Trivia / CM Punk

• Breakup Breakout: As one of the most popular and famous wrestlers of the twenty-first century (equal to the likes of John Cena, Randy Orton, and Daniel Bryan), Punk is effectively the Michaels to every stable and team he has ever been a part of. To wit:
  • Colt Cabana and Ace Steel, his teammates in the Second City Saints, joined him in signing with WWE, but Punk was the only one to make it big. Ace Steel never made it out of developmental, while Colt Cabana's run on WWE programming lasted all of four months and he'd be the first to tell you that it didn't exactly work out. This translated to AEW, where Cabana, despite signing with the promotion from almost its inception, has been relegated to being a background member for the The Dark Order appearing mainly on Dark, while Punk had several high-profile matches and feuds from the moment he debuted and became AEW World Champion within a year of his signing. In fact, the disparity in success is so great that a person could easily argue that Cabana is more well-known for being Punk's (now-former) best friend than as a wrestler in his own right.
  • Punk is the breakout from the Gold Bond Mafia in relation to ROH and WWE after Chris Hero showed up there, though Hero does have the consolation of wXw.
  • Punk has been this to every stable he has ever joined in the WWE. For example, the heel stable The New Breed on ECW (which he joined for all of two weeks); by the end of 2008 he was the only member still employed by the company as an active wrestler.^note Matt Striker transitioned into a commentator role in August 2008, and worked in a variety of roles until 2013. It became blatantly obvious over the course of his joining, leaving, and subsequent feud with them that he was the only one that had any sort of real future in the company — the rest are now in the indies. Every stable that he has joined since then has him being the most successful of the bunch (the SES, the New Nexus) — though this is mainly due to him being already well-established before he joins.
  • A minor example in his earlier WWE days when he teamed with Kofi Kingston. After they dropped the Tag Titles, Punk went on to win multiple World Championships, with one such reign became the longest reign in the modern era. Kofi, however, was stuck in midcard hell, jobbing to the bigger talents on the roster, until he formed the wildly successful stable The New Day with Xavier Woods and Big E. Langston. While he hasn't quite matched Punk's success (and most likely never will), Kofi is by far the best off out of all of Punk's former stables and tag teams. Interestingly, Kingston would end up surprisingly being pushed for and winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35 and hold it for a half a year, shortly before Punk returned to work to WWE via their Fox show WWE Backstage. Ironically, Kofi's WWE Title victory has had made him a WWE Grand Slam Champion, a feat Punk never accomplished.
  • Punk is also, by far, the most successful member out of all of Raven's stables. This includes Raven himself, who, while still relatively popular and respected thanks to the original ECW and regarded as a minor wrestling legend, never managed to attain the mainstream success and widespread popularity that Punk has today. The only other wrestlers who were in any of Raven's stables who became World Champions are Cactus Jack and Bully Ray (formerly Bubba Ray Dudley), both of whom were in Raven's Nest in ECW.
  • He's also this to the entire roster of WWE's ECW, including the aforementioned New Breed. While several of his fellow wrestlers from that show (The Miz, John Morrison, Sheamus) would go on to have successful careers, none of them were ever able to surpass Punk, even during the seven years he was gone from wrestling. Hell, the person ECW initially pushed instead of Punk, Bobby Lashley, would be gone from WWE within six months of leaving the show for RAW; it took over a decade later and around three years into his return to WWE for him to get over enough to justify a world title reign. Compare that to Punk, who was a five-time world champion by the time he left, with one reign lasting 434 days.
• Creator Backlash: He's quite regretful of that time he referred to a heckler in the crowd as a "homo" during a house show in Australia (which became quite memetic after being caught on video), especially considering his support of the LGBT community.
• Demand Overload: His AEW debut came with an associated t-shirt, which was so desirable that both ShopAEW and Pro Wrestling Tees saw frequent outages throughout the next 24 hours. Pro Wrestling Tees also ran out of ringer shirts to print the design on, forcing them to offer a plain substitute while awaiting a restock. Within just 72 hours, the design had become the best-selling PWT product of all time, beating the iconic Bullet Club "Bone Soldier" design, and they had to order the entire North American supply of black-on-white ringer shirts to keep up.
• Died During Production: Punk was scheduled to wrestle Chris Benoit for the vacant ECW World Championship at Vengeance: Night of Champions in 2007. Benoit never made it to the show, and a day later, everyone found out why. This led to a meme directed to the wrestler who replaced him: "Dear John Morrison: Who died and made you champion?"
• Doing It for the Art: CM Punk, during his wrestling career, was very passionate about the quality of professional wrestling as a performance piece and not merely as a means of personal exposure. He has been quoted for saying that the three great arts that America has given the world are comic books, jazz, and professional wrestling. That's one of the reasons people were so heartbroken to learn his time in WWE had killed his love for wrestling — and why they were overjoyed when time and the founding of AEW helped bring it back.
• Executive Veto: Says he got to keep his ring name and gimmick because Paul Heyman was against repackaging CM Punk. Depending on when this happened, Alexis Laree might have benefited to, as she was still around Punk around the time "writers" were experimenting with a new gimmick for him.
• Follow the Leader: Darts player and CM Punk Fanboy Paul Nicholson has to this to a tee. Just compare this video of Nicholson's walk-on to Punk's entrance at Money in the Bank 2011 and it's practically a carbon copy. Past entrances also include wearing a Nexus-branded scarf, coming out to "We Are One" (Nexus' entrance theme), and having Xs drawn on his hand like Punk.
• Hostility on the Set: Punk is pretty infamous for his history of being difficult to work with (something that Punk himself will probably be the first to tell you about), and there's probably too many examples to list of wrestlers that he had mutual heat with. The ubiquity of just how much people hate Punk backstage has occasionally been exploited to help sell an angle, such as his Worked Shoot storyline for Full Gear 2021 when he feuded with Eddie Kingston — their actual heat was from fifteen years ago and an interview with Punk indicated that it was water under the bridge, but they acted as if it were still real onscreen for the sake of their feud. Punk's history with reconciliation has also been pretty fraught — following him being signed with AEW, he had to give out a lot of apologies when he first met with the roster, and appeared to have a mostly chill working dynamic backstage for a while, only for him to get into hugely public conflicts again from the "gripebomb" scrum at All Out 2022, and eventually his All In 2023 brawl with Jack Perry that resulted in him being fired. Meanwhile, Punk's beef with the WWE and especially Triple H has been well-documented even before Punk walked out of the company on 2014, but almost a decade later, Punk and Trips managed to privately bury the hatchet in 2023, with Punk returning to wrestling on WWE just months following his AEW release — time will tell how long this will last.
• Irony as She Is Cast
  • Punk's increasingly mad savior character from Straight Edge Society and The Nexus has a lot of creepy religious undertones; real-life Punk is a hardcore atheist. His response to Teddy Hart saying God made him able to jump off a thirty foot cage?
  "There is no god, and that cage wasn't thirty feet."
  • CM Punk as Satan
    • Which itself was a nod taken up to eleven at a line Punk said in the promo that turned him heel and started the original Summer of Punk.
    • Alternatively, it could be a Development Gag alluding to when he got his head shaved by Rey Mysterio. Punk's original concept for the mask (before Vince McMahon made him change it), included devil horns.
• Money, Dear Boy: In one of the many interviews asking him whether he would return to the ring during the time he was away from wrestling, he said that the one thing that would make him return would be a "big bag of cash".^note This being Punk, it's hard to tell how much of this is legit or how much is Punk being The Gadfly, especially considering that his stance on returning has shifted back and forth between "under the right set of circumstances" and "never in a million years." He did admit after his speech on the first WWE Raw since his return at the end of Survivor Series that "I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to make money." On camera, no less. Of course, this being CM Punk, it's a bit hard to tell how of much this is legit or how much was kayfabe.^note Especially considering that more than one wrestler in the past has used the phrase "make money" or similar as slang for "doing business no matter whether one is friendly with other fellow wrestlers or not." Considering Punk's problems in AEW, this would put it in a whole different context.
• Promoted Fanboy: According to the WWE-produced Best in the World DVD, one of Punk's ex-girlfriends mentioned that Punk is intensely devoted to the wrestling business and being a professional wrestler.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • CM Punk legitimately lives a Straight Edge lifestyle, spurred by the hatred of his father's drunken wastedness, and this eventually became the basis for his career-defining gimmick.
  • Also, CM Punk's winning Ring of Honor's world title in what was said to be his last scheduled match before leaving for WWE; instead of telling fans that he had more appearances scheduled before his actual departure, ROH let Punk lead the fans on that he was going to steal the title, take it to WWE with him, and break the title's line of succession. He even went so far as to sign his WWE contract on the belt in one of his most infamous promos.
  • Rumors of him not resigning with WWE led to an angle similar to the one in Ring of Honor in which Punk has vowed to take the WWE title with him in exile upon defeating John Cena at Money in the Bank 2011. (Which he did.)
  • Potentially a Worked Shoot, but his feud with Jeff Hardy has many, many elements of this, Punk brought up some extremely reasonable points when pointing out the enabling nature of the fans and Jeff towards each other.
  • In WWE, there are a multitude of references towards Punk being extremely gifted in the women department, references that (by all accounts) are all true.
  • Punk's ECW World Championship win occurred when it did because John Morrison was about to go on a suspension due to violating the Wellness Policy. It's believed that his initial Money in the Bank win happened under similar circumstances, as Jeff Hardy (whom WWE was pushing as their next big face at the time) did the same thing and missed WrestleMania because of it.
  • Near the start of his famous "Pipe Bomb" promo, which was mostly a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to John Cena, Punk declared that he doesn't hate Cena, in fact he likes him more than most of the guys in the back. As he revealed in the interview he gave at Starrcast III, Punk actually really did enjoy working with Cena and they apparently did get on well.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • The International Wrestling Cartel gave him "Ole!" by The Bouncing Souls, AFI's "Strength Through Wounding" and "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch"
  • ROH used "Night Train" by The Bouncing Souls during what was thought to be his final appearance in the company.
  • IWA M-S used Jay-Z's "99 Problems", Less Than Jake's "Gainesville Rock City" and Ice Cube's "When Will They Shoot?"
  • FIP used Slayer's "South of Heaven"
  • And of course his iconic use of Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" in ROH, WWE, UFC and AEW, which is easily his best-known theme song.
  • Before he switched themes in 2011, he came out to "This Fire Burns" by Killswitch Engage.
• Reality Subtext: One of CM Punk's tics in IWA Mid-South was to bail from the ring before the start of a match and get in the face of a fan who was badmouthing him or who he thought was badmouthing him. This was later revealed not to be so much his gimmick as him trying to prove fans would still stab a pro wrestler if provoked enough. Punk was proven wrong. Security did have to restrain a few people but none had knives.
• Revival by Commercialization: His revival of "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour as a theme in 2011 led to a resurgence of popularity in the iTunes charts, especially in the U.S. and the UK.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • It was believed that his original firing from TNA was because he got into a fist fight with Teddy Hart at a local restaurant (Punk and Teddy were firing shots at each other on the internet after Teddy's infamous Spot Monkey incident at an ROH show). Punk himself, however, denies this — he claims that the actual reason he was fired was the standard "creative had nothing for him".
  • Punk ended up in serious trouble with AEW following the infamous "gripebomb", where during a media scrum after the All Out event in September 2022, Punk started publicly insulting several of his colleagues, including Colt Cabana, Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, and Adam Page, leading to a huge backstage altercation. Amidst the chaos that followed, Punk was suspended indefinitely and stripped of his World Championship title. While this didn't irreparably burn his bridges with the promotion (eventually making an on-camera return on June 2023), this makes him the first wrestler to fully vacate his title in AEW, as opposed to other instances of having interim champions with a unification happening once the original champion was able to return.
  • After being initially suspended for being involved in another backstage altercation, this time with Jack Perry at All In 2023, Punk's AEW contract was officially terminated on September 2, 2023.
• Romance on the Set: Dated Daffney, Tracy Brooks, Maria Kanellis, Beth Phoenix as well as Lita. Eventually married A.J. Lee.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: His run at the top of WWE was very brief compared to a lot of other top stars. In that two or so years since the infamous promo, he got over with fans to the point where chants can still be heard for years after his departure in protest of anything WWE presents that fans find frustrating. Also, the very strong and convincing argument can be made that Punk's run at the top, particularly his rivalry and a handful of great matches with John Cena, cracked the door open for his "indy veteran, high-workrate" archetype to have roles, even featured roles, on WWE programming, despite most not fitting into Vince's prototypical wrestler mold. Nowadays, NXT's constantly cycling through former indy/international standouts. Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Shinsuke Nakamura, Finn Bálor, have all been NXT Champion and/or held a main roster singles title. And that's not even a comprehensive list. The renewed focus on workrate eventually spilled over to the women as well (perhaps not-so-coincidentally, Punk's now-wife A.J. Lee had quite a bit to do with that) to the point where anyone of either gender who flat-out can't wrestle and doesn't have some other type of value to compensate, tends to stick out like a sore thumb.
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: Living Colour released the re-recorded version of "Cult of Personality" from Guitar Hero as a single a day before Punk's return at Survivor Series.
• Star-Making Role: He has two in WWE:
  • His legendary feud with Jeff Hardy made him the top heel in WWE within only a couple of months. By the time of their TLC match, the feud was so over that they main-evented SummerSlam above even Randy Orton and John Cena. It probably would've been the peak of his WWE career, had it not been for...
  • ...the Pipebomb. Punk was nearing the end of his contract with WWE and facing an uncertain future, so he dropped a legendary Worked Shoot promo that changed not just his career but the landscape of professional wrestling forever. This, combined with winning the WWE Championship from John Cena in what many still regard as the absolute best match in WWE history, concluding in him running off with the title in the middle of his hometown of Chicago, less than two hours before his contract expired, saw him ascend to superstardom and etched him into history as a wrestling icon.
• Trolling Creator: Despite consistently wearing trunks in his indie and WWE runs, in AEW he has instead shown a preference for long-leg tights, to cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. CM Punk has played in to the "CM Trunks vs. Long Bois" debate both in the ring and on social media, constantly teasing and rejecting the idea of going back to his older fashion style, jokingly suggesting switching to a singlet, then deciding to actually wear trunks for random one-off matches.
• What Could Have Been
  • Mickie James and him were nearly repackaged as cheerleaders back when they were still in developmental. Paul Heyman saved them from the gimmick, but apparently someone in the office really wanted cheerleader wrestlers, which led to the birth of the infamous Spirit Squad stable. Ironically, the stable included the future Dolph Ziggler, who would become something of a recurring foe to Punk over the years.
  • Paul Heyman stated that he wanted Punk to win the infamous Extreme Elimination Chamber in 2006 to win the ECW Championship. Vince however, wanted Bobby Lashley to win it to further push him as the next big thing. Heyman then tried pushing to have Punk at the very least be the one to eliminate Big Show, then ECW Champions, to at least make him a credible threat, and Big Show was more than happy to put Punk over, sadly Vince didn't want it to happen and the show went on with Lashley winning it in the end, with Punk being the first eliminated. This was also the decision to led to Paul Heyman to leave WWE.
  • Speaking of WWECW, Punk was due to wrestle Chris Benoit at Vengeance: Night of Champions 2007 for the vacated ECW Championship after Bobby Lashley got drafted to RAW. We all know why that didn't happen, and Punk ended up wrestling and feuding with John Morrison (then-known as Johnny Nitro) instead. One can't help but wonder what would've happened had the match — and the planned feud — happened and where Punk's career would've gone as a result of it. In a Twitter Q&A in early 2021, even Punk admitted he had no idea what the plans for them were; all Benoit and him talked about in regards to the match was "beating the piss out of each other" and he had no idea who was suppose to go over (though reports indicate it would've been Benoit).
  • He, Colt Cabana and Sherri Martel were in the running for a Jerry Springer booking according to AOW interview with Mad Man Pondo.
  • There's been many reports and long-standing rumors that WWE wanted to reignite his legendary feud with Jeff Hardy several times only to fail because of Jeff's refusal to re-sign with the company. It's even been said that the original plan for the feud was for Jeff to take the next six to eight months off, then re-sign with WWE and continue where things left off, which is supported by how Punk would make numerous disses towards Jeff on SmackDown! even after Jeff was gone from the company. The second time was when Jeff's TNA contract was about to expire and Punk was in the middle of his second WWE Championship reign; TNA did just about everything could to keep Jeff with them, and ultimately succeeded. By the time Jeff finally re-signed with WWE in 2017, Punk was long-gone from the company and wrestling in general, and they wouldn't be in the same promotion together for another five years.
  • When WWE creative approached him with the idea of having a security force stable centered around him, they suggested Daniel Bryan, Big Show, and one call-up from developmental (most likely Seth Rollins). He had an idea instead for the stable to be all developmental call-ups, specifically featuring Rollins along with Dean Ambrose and Chris Hero. They liked the idea, but rejected Hero, so we got Roman Reigns instead and Punk wasn't directly involved with the end product of The Shield.
  • In January 2020, Punk shared a picture of a sheet◊ featuring the matches WWE had planned for WrestleMania XXX shortly before Punk's walkout from WWE. It confirmed a long-standing fan rumor that Punk was scheduled to wrestle Triple H at the event.
  • After Punk signed with All Elite Wrestling in August 2021, it was revealed that him debuting for the promotion could have happened earlier at different times:
    • When AEW was getting off the ground, Punk was one of the big names that the company was actively pushing to sign, and of course they eventually would in August 2021. However, Punk initially passed on the offer because he was skeptical that AEW would be successful after years of receiving similar offers from several wannabe upstart promotions, dismissing their talks at the time as being nothing more than a few text messages. (He also said that the way how AEW handled certain events, such as the death of Brodie Lee, won him over.) Had he signed in those early days, AEW's main event scene could've looked very different.
    • While talking to the press subsequent to his debut for the promotion, he and AEW owner Tony Khan also revealed that they had been in talks for this debut for a year and a half, and that they held off this long because they refused to debut him in front of an empty crowd due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Had the world not gone into such disarray that year, the prospect of what storylines he could've been involved in and matches that could've taken place had he debuted in early-mid 2020, is nothing short of tantalizing.
  • It seems that, had he not being injured almost as soon as he won the AEW World title at Double or Nothing 2022 (resulting in Jon Moxley winning an interim title in the process), the plans for Punk's reign would have been to eventually face MJF for it, with whom he had a very intense feud, so as to complete a trilogy between them (with MJF beating Punk on an episode of Dynamite, ending Punk's undefeated streak since debuting in AEW in the process, and Punk beating MJF in the rematch at Revolution 2022), which would probably had MJF win the match, and thus the trilogy and the title in the process. There even seemed to be a tease of it when, after Punk regained the title from Moxley at All Out 2022, MJF came out to confront him. However, the "Brawl Out" threw everything completely off the window, Punk was stripped of the title, and Moxley yet again won the title (making him the first three-time AEW World champion in the process), and ultimately went on to drop it to MJF at Full Gear 2022.
    • To a lesser degree, Punk was also set up to defend the AEW World title against Hiroshi Tanahashi at Forbidden Door 2022, which was set in his hometown of Chicago. However, the aforementioned injury post-Double or Nothing caused AEW to change plans; Punk was not stripped of his belt at the time, and Moxley became an interim world champion leading into the NJPW crossover show.
  • According to Triple H, Punk re-signing with the WWE was a very last minute decision that very few knew about.^note He even claimed that the actual talks between WWE and Punk for the latter to re-sign took place after fan furore over a possible Punk return to WWE (after whan fans perceived as references to Punk on WWE programming) had mostly died down. It's safe to say the narrative and creative plans coming out of the Survivor Series would have been very different had Punk not returned.
  • Punk was slated to headline in WrestleMania XL — the first WrestleMania following his return to WWE — but ended up suffering a torn tricep during Royal Rumble 2024, with it being so serious as to require surgery, forcing him to miss the event.

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