CM Punk ruled as the coolest guy in North American professional wrestling in a few different eras. An indie firebrand in the first half of the 2000s, the straight-edge icon signed with WWE in 2005 and built himself into an avatar for fans frustrated by the company’s de facto monopoly on big-time wrestling. He cemented this position during a feud with quintessential company man John Cena in 2011. Punk (the on-screen character) spoke out against WWE’s corporate incompetence; then, in front of a rabid Chicagoland crowd, he beat Cena for his championship to climax probably the best match in company history (even if it’s sullied by the presence of Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis).
A few years later, Punk became a man who spoke out against WWE without getting paid by them to do it, leaving the company acrimoniously in 2014 because of the toll his work for them took on his body. He went over seven years without a match, in any promotion, and in that time his name became a thing that WWE audiences chanted when they didn’t like what they were seeing. Capitalizing on that increasing discontent with the main provider of wrestling in the U.S., All Elite Wrestling launched in 2019, and after it emerged from the limited crowds of the social-distancing era, they signed Punk. He debuted to an unforgettable ovation in the Bulls’ arena, furthering the company’s upstart momentum, then proceeded to have basically one good year and one year marred by injury and workplace drama. Punk was fired after a backstage altercation at Wembley Stadium in 2023, and he returned to a WWE that was no longer run by his old nemesis McMahon. He’s been a wrestler there without off-screen incident ever since.
On a professional level, Punk is a drama king who seems like a pain to work with. But his politics, at least superficially, are about as good as they get for pro wrestlers. On television, he’s worn a shirt with the trans flag on it and a shirt that says “Abortion Rights Are Human Rights,” among other gestures of support, and those have extra impact when they come from such a charismatic public speaker. While WWE is the worst possible environment for anything approaching “authenticity,” Punk is one of a select few in that company who can get you to believe that he’s speaking from the heart when he’s holding a microphone. In AEW, which gave him a ton of leeway to put his stamp on their shows, that quality was magnified, and I think a lot about this promo he cut in Regina, Saskatchewan, a couple years ago. It was not a particularly well-attended show, but Punk, right up against the barrier separating fan from performer, used his intensity, humor, and eloquence to make it feel like an unmissable night.
It’s a strange contradiction, that a wrestler who so signifies the Heart Of The People was nevertheless so beholden to his petty grudges that he now plies his trade at the most soulless company in the industry. For the Punk fan who still holds up that ideal of the outsider fighting the system from the inside, this past weekend was pretty rough.
John Cena is yet again the WWE champion, or whatever they call the belt he’s holding, and he’s doing this totally flat bad-guy act on his retirement tour because I guess he thought people wanted to see that. Anyway, him facing Punk one last time, rekindling the greatest rivalry of his career, was an obvious choice as soon as he announced his final dates as a wrestler. What I don’t think anyone foresaw is that the nostalgia match would happen at one of WWE’s absurdly lucrative Saudi Arabia PPVs, which have been helping make the company even more obscenely wealthy since 2018. Punk headlining an event meant to whitewash an authoritarian monarchy where women are second-class citizens and queer people aren’t allowed to express their existence at all would be a bummer in and of itself, but it felt extra humiliating for him given his previously expressed views on the country, back in early 2020.
This tweet, almost immediately deleted, nevertheless remained front and center leading up to Saturday’s show, where Punk had to eat shit at a pep rally in Riyadh. Heckled by booing fans, including one in particular who referenced the “blood money” comment, Punk responded with a bold lie: “This guy wants me to apologize for a mean tweet I wrote six years ago. Hey, listen—legitimately had nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. I woke up and I was crabby and I wrote a mean tweet to The Miz. And I apologized to The Miz. And sir, what’s your name? Muhammad? Muhammad, I sincerely apologize to you and all of Saudi Arabia.”
It’s hard to be surprised anymore when a celebrity bows to oil money, but it felt like an extra kick to Punk’s reputation when his slimy boss later praised him for this “apology.” Triple H, speaking about the tweet that apparently had nothing to do with Saudi Arabia, said after the show, “I was privileged to watch him grow as a human being, to step out here and apologize to the people of Saudi, to just cherish where he is at in life and his career and the things that he gets to do and the opportunities that he has. And I was incredibly proud of him.”
The whole situation seems to validate the supposedly unscripted televised insult directed at Punk from then-AEW champion Adam Page back in 2022, which lit the fuse that eventually blew up Punk’s position in the company: “You talk a big game about workers’ rights. Well, you’ve shown the exact opposite since you’ve gotten here.” CM Punk is, indeed, exceptional at talking. You know what they say about how much that’s worth.
I’ve watched CM Punk win that title in 2011 more times than I’ve watched any other wrestling match. I didn’t watch on Saturday. I looked up the result later: Punk lost.