When Was the Last Time CM Punk Lost a Match Before This Week's AEW?

By Connor Casey

CM Punk suffered the first loss of his AEW career on this week's AEW Dynamite, taking the pin from MJF after the 25-year-old bashed him across the face while wearing his Dynamite Diamond Ring. Prior to Wednesday's match, Punk was a perfect 11-0 in AEW, beating the likes of Darby Allin, Eddie Kingston and every member of The Pinnacle. Before his loss against Friedman, the last time Punk was on the losing end of a singles match was the Jan. 6, 2014 edition of Raw (an "Old School Raw" special) when he lost against Roman Reigns. 

This was still months before The Shield would break up, over a year before Reigns' first main event push and years before he became the dominant "Tribal Chief." Fans will also recall this was the same episode where Jake "The Snake" Roberts made a surprise appearance and left Damian on top of an unconscious Dean Ambrose.

While Punk and Reigns wouldn't share the ring again after the 2014 Royal Rumble, the pair have said quite a lot about each other in the years since then. Punk even praised Reigns' run as the "Tribal Chief" last June (two months before his AEW return).

"I think a lot of times the best stuff, you've also kind of just gotta go with the flow with it," Punk said. "I'll use Roman Reigns as an example, because if we're talking about good stuff, if the WWE does anything good, I mean, this is the one thing that they're doing right right now, it's Roman Reigns," Punk told the Wrestling Perspective Podcast. "His character work, his in-ring stuff. It's all great but I feel like, classic WWE, they're always five years, 10 years late. This is something that they should've done originally, because they tried so hard to get this guy over as a babyface and they gave him X amount of 'Mania main events. Like, 'This is the guy, this is the guy, this is the guy,' and he never really had his moments until now."

"Maybe he needed that adversity and that backlash to finally be this guy, but this is the one thing they're doing right because what can you say bad about what Roman Reigns is doing right now?" he continued. "He's far and away the best guy they have. When you talk about storylines, in-ring work, and all that stuff, right now he's the total package. For the first time in his career, and I'm not being mean to Roman Reigns, I just feel like he's finally where they pushed him to be. It just took a minute, you know what I mean?"

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