CM Punk has earned his place among the great pro wrestlers of the 21st century. His work at Ring Of Honor, AEW, and especially his tenures at WWE cemented that status. Punk’s 2023 return to WWE has had its ups and downs — while he was shelved with a torn tricep for Wrestlemania season, he came back and had an amazing storyline against Drew McIntyre. Punk has always been something of a polymath among his wrestling brethren, something he proved after the interval between leaving WWE in 2014 and returning to wrestling when he went to AEW in 2021. Punk tried his hand at MMA, wrote comics, and acted. That last one is important, because Variety confirmed that Punk was joining the cast of Revival, a new SYFY horror show based on the comic by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton.
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Punk joins the show’s previously announced cast members Melanie Scrofano, Romy Weltman, David James Elliott, and Andy McQueen, with Steve Ogg appearing in a recurring role. The description for the series is, “On one miraculous day in rural Wisconsin, the recently deceased suddenly rise from their graves. But this is no zombie story as the ‘revived’ appear and act just like they once were. When local officer and single mother Dana Cypress (Scrofano) is unexpectedly thrown into the center of a brutal murder mystery of her own, she’s left to make sense of the chaos amidst a town gripped by fear and confusion where everyone, alive or undead, is a suspect.”
Punk is a die hard comic fan — before he goes down the ramp to the ring he calls out the Thing’s catchphrase, “It’s clobberin’ time!” — and has written comics in the past, including co-writing 2015’s Thor Annual #1, the story “The Most Cursed” in Vertigo’s 2015 series Strange Sports Stories #3, co-wrote the 2015 Drax ongoing from Marvel, and wrote a Master of Kung-Fu one-shot for Marvel in 2017. Punk joining the cast of an adaptation of a horror comic makes perfect sense. Punk is also doing a movie, joining the cast of Ryan Prow’s Night Patrol in a major role, making him a very busy man.
Punk’s straight-edge lifestyle is incongruent with pro wrestling, since he refuses to use performance enhancing drugs of any kind. This makes bouncing back from injuries even harder, something that has plagued him since his return. Punk even almost considered not returning to wrestling before his AEW debut.
Punk’s current role in the WWE — a special attraction who also helps with the training of young wrestlers — gives him plenty of time for work outside of wrestling. It’ll be great to see what role plays Punk plays in Revival, and what the series could mean for his future acting career.
