WWE News: CM Punk Return, Brock Lesnar Update
With WWE and CM Punk finally reaching some sort of deal late last month, which was to sell CM Punk merchandise on the WWE’s website, wrestling fans had hoped that this was the first step to a Punk return to WWE, and that the deal meant Punk and WWE were now on good terms. Sadly, this isn’t the case.
Former UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen, one of Punk’s close friends, spoke to former WWE play-by-play announcer Jim Ross on his podcast You’re Welcome, and Sonnen told Ross that he had recently asked Punk if he was ever going back to WWE. Punk answered the WWE return question by saying “no, never.”
Sonnen expanded on his conversation with Punk when talking to Ross, and added that he didn’t know if Punk was working him or being truthful when he said he’s “never going back to WWE.”
“I talk to Punk a lot. I never know, when it comes to [Punk’s] profession, and when I ask him ‘Hey what are you gonna do? Are you ever gonna go back?’ I don’t know when he’s working me, or when he’s telling me it straight. [Punk] says he’s done. He has stuck to this story and I can’t get him to bend.”
Ross responded to Chael by saying this in regards to CM Punk.
“I think he’s done. I think the thing about it is if you go back and do the math, [Punk] has been in the business a long, long time because he started as a teenager.
“The business educated him, the business allowed him to travel, the business allowed him to have a very unique social life. He, himself is a very unique guy in that he’s one of the very few wrestlers that I’ve known in my four decades in the business that didn’t drink, no drugs, no booze, no cigarettes, no tobacco of any kind. [Punk] is legit straight edge. That put him in a minority. That kind of ostracized him from the masses.
“He’s very, very well-read, he’s very cerebral. That ostracized him from the masses. So he was always sort of an outcast. But the friends that he has he’s very loyal to, and they to him. But he was just a different breed of cat when he was in the locker room.
“I loved his work, I think he has great psychology. I think that in the old territory days that [Punk] would have made a great booker because he has great ideas and he’s got a very vivid imagination.
“I know that he had a lot of really good years financially, I know that because he starved, and wrestled for little or no money for years and just got by, that when he started making big cash he knew that it wasn’t going to last forever and he was going to save it. And he did. So I think financially [Punk] is very secure, and I think he has a lot of diverse interests. So many wrestlers are one dimensional, and they need wrestling. [Punk] isn’t one of them.”
WWE and Brock Lesnar are currently negotiating a new deal in hopes to get it done long before WrestleMania 31 in March.
When Lesnar won the WWE championship at SummerSlam in August the original plan was to have Lesnar destroy everyone on his way to WrestleMania 31 and eventually have Roman Reigns be the one who ends Lesnar’s reign of terror.
Now the original plan all depends on whether or not Lesnar decides to re-sign with WWE. The rumor is that WWE thinks the current Lesnar contract is too expensive for the limited amount of days that he works. It’s unlikely that Lesnar will take any less money or work more dates for the same amount of money he’s making now.
If Lesnar doesn’t re-sign with WWE before the Royal Rumble in January, the WrestleMania 31 plans will be changed, and Lesnar will drop the title to John Cena at the Royal Rumble, changing the WrestleMania 31 main event to John Cena vs. Roman Reigns, with Reigns likely picking up the win.
Brock Lesnar’s next WWE television appearance is scheduled for December 8. It’s still yet to be determined what kind of role and impact he’ll have on the show, but it’s likely he’ll have some kind of face-to-face interaction with John Cena.
