As promised, CM Punk didn’t hold back his opinions on WWE’s current product when he made his first appearance as an analyst on WWE Backstage late Tuesday night. After addressing whether or not he would actually step back in the ring, Punk was asked about what he thought about the WWE after catching up on the past six years of not watching the show. Punk’s comments weren’t all bad, he thought highly of what the Women’s Division has been doing over the past few years, but he noted how many of the complaints he had about the presentation were exactly the same as when he left the company in 2014.
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“I think the product is the same as when I left it,” Punk said. “Wrestling could be so much better, it could be so much more. Obviously there’s a reason myself, yourself, everybody who puts on a pair of boots fell in love with professional wrestling. And regardless of what I think of the product now, the opinion is the same as when I was there.
“Stuff is overproduced, stuff’s micromanaged. I think the best characters, the people that fans love the most throughout all of wrestling are the characters that they get to figure stuff out themselves instead of being told what to do by somebody who’ve never done anything, never been anywhere. ‘never drew money, brother.’ So I think there’s a lot wrong with it, but I see a lot of bright spots.”
And what are those bright spots?
“I like all the women,” Punk said. “I don’t like the forced Women’s Revolution thing. Let the women be the women, and they’ll show you why they kick ass and why they belong. You don’t need to put a hashtag label on everything. Selfishly I think I like the NXT thing because I see a lot of myself in a lot of that. I was an Indie wrestling guy, I was in WWE developmental and told I was never going to be brought to television, so I know the struggle. I think those are the characters that are, for lack of a better term, lest tainted. They still feel new, they’re like the new toys.”
Check out the full card for WWE’s Survivor Series pay-per-view in the list below.
- WWE Championship: Brock Lesnar vs. Rey Mysterio (No Holds Barred)
- WWE Universal Championship: Bray Wyatt vs. Daniel Bryan
- NXT Championship: Adam Cole vs. (Pete Dunne/Killian Dain/Damian Priest)
- Men’s Survivor Series elimination match: Team Raw (Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, Drew McIntyre, Randy Orton, Ricochet) vs. Team SmackDown (Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman, King Corbin, Mustafa Ali, Shorty G) vs. Team NXT (TBA)
- Women’s Survivor Series elimination match: Team Raw (Charlotte Flair, Natalya, Asuka, Kairi Sane, Sarah Logan) vs. Team NXT (TBA) vs. Team SmackDown (Sasha Banks, Carmella, Dana Brooke, Lacey Evans and Nikki Cross)
- Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch vs. SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley vs. NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler
- United States Champion AJ Styles vs. Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura vs. NXT North American Champion Roderick Strong
- Raw Tag Team Champions The Viking Raiders vs. SmackDown Tag Team Champions The New Day vs. NXT Tag Team Champions Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish
