terrible (covers everything from Vince never actually paying Stu Hart a dime for Stampede Wrestling in violation of their agreement up through his involvement in Owen’s death.) The Hart family sued (successfully) over Owen’s death and won $18m. That’s still worse than the current Punk/Vince relationship and Bret is now in the Hall of Fame and was on Raw not too long ago.
Punk would have to want to come back, much as Bret did. Bret had medical reasons that prevented him ever truly coming back as a wrestler. He actually has a huge insurance settlement from when Goldberg brained him with a mule kick and when he “worked” a few return matches with WWE they were apparently very up in his ass about the level of physicality; he wasn’t allowed to take any bumps or the insurance company would have sued him on the grounds it was no longer the case that he had suffered a career ending injury.
Punk is apparently very health-conscious compared to most pro-Wrestlers. He’s “Straight Edge” (world’s dumbest philosophy), and such, so I think if he has legit fears of long term side effects of concussions he’ll never be back as a full time wrestler. It doesn’t mean ten years from now when all the rage has died down and there’s an opportunity to come back and make some easy money doing a few segments or appearances he won’t do that. I read an article the other day that said Flair was being paid something like $36k/mo in his current capacity, which involves essentially no work. There’s money to be made on that side of things.
I watched most of Punk’s special on WWE Network some time back, and to hear him tell it, he trained himself. He started off as a backyard wrestler, and eventually joined an area indy league and worked his way up from there. He called his own shots and didn’t seem to credit anybody as an influence, but he worked zillions of matches with Colt Cabana, so I would say CC is responsible for a lot of Punk’s emerging success. A little too much arrogance and hubris, but sometimes that’s how you move up in the world.
I doubt Punk’s going to sit on his hands for too long. Eventually his rebel novelty will be forgotten, and he’ll want to find his way back to the spotlight. Maybe he can do like Foley did and host some robot wars shows on cable, or decide to start his own wrestling league.
He’s starting to write comics for Marvel. If he’s any good, he may start getting more work doing that.
There’s something ironic about the fact that one of the tipping points for Punk’s deciding to walk out was learning that, instead of main-eventing WrestleMania, he’d be fighting Triple H on the upper midcard.
That plan was made in the lead-up to the Royal Rumble, at the time when WWE was convinced that fans would accept Batista as a returning hero and cheer for him in the main event match. That, of course, didn’t happen, and WWE had to come up with a save - so they booked Daniel Bryan into the storyline Punk had been in and gave him the match with Trips, with the stipulation that he’d get to be in the main event if he won.
Had Punk not left the company, he’d likely have gotten that spot instead.
This is probably the most likely scenario.
He’ll do just fine doing is Marvel Comics, until no one reads them because no one really reads comics anymore, he’ll panic because omg no one is paying attention to him anymore and figure out some way of getting back into the spotlight.
I only barely watched RAW (Dolphins were on) and from what I saw it was boring as hell.
The Fins were boring/losing at the time too so I ended up going to bed at 10. Anything interesting happen?
Also did anyone listen/watch the Austin Podcast? They bring up Punk?
I missed Raw, I may rewatch at some point this week. I did get home in time to see the Austin/McMahon podcast. I suggest watching it/listening to it.
Some backstory, if you ever listen to Austin’s regular podcast it’s obvious he’s not an insanely enthused fan of the current product. However, he’s always extremely respectful to the WWE, and in fact almost never directly criticizes them. My prediction was this would be a love-fest where Steve didn’t really ask any harsh questions. I was wrong.
If this podcast was pre-scripted, then it’s the best acting job I’ve seen from either man. Austin asked several questions that seemed to really annoy Vince.
Austin did ask about Punk, surprisingly that was one of the “easy” questions as least based on Vince’s reaction. Vince probably had prepped for that specifically. Vince was conciliatory, he didn’t address any of the stuff relating to Ryback or the medical issues, but he apologized that Punk received his severance papers on his wedding day and said it was unintentionally, but that he was sorry. He said he was open to working with Punk in the future.
Austin contrasted Punk’s leaving to his 8 month hiatus (when he left over refusing to job to Lesnar) and asked if an intermediary could bring them together in the way JR brought Vince and Austin back together. Vince said he thinks part of the problem with Punk is there was no such intermediary, and that Punk is a loner with poor communication skills.
The issues that really seemed to annoy Vince is when Austin used the term “pro wrestling”, it appears Vince really hates the use of that term. Vince said that “pro wrestling is what my dad did, I do sports entertainment.”
Vince also objects to Austin’s characterization of Vince having “put the territories out of business.” Vince claims that men like Verne Gagne and other territory owners were multi-millionaires who at the time were fair wealthier than him, because he basically had bought WWF from his dad on credit. [Not delved into on the podcast too much but I was previously aware of this, his dad basically made the sale a loan with a huge balloon payment, if Vince had failed to make it, the federation would have reverted back to his dad and Vince got nothing.]
Vince said that all the other territory owners who were cash-rich, had all their money outside of the business, while he was folding all of his money back into the business to increase production values and etc. In his words the territories put themselves out of the business by refusing to invest in themselves.
Austin asked about the large writing staff today versus only having a few in his day, and annoys Vince when he uses the term “a whole bunch of writers.” Vince argues WWE is much larger today and requires them.
Austin says he’d like to see more in ring action, and the opening segment sometimes goes too long. Vince conceded that on the opening segment, but says that the in ring actually only matters if people care about the storyline, and he sees no value in “just two guys wrestling.”
Basically Vince seems mostly okay talking about any past controversies (including Punk), and extensively on Austin and his controversies. He seems very uncomfortable with any questions about the current business or the direction WWE is going.
At the end Austin asks McMahon repeatedly if there is an email or other contact information that fans can use to give feedback to WWE. This also seemed to bother Vince for some reason, and he just kept repeating that “he listens to the audience” for his feedback. Austin then just says “alright, so use WWE or Vince McMahon’s official twitter to give feedback” (Vince seems annoyed at this.)
Anyway, it was pretty interesting, and covered a lot more than I just summarized.
I listened to part 1 of Austin’s interview with Bray Wyatt. Part II airs Tuesday night.
They mainly discussed Bray’s background and how he came up with his character. Bray said he knew a kid named Bray White who frequently got into fights. He had lost the feeling in his face and couldn’t feel any punches to that area, so he won a lot. “Wyatt” comes from Wyatt Earp. He’s a big fan of horror movies, and got to talk to Dan Spivey about his Waylon Mercy character, who also wore Hawaiian shirts. Bray said he listens to podcasts of right-wing crackpot conspiracy theorists (as well as Charles Manson) and gets of lot of his material from them. He originally studied broadcast journalism and wants to become one of those right-wing crackpot conspiracy theorists when he retires from wrestling. Hey, worked for Jess Ventura.
Austin brought up that even though Bray’s supposed to be a heel, he has a lot of fans. Bray said he makes it a point not to insult the audience like other heels do, since cult leaders typically try to win over converts with their charms. As for how he wound up with Mark Crozier’s song as his intro, he talked about how each wrestler consults with the music director and listens from a database of music to pick what type of entrance music they want. He said other guys usually pick out the style of music they want in short manner, but it took him days of listening until he discovered the Crozier tune and decided it resonated with him. So, it would seem like the individual wrestler can have a lot of say in their character development, and if they seem bland on TV, it’s mostly their fault. 
And it doesn’t hurt if your dad is part of the booking team, either.