CM Punk on What Would Bring Him Out of Retirement, Leans Toward AEW

CM Punk appeared on Renee Young’s Oral Sessions podcast this week and the subject of his pro wrestling retirement once again came up. The former WWE Champion still hasn’t wrestled another match since his sudden departure from WWE in 2014. Punk said it would take an “interesting scenario” to get him back in the business and speculated on just how different his situation would have been if AEW was around during his initial suspension from WWE.

“I think the landscape currently is much different than when I left,” Punk said.”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.”

He then said, of the two major companies, AEW sounded like the more compelling option.

“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 said. “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.”

He then said there was nobody in WWE he was interested in wrestling that he didn’t already face in his initial WWE run.

Reports popped up in late 2019 that Punk met with AEW president Tony Khan about potentially signing with the young promotion, but the two sides could not agree on money. It was around that same time Punk dipped his toe back into the wrestling world by signing with FOX Sports to work as a contributor for WWE Backstage.