Stop Please CM Punk—You're Telling Lies

Roll The Tape on the World's Most Boring Fight

CM Punk challenges people to stop him when he’s telling lies.

So, um, can you just stop already?

Last week Punk, perhaps in a preemptive strike, went on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour and spent what felt like an eternity laying out all his grievances with AEW, his former wrestling home. The show, titularly about the mixing of the martial arts, is a wildly successful podcast/YouTube marathon often used to pitch decidedly non-MMA ventures when Helwani has a business partnership with a promotion or broadcaster. As a result, it frequently has WWE guests, with some mixed results.

This time, however, it worked. The Twitter-verse was abuzz and Punk, per usual, was captivating as he spun his tale of recrimination and woe. As you’d expect if you’ve ever encountered CM Punk or his online proxies, he was presented as the victim, here of a promotion and an owner unworthy of his many notable talents, of co-workers that didn’t appreciate or properly defer to his elevated status in the business, children who don’t understand that wrestling is about making money for shareholders or whatever.

It was a remarkable performance, petty while maintaining the pretense of propriety and angry while somehow remaining self-assured and cool. He minimized the confrontations with Jack Perry (the son of the late actor Luke Perry of Beverly Hills 90210 fame if you want to feel old) and Khan backstage at All In, brushing it off as no big deal, despite the fact that it ended his tumultuous relationship with the company.

I gave it ****1/4, one of the better pseudo-shoots I’ve seen in the wrestling media space. Punk is clearly relaxed with Helwani, knowing that he can trust him to provide the latitude to spin the story however he chooses. It worked as a piece of art.

And, then, last night, AEW played the actual footage from the evening in question on Dynamite, using the clip to both push a match between the Young Bucks and FTR (Punk’s best friends in the promotion and vocal supporters) and prep the audience for Perry’s return. Whether or not it worked is a matter for further consideration—it’s hard to say this early whether the audience will find the departure from kayfabe confusing or tittilating. Right now opinions appear to be split right down the middle.

Most hilarious are the people who cheered Punk on for spilling the dirt on Helwani’s show, but are aghast that AEW would “stoop” to discussing the events at all. Right now my mentions on Twitter are full of blue checkmarks hoping AEW goes out of business. Additionally and anecdotally, a weird connection seemingly exists between support for Punk (on the surface a leftist, despite his obsession with capitalism) and support for Donald Trump. But it shouldn’t come as any great surprise—for all the punk rock posturing, Punk’s opinions about pro wrestling are super conservative. I’d imagine his kind of longing nostalgia connects deeply with those who have other conservative inklings.

Of course there are plenty of Punk supporters on the left as well. It's really weird, because some of the people I see cheering him on are absolutely the kind of people who talk about micro-aggressions and routinely want to police behavior and speech. Just....not for this one guy, who is apparently uniquely allowed to try to slug his way through life.

In the wake of the video airing on Dynamite and then being pulled down right and left on social media, it also wasn’t entirely apparent what AEW wanted us to make of it. After all, the Young Bucks are the storyline bad guys. Were we supposed to be mad at them for dredging all this back up, no better than a true villain like Punk?

The messaging here is clear as dirt.

What the video showed, fairly clearly I thought but not so much if you go onto Twitter and follow the discourse, was that Punk was far from the cool customer presented while sitting across from Helwani. Instead, he was completely out of control, confronting Perry, who appeared calm throughout an extended conversation. Punk took a shot at Perry’s face while he was (somewhat hilariously) trying to put his hair up with a scrunchie, then shoved him with both hands and used Perry’s long locks to pull him into a front facelock. Several men intervened and Punk then took another swipe at Perry, who was in the solid embrace of Samoa Joe, before lunging at Khan who was sitting just off camera. Punk was screaming and gesturing, apparently begging to be fired. It took two grown men to drag him away.

(Video slowed down and annotated in places for clarity)

Fact checking Punk (quotes generated by AI from the Helwani interview):

Claim: “I thought I was doing a responsible thing. You know, I didn't punch anybody.”

Verdict: He was not doing a responsible thing. He did (try) to punch someone.

Claim: “Samoa Joe was there, told me to stop, and then I quit.”

Verdict: Actually, Joe and two other men had to forcibly separate the two, then Punk went after him again. He didn’t “quit.”

Claim: I turned to Tony and I said, ‘this place is a fucking joke, man. You're a clown, I quit.’

Verdict: “I turned to Tony” is a strange way to describe lunging at him and two grown men being forced to pull you away.

Just generally, the way Punk presented the confrontation was completely at odds with what actually happened. He wasn’t the cool guy being pushed to his limits by brash young wrestlers. He was a 45-year-old man attacking people in a rage (ineffectually, despite years of MMA training he should really consider getting a refund for) and petulantly quitting the company over a comment on the undercard he didn’t like, one only the most online of online fans would have even realized was connected to him at all.

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This was a real shit show in the way only pro wrestling can manage. The truth is, no one is a winner here.

AEW looks like a cold brand.

CM Punk is forced to kiss up to Triple H and Shawn Michaels and eventually do a job for LA Knight third from the top on a Saudi Arabia show or whatever. It’s a sad situation built from a collection of regrettable choices.

If it happened at your workplace, it would have resulted in an immediate termination. Very few people, even rich and famous ones, would walk away unscathed after lunging at their boss, eyes aflame and self control long, long gone. And that’s okay. It seems like he wanted to leave and now he’s gone, back to his corporate wrestling comfort zone where slick-haired succubi can try to carefully manage his ego for however many appearances they can get out of him before his body and mind both inevitably unravel.

You can already see it happening, the comments about Drew McIntyre that reside just a smidge over the line, the quiet seething as people he sees as lesser talents like Cody Rhodes thrive. It’s coming. A bee has got to sting. And, when it does, we can only hope it’s as gloriously messy as this was.