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CM Punk recently spoke on Renee Paquette’s ‘Oral Sessions’ podcast where he discussed his opinions on WWE stopping wrestlers from using Twitch and how he believes wrestlers won’t unionize.
“This is where I will get controversial and piss a lot of people off. I don’t know Xavier Woods. I met him in Atlanta. He was doing a dark match one time. He was always a good wrestler but there wasn’t a character for him at that time. Obviously he has become a pretty big superstar. He’s big on Twitch. He’s a big video gamer. I don’t know what’s going on with his Twitch channel so I don’t want to speak out of turn on that. I just saw he was petitioning to get a job with G4. Why is it ok for him to do that but Zelina Vega can’t have a Twitch? That was always my thing and people labeled me a complainer or whiny because I would always be the guy that would say, wait, why is so and so able to do this because there was always outside interest, not only from me.”
Punk then spoke about how WWE gave another wrestler’s movie role to John Cena.
I remember one particular person got a role playing a wrestler because they knew somebody who was producing this television show for this certain channel. Then when it got shuffled to the office, all of a sudden, he couldn’t do it and the next thing you know, John Cena is doing it. They would literally take every single request that came through and funnel it to the one person that they wanted to be the face of the company.
Punk continued by touching on a time where WWE ordered a pinball machine factory to not put Punk on their machine.
We went to a pinball factory in Chicago where they make a lot of pinball games. We were there and the guy who was giving us the tour, the guy who owned the factory and the company, said he wanted me on the WrestleMania WWE pinball machine and they said no. I said, what do you mean no? They (WWE) said, don’t put this guy on it, we want this guy on it. Still to this day, I will hear stuff like that where they reached out and they had an offer for me and it never got back to me. THQ wanted me on the cover of their video game. I was forwarded the emails where WWE said, no, we want Sheamus, Miz, or John Cena. To their credit, Bryce, who was the head of all that stuff said, no, we want CM Punk as he is literally the guy right now.”
Punk was asked whether he thinks wrestlers would ever unionize.
“No. It’s because there is no such thing as the boys. It’s a trope. You know, (they say), we are on the road and these people are our family. But, once you’re out of the bubble, you don’t hear from anybody anymore. Those people don’t pay your bills. There are always going to be a handful of people that will undercut everybody else just to get ahead a little bit. There seems to be a lot of people who not only by nature are boot lickers, but they love the taste. You’re supposed to lick the boot, not eat the entire thing.”
Punk mentioned a time when he muted Vince McMahon whilst being on commentary.
“I remember the first night on commentary, Vince started yelling in my headset. I elbowed Lawler. I wrote a note to him asking which one is the volume bottom. He pointed to it and I turned it all the way down. When we took the headsets off after the show, I asked him, “Did you not know you can do that?” He said, “We are going to get yelled at.” Vince never said a word to me.”
When asked what it would take for him to get back into a wrestling ring, Punk responded by saying how he would want an ‘interesting scenario’.
“I think the landscape currently is much different than when I left. You can play the game where if AEW was an option, would you have gone right after you left WWE? If you are going to play that game, there is no way they (WWE) would have handled it the way they handled it by suspending me for two months and nobody contacting me and the next thing you know, I got my release papers on my wedding day. There is no way that would have happened if there was an AEW. They probably would have approached me and said my suspension is up and asked if I am ready to go back to work. Without wanting to insult anybody on either side of the fence, any WWE or AEW talent, it would take, above all, an interesting scenario. It would take a story that would be fun to tell and also the stupidest amount of money. But, they can save themselves a lot of money if they present a fun storyline. Now, what that is, I don’t know. I’m a pretty picky guy, especially at this point. There are more interesting people on the AEW side for me to wrestle and that’s because I’ve never wrestled them before.”
Check out the entire episode below.
Special thanks to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.