CM Punk Reveals His Status With UFC

CM Punk made headlines earlier in the week when, in an interview with ESPN's Marc Raimondi, he gave his thoughts on the speculation that he might join AEW following his upcoming appearance at the Starrcast III convention. Punk stated during the interview that he was recently offered a contract from the company, which Cody Rhodes denied, and said that he was bracing himself for all of the questions regarding his potential future in professional wrestling.

Elsewhere in the same interview Punk discussed his mixed martial arts career, saying that he's technically still signed to the UFC contract. The former WWE Champion first announced that he had signed a multi-fight deal with UFC way back in December 2014 but has since lost both of his professional fights — a submission loss to Mickey Gall in September 2016 and a unanimous decision defeat to Mike Jackson in June 2018.

"I believe I am," Punk said when asked if he was still in the UFC. Raimondi then asked about potential upcoming contractually-obligated fights.

"That I have no idea about, but I will say that I'm a different animal compared to most people," he said. "I think I'm just kind of floating right now. But have I been offered anything? No, I haven't. Every time somebody calls me, though, I'm like, 'Oh, this is it, I'm cut.' I think I've come to terms with it. I'd be like, 'All right.'

"There's people out there that will read this interview and for some reason complete strangers will get furious about what's going on in other people's lives," he added. "I don't pretend to say what's fair and what's right. I just roll with the situation I'm in. If I was gonna fight again, should it be in the UFC? Probably not. But again, I'm not gonna ... be like, 'Hey, you should cut me.' It'll happen or it won't happen. I'm not worried about it."

Punk, who still trains with the MMA gym Rofusport out of Milwaukee, said he doesn't have any regrets with how he entered the world of mixed martial arts.

"It's hard for me to have any kind of regrets," Punk said. "I don't look at anything in my life like that. What's done is done. I did things completely backwards, and I'm 100 percent fine with that. I'm not going to say, "I wish I would have done this, and I wish I would have started as an amateur, and I wish I would have fought in a cornfield somewhere in southern Illinois." Like I said before, I'm a different animal when it comes to this world. I think obviously it's afforded me opportunities, and I just say yes to things.

"I feel completely at peace," he continued. "I love the experience. Losing stinks, but I'm not dead. I woke up the next day to my beautiful wife, my awesome dog. The sun came out. So I'm like cool, I woke up today. It's not the end of the world."