CM Punk Celebrates The Anniversary of His WWE Departure

It’s officially been seven years since CM Punk walked out of WWE, and to commemorate the occasion the former WWE Champion tweeted about his “anniversary” on Wednesday morning. Punk’s last match was the 2014 Royal Rumble, and the night after he told Vince McMahon and Triple H that he was going home. The decision was made due to a mounting number of issues Punk had with the company and how they were (allegedly) ignoring a number of injuries he was dealing with. He detailed many of these in an episode of The Art of Wrestling podcast later that year, which infamously led to a number of lawsuits.

Punk was initially suspended for walking out and was released by the company months later (on the same day was his wedding with AJ Lee). He then turned his attention to mixed martial arts and has competed in two fights for the UFC, losing both. He dipped his toe back into the wrestling world in November 2019, joining FOX Sports 1’s WWE Backstage. The show was canceled in mid-2020 but has been brought back for the occasional one-off appearance ahead of big events. There’s a new episode this Saturday night, but there’s no word yet on whether or not Punk will be there.

Over the years Punk has been asked numerous times about coming out of retirement. His answers usually leave the door open as a possibility.

“I think the landscape currently is much different than when I left,” Punk said while on Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions last month. .”You can play the game where you’re like, ‘Oh, AEW was an option, would you have gone right after you left WWE?’ If you are going to play that game, there is no way they (WWE) would have handled it the way they handled it with suspending me for two months and nobody contacting me and the next thing I know, I got my release papers on my wedding day. That wouldn’t have happened if there was an AEW. Because then they probably would have approached me and been like, ‘Hey, your suspension is up. Ready to come back to work? Let’s work this out.’ Or handle it like any other sports organization would have handled [a] star pitcher f—ing going home. They’re not just going to let him leave the team, go to a rival organization.

“What would it take? Oh gosh. Without wanting to insult anybody on either side of the fence, any WWE talent or AEW talent, it would take, above all, an interesting scenario,” he added. “A story that would be fun to tell and also just the stupidest amount of money. But, they can save themselves a lot of money if they present a fun storyline. Now, what that is, I don’t know. I’m a pretty picky guy, especially at this point. I think there are more interesting people on the AEW side of things for me to wrestle and that’s because I’ve never wrestled them before. Young Bucks, Kenny Omega.”