Former WWE Champion CM Punk spoke to MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani for over 45 minutes to discuss his journey to the UFC, in what has become an annual interview. You can check out the highlights below, or see the full interview above.
* Punk says he didn’t know he was going to leave WWE when Helwani interviewed him shortly before the Royal Rumble in 2014.
* Helwani said that Punk told him he was happy before the Royal Rumble, and he didn’t believe him. Punk says he didn’t believe himself, but he’s happy now.
* He wasn’t allowed to go to UFC shows while he was with WWE.
* Punk said that the UFC wanted to make the announcement, but looking back he wouldn’t have minded training and seeing where he was before making the announcement that he was joining company.
* CM Punk said that AJ Lee fell in love with Milwaukee, and that helped him decide to move. He said driving every day and training once a day wasn’t enough for him. Now he’s training 2-3 times a day, and takes the weekends off.
* Punk talked about getting rocked pretty hard in a kickboxing scrimmage while at the gym. He said he would have easily lost via judges’ decision.
* He says he doubts he’s won any scrimmages yet, but he’s fighting professional fighters. He wants to gauge where he needs to be at.
* Punk said that a filmmaker is following him throughout the process, all the way up to his fight.
* He has a problem taking it to easy on guys because he’s still in pro wrestling mode sometimes. Punk says that Brock Lesnar said he had the same problem.
* He says he didn’t watch pro wrestling when he was there, as it was just a job to him by that point.
* It wasn’t a relief when AJ Lee left WWE, because he enjoyed watching her and he was invested in her. He says she could go back to the WWE tomorrow, and he wouldn’t.
* Punk says he’d like his debut fight to be in December, but his accountant wants him to hold off so he doesn’t have any big income in. Ultimately he says it’s up to his coach, Duke Roufus.
* He says he trains with some of the best guys in MMA, and there are plenty that a lot of people haven’t heard of and aren’t in the UFC.
* Punk isn’t interested in calling anyone out, but he hopes they’re in the UFC. He said the person who faces him is in a weird position because people will either say Punk sucks or his opponent sucks based on who wins.
* He wants to fight more than once and says he got a “sweet deal.” He wants to compete at 170 pounds.
* Punk says that Daniel Bryan sent him a text to tell him that him signing with the UFC was awesome. He thought it was cool that Bryan reached out to him because they hadn’t talked in a long time.
* He doesn’t have an agent or a manager, and doesn’t care about the Reebok deal, he says his focus is training. He doesn’t want to have to pay someone a percent of his money.
* He’ll be using the CM Punk name, and he says a lot of people are upset about it, even though Mirko CroCop and Rampage Jackson go by nicknames.
* He has positive memories of training to be a pro wrestler, and he’s experience a lot of those same feelings as he learns and trains MMA. He says he wouldn’t consider this the most fun time of his life, but it isn’t a dark time.
* Helwani asks him if he feels hypocritical about complaining about part-timers in WWE, and starting in the UFC the way he did. He says the UFC is real, and he’s already had two dozen guys call him out. You make your own spot in UFC.
* He’s asked about the brutal Robbie Lawler/Rory MacDonald fight and says “that sh*t happens in a fight,” and one should have probably tried to have wrestle a little more.
* Punk says he just does whatever his coaches tell him to, and shows up whenever they ask him to.
* He knows he’s going to fight on PPV, it probably won’t be a main event, and will likely be in Las Vegas. He’d like to fight on a card with Ronda Rousey or Conor McGregor first, then he’d like to compete in Chicago for his second fight. He doesn’t want his first fight to be in Chicago, because it’s the only way that he’ll feel pressure.
* Punk talks about how ridiculous it is that mixed martial arts isn’t legalized in New York.
* He doesn’t know why the UFC signed him, but he knows that the company thinks there’s money in bringing him onto the roster. He said that they had to convince him that they were serious, but he’s known Dana White and the Fertittas for a long time. He thought the company was joking when they made the offer.
* AJ Lee makes a quick cameo around the 35 minute mark.
* Punk says he made a trip to Louisville in October to see Cliff Compton while AJ was in Mexico. He said Dana White called him while he was there, and asked him about fighting and asked him what the deal with WWE was. Dana and Lorenzo then flew to Chicago and had dinner with him and offered him a contract to fight. They told him it was good business. They then got on a plane and flew to Montreal to see Georges St-Pierre.
* Punk had to talk things over with AJ Lee, then gave his confirmation. The UFC wanted to announce it in November, and was the “big announcement” at the November press conference, but it got delayed because AJ couldn’t make it to be there with him.
* He says he wasn’t mentally in a good position to fight, act or anything due to the lawsuits. Once the lawsuits wrapped up, he was good to go and said the UFC made things happen quickly for him.
* He didn’t negotiate with other MMA companies, but got offers to do porn. There were also a lot of feelers for other ventures sent out.
* Punk picks TJ Dillashaw to beat Barao, and cites Barao’s weight cutting issues as a possible reason.
* He’ll be at UFC on Fox this Saturday in Chicago. The last time he was at a UFC in Chicago was January 2014, and had to get on his bus and ride right to Pittsburgh, which was his last night in the WWE.
The full interview is a must-watch, and can be seen above.
