CM Punk is sitting in a conference room in WWE headquarters. For the better part of a decade, that innocuous sentence would’ve been enough to set the pro-wrestling world on fire. During his blistering, iconoclastic run in the early 2010s, Punk consistently upended the organization’s status quo—breaking the fourth wall in his incandescent promos, antagonizing his corporate overlords at every possible turn, and blurring the lines between reality and fiction in a way that made WWE must-watch TV for the first time in years. But after his acrimonious split from the company in January 2014, a yearslong defamation lawsuit surfacing in his wake, it seemed certain that he would never step into the squared circle ever again.
And yet here we are, lounging in a quiet corner of WWE’s starship-sized offices in Connecticut. Punk is serene, calm, smiling. It’s a Saturday in early January and he’s fresh off a red-eye from Los Angeles, his graying beard a little extra unkempt, wearing a Rowdy Roddy Piper hoodie and black sweatpants. Over two years into his shocking and triumphant WWE homecoming, and nearly five since his return to the sport with AEW, the 47-year-old Chicago native, born Phil Brooks, is once again at the tippy-top of the wrestling mountain. He’s the reigning WWE World Heavyweight Champion, fulfilled his lifelong dream of main-eventing WrestleMania last April, and was officially unveiled today as the cover star of WWE 2K26, which drops on March 13.
It’s a sequence of events that would’ve been near-unimaginable to fans even half a decade ago, but this version of Punk—while still fiery on the mic and deft in the ring—is older and wiser, more willing to work the system from inside of it, maximize the opportunities in front of him, and show up obligingly for stuff like doing press for a video game on a weekend.
“CM Punk is the most appreciative rebel I’ve ever met in my life,” the legendary WWE manager Paul Heyman, Punk’s longtime offscreen mentor and onscreen frenemy, tells me later that day. “Rebels generally don’t age well, but Punk continues to hold onto a rebel spirit while being appreciative for every blessed day that he has. Now, more than ever before, when he gets to stand in front of an arena filled with people that have such adulation and affirmation and affection for him that they chant his name at the top of their lungs, he takes the moment to enjoy it. And he never did that before. He was too busy rebelling to let the moment soak in.”
Here, Punk reflects on what this 2K cover moment means to him, why he’s still raring to go even as his greatest rivals hang up their boots, and the most underrated matches of his career.
CM Punk: I don’t know if it means more depending on what age I am. I will still always go back to goals that I had when I was a little kid—things like [having my own] action figures, being in a video game.
So to be on the cover of said video game, I just think it’s just a neat thing. Beyond representing the company and being on the cover and all that stuff, I’m just a little kid that’s on the cover of the video game. It’s pretty cool.
I’m not maybe the biggest gamer in the world. My wife is a bigger gamer than me, but I actually like it for just spending time with her. So if I’m watching her play a video game or vice-versa, there are games we will play together that I probably wouldn’t pay any mind to if I was solo.
But I think what makes a good wrestling video game is options. Different matches, different characters. Obviously there’s different moves and different things you can do, but a bigger roster and the ability to just do more fun and for lack of a better term, wacky stuff, I think makes a really good wrestling game.
Oh God, you’re talking about somebody who played Pro Wrestling on the NES. I’d be very nostalgic to go back and play that.
[Laughs.] No, no. Not in my brain. But again, going back to what makes a good game, it’s neat. It’s cool. It’s a “what if” and it gives you more options. It’s like choose your own adventure.
Yeah. It’s nothing that I thought would be in the game. It’s nothing that I would have come up with myself. So it’s an interesting, fun little aspect of this new game.
No, definitely not. I do think wrestling as a whole was a pretty closed book for me. But time heals wounds, changes things. Different doors close and new windows open up and I always take advantage—and at least try to—of every opportunity presented. So it’s been a fun ride, but definitely not one that I would have been able to predict.
I think it’s just the amount of stories that are left to tell. Talking to John, talking to AJ Styles, these are guys that are my contemporaries. We all started around the same time—late ’90s, early 2000s. We’ve all reached the pinnacle of our careers. We’ve all reached pinnacles of our business throughout our careers, in different organizations and everything. So it’s interesting to get their take on things. And John saying that he slowed down and felt like he couldn’t be that John Cena anymore? I completely disagree. I watch everything he does, I watch everything AJ does. I don’t think those guys are slowing down at all.
I agree. But I also look back historically on the guys that I grew up watching, and Terry Funk to me was always Terry Funk. I don’t make any kind of [distinctions] of, like, “Oh, this is young Terry Funk or this is old Terry Funk.” To me, Terry Funk is Terry Funk. I think as a storyteller, there’s a beginning, there’s a middle, and there’s an end. Even though society will put term limits on whatever you are or whatever you do based on their own feelings, I don’t feel old. Maybe there’s some gray in my beard, but I think it’s more impressive that I’m able to operate at this level, at this age, at this late stage in my career than it is a hindrance.
And I just think that it gives me an edge and it helps me tell stories in a more sophisticated way. Am I 20? No, I’m not. Can I do the things that I could do when I was 20? No. But I can also do things at 47 that I could never do even if I was 45. There’s just so many different things that you can do and explore now. Everybody loves Wolverine, and what’s recently been the more impressive Wolverine story is Old Man Logan.
Again, tying it back into the video game, there’s so many possibilities. So yeah, I think grizzled, old CM Punk is—pardon my language—fucking awesome.
I mean, just because it’s there, probably a Night 2 main event. Honestly, I don’t differentiate between the two nights. I think that’s just a way for people who are sad about their own lives to try to diminish something. I mean, Rock did a Night 1. Stone Cold Steve Austin did a Night 1. Who am I to say it’s not a main event? That’s just silly semantics to try to hate on somebody that you don’t like for whatever reason.
But, yeah, I’d be hard-pressed to really kind of think of what else [I’m striving for]. Unless it’s something really silly, like if they give me the opportunity to do something like a Coal Miner’s Glove Match. I’d really like to see if we could get that over in 2026. You know what I mean? Something weird like that.
Oh no.
I got a custom suit guy. Not to disparage Men’s Wearhouse or anything. I’m not wearing something that doesn’t fit me, doesn’t fit right. Also, I think there’s a time and a place. Hall of Fame is one of them. Unfortunately, funerals are one of them. I do a lot of other stuff outside of wrestling. So I think showing up for red carpets or press or anything else, I want to look my best. And—your words—I look damn good.
I haven’t the slightest. I really don’t. That’d be a question for him. I just think I watched guys like Bret and Shawn or Hogan and Warrior hold on to these grudges. And I think what it amounts to is just life is too short.
Triple H had a serious heart issue that he woke up in the hospital with one day. I thought about that a lot and how anything between us didn’t matter at all. And I’m super fortunate now that we can laugh about everything and I can just let a lot of stuff go, because everything to me, I looked at it like it’s a hot coal and I’m just holding on to it. And after a while, I’m just hurting myself.
I tried to be a fly on the wall. I would answer questions when asked and I never pushed her towards it. I would just tell her of my experiences and my point of view and I let her make her own decisions. Because a little secret about my wife: Can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. She’s a lot like me in that respect. I just was there to answer questions and help guide her if she wanted that, and luckily, it all worked out.
Yeah, you probably haven’t. But in the ring, I’m always guarded. I’m always with red lights on. When my wife’s around, I think you get a glimpse of just a more honest assessment of what a goof I am.
You got to be flexible. This coming month, I’m not back home until like February, so I don’t see my wife for a month and it stinks, but she fully supports me getting to do all these fun, crazy things. And likewise, I fully support her getting to do all kinds of fun, crazy things. And that’s why you see a big smile on my face anytime we get to do fun, crazy things together. You got to be flexible and you’ve got to 100% support each other and what you both want to do.
I think me and Randy at WrestleMania 27. A lot of people talk about the three-way that I had with Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio. Oh boy, what else?
Je’Von Evans asked me this the other day. He said, “Who are the guys that you learn the most from?” So to me, from an outside perspective, they might not be the most interesting matches, they might not be the most dynamic matches of my career, but they mean a lot because these are the guys that I learned the most from.
The first one was Tracy Smothers, second one was Raven, third one’s obviously Eddie Guerrero. These are guys that took the time to sit me down and ask me a question, “Why did you do that? Why do you think this is a good idea?” Or straight up, “Don’t ever do that again. This is why you shouldn’t. This is why this…” They just really sat me down and coached me. And up until that point, a lot of people really just didn’t. It was just, you’re wrestling for wrestling’s sake and you’re out there just going through the motions, but everybody starts out this way. I’m mimicking what I saw guys do on TV. I just essentially picked up a bass and started playing Ramones songs, picked up a bat and just started swinging without anybody teaching me anything technical. Those are the guys that helped me along the way. I would say Chavo Guerrero too. I worked with him extensively when I first came up in ECW. Those were always really, really good matches.
We’re doing all kinds of weird vault releases with super matches and stuff like that. There’s a match that I had with Chavo Guerrero because of travel difficulty and really bad weather and flights getting canceled. We did damn near almost an hour on a house show one time. I’d imagine that’ll probably get released at some point.
Unless it really stinks and then I won’t let people see. I don’t know.
I told myself and a lot of people that I was going to go to his first game back—and then I can’t remember what happened. Obviously, I was whisked away to do some other stuff, but I didn’t really care what team he was going to play with, just the fact that he got to lace ’em up and play, I think is amazing. Watching him and [Patrick] Kane the other day play against each other for the first time ever. Again, it’s one of those situations like [mine]: You didn’t really think it was going to happen, and we’re all fortunate and better for it happening now. We get to watch and enjoy it. I love watching that guy skate.
Regardless of what you think of him, the career he’s had is tremendous. And he’s one of those wrestling national treasures. I’d be hard-pressed to really think of who’s left. Two names, and they probably both hate being associated with each other: It’s Paul Heyman and Jim Cornett.
These are guys who were fans, just like everybody else, and are still fans to this day. Love the business, started taking pictures ringside for various [publications]. Obviously Paul in the Northeast and Jim getting hired by Teeny Jarrett, just taking pictures of the guys and then that morphs into manager roles. And then they both run their own promotions. They’ve been bookers for various companies, onscreen talent, and each of them is a hell of a talker.
So those are two guys that, to me, are really national treasures in the wrestling world and need to be protected at all costs. Heyman, his career is like otherworldly, and it’s still going. He’s still on TV, he’s still doing it. So again, let’s enjoy him while we can.
Last great show I went to is real easy, because I don’t often get to go to shows. I was fortunate enough that everything fell into place: I’m home, I have one day off that week, and I got to see the Lambrini Girls play in LA. I have heavily been listening to Lambrini Girls and to Wet Leg—they’re a new band, and they play this very almost, like, ’90s throwback kind of rock.
And then just everything else on rotation is all the same thing. I listen to a lot of my friends’ bands: Rancid, God’s Hate, a lot of hardcore, a lot of punk rock. But it changes frequently.