411MANIA | CM Punk Says He Won’t Stay in MMA Longer Than He Should
CM Punk spoke with Colin Cowherd (
via MMA Fighting about his upcoming UFC debut and more. Some highlights are below:
On people saying he’ll only fight two or three times: “What’s wrong with doing it just two or three fights? That’s a lot of money.”
On not overstaying his welcome in MMA: “I was the guy in wrestling that always had an exit strategy. I was always saying, ‘I gotta get out of here.’ That’s why i’m just flabbergasted that people are actually like, ‘Whoa, he left!’ I was surrounded by a lot of old timers on the independent scene before I went to WWE. They were always like, ‘You gotta get out.’ You gotta get in, you get out. You can make a stupid amount of money, but if you stick around you wear out your welcome. Something bad’s going to happen. Guys that were legends in the sport, they made their money and for whatever reason, they didn’t get out. I always looked at that like, ‘I’m going to listen to the old, wise sages’. I’m going to get in to get out.”
On a possible title shot: “I know people think this is a publicity stunt, I’m never going to set foot in the Octagon. I look forward to proving them wrong, but to me, it’s not super far-fetched to be like, ‘You know what? What if I put three or four wins together? Who’s to say I don’t get a title shot?’ I’m a very positive thinking person. Of course I’m not going to saddle myself with this negativity that’s, ‘Oh, that’s it for me’. Because to me in life, it’s so cliche and it sounds so corny, so Karate Kid-like, but it’s not about getting knocked down. It’s about how many times you get up. That’s why I train the way I do. I get knocked down in training every day, so on Sept. 10th I won’t get knocked down.”
On his critics: “To wrestling fans who say, ‘Oh, this is B.S.’…the ones who say I’m going to fight one time are the same ones now saying I’m never going to make it to the Octagon. That’s for them to say. They’re entitled to their opinion, but I’ll prove them all wrong.”
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CM Punk Says WWE Treats Its Talents Like "Indentured Servants"
On re-signing with WWE back in 2011:
“Back in I want to say, 2011, my contract was up and they were trying to re-sign me and they were trying to re-sign me for lowball figures. It’s what they do to the guys. They’re indentured servants. They try to pay them the smallest amount of money you could possibly pay them. There’s no health insurance. You’re responsible for your own travel, your own hotels, your own food on the road. You’re home once a day, maybe. I did that 10 years to get to the WWE and then I did it 10 years there, so my gas tank was empty in that regard.
In 2011, it was kind of hanging in the balance there and I made the decision to re-sign. It’s not that I regret that decision, it’s just that if I didn’t re-sign, I would have dedicated myself 100-percent to this. So I re-signed, that story unfolded, that chapter of my book’s over with and now I 100-percent dedicate myself to this now. It’s just later than I anticipated and it’s a bigger challenge now cause I’m older.”
On him “soiling the sanctity” of MMA by not working his way up the rankings:
“There’s something pure about it that nobody outside that cage can touch. Do I think that I’m ruining the sport? No, absolutely not. Do I know that there are people that are going to say that? Yeah, absolutely, but I don’t got to see them on a daily basis and when I want to shut them off, I just don’t read my Twitter.”
brehs remember that reporter Punk had that issue with? I don’t play tennis, and if I trained for two years with Nick Bollettieri, it wouldn’t matter; the No. 400 ranked player in the world would still hand me my ass.
Punk has made it clear that he wants to fight again. But if he doesn’t drop down to a smaller promotion—he’s clearly in over his head in UFC— it confirms what critics have said all along: His MMA career is a ploy for money and the largest amount of attention possible.
