CM Punk on Not Being Against WWE: Unreal But Was Always Taught to Protect The Business & Having Handshake Agreement with Vince McMahon for WWE Return in 2018 or 2019

A recent episode of ESPN’s Unsportsmanlike with Evan Cohen, Chris Canty and Michelle Smallmon radio show featured CM Punk as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Punk’s thoughts about WWE’s upcoming new behind-the-scenes WWE Unreal docuseries for Netflix.

“I’m probably the wrong guy to put on this show to try and talk it up. It’s not that I’m so much against it, it’s that my entire existence in my profession, professional wrestling, you’re taught and you’re brought up, and you’re old school, you protect the business. It’s always been that way. Since the 1920s or 1930s, everyone knew that wrestling was predetermined. They talk about how they didn’t know, and how in the 1980s we just kind of blew it wide open, and now we’re exposing the business. If you’re living under a rock, you don’t know, but most people do know.

What this show is going to do is just show us backstage in our environment, interacting with each other and that’s really for the fans. You see it all the time with football shows like Hard Knocks. That’s a big one. You’re in the room, you’re seeing the special teams, Xs and Os, and the relationships between the coaches and players and families. That’s sort of what we’re doing. We’re following suit in a way. It’s just really strange, for me at least, because I’ve always been taught you protect the business, you don’t let the insiders in.”

In a recent separate interview with the My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox podcast, Punk gave his thoughts about how he had a handshake agreement with Vince McMahon for a WWE return in 2018 or 2019 that didn’t happen in the end due to McMahon had “ghosted” him.

“I think the Twitter and the internet perception is I tried to go back to WWE and they didn’t want me so I went and did the FOX show. That’s not what happened at all. I had a hilarious, clandestine meeting in the Borgata in Atlantic City with Vince (McMahon) and Triple H. I don’t even know now. What is it? It’s 2025. This has to be 2018 or ‘19, and it’s just because Vince just started (calling). I had agents, they were telling me, ‘Hey, they wanna talk to you’ and I was like, ‘Whatever, I’m not interested,’ and then Vince just started calling me. He was like, ‘Hey! I’m eliminating the middleman,’ and I was just like, ‘This is insane,’ and it just so happened that, ‘Oh, well, I’m gonna be here.’ ‘Alright, we can get there.’ You know, ‘Okay, alright’ and we had a meeting and we had a handshake agreement and then he ghosted me. So, that’s why it didn’t happen. Unbelievable. I’m gonna write a book someday… It’s a great story. It’s a fantastic story. Yeah, that would have been probably the first time that me and Triple H probably started chipping it away at any problems or drama that we had in the past. That was the first instance… Yeah (I was open to a return at the time). I was very much just like, yeah, okay. Pay me, whatever. I took some stuff personally. Like, years have gone by. Alright, I’m over it, recognized that it’s a business. You don’t want me to take it personally? Just pay me.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2