CM Punk details nearly returning to WWE in 2018 or 2019

Before returning to pro wrestling for AEW in 2021, CM Punk almost came back a couple years earlier for WWE.

Punk spent seven years away from the ring prior to that 2021 return. After a tumultuous end to his AEW run, he then came back to WWE in 2023 and is now less than two weeks away from challenging for the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam. There was almost a decade between his two WWE stints, but Punk could have returned to the company around 2018 or 2019 if things went differently.

While appearing on Barstool Sports’ My Mom’s Basement podcast, Punk detailed a “hilarious clandestine meeting” he had with Vince McMahon and Paul “Triple H” Levesque that nearly led to his return. They reached a handshake agreement for Punk to come back to WWE, but McMahon then ghosted him.

“I think the Twitter and the internet perception is I tried to go back to WWE and they didn’t want me, so I went and did the Fox show [WWE Backstage]. Like, that’s not exactly — that’s not what happened at all. I had a hilarious clandestine meeting in the Borgata in Atlantic City with Vince and Triple H. I don’t even know now, like what is it? It’s 2025, this has to be 2018 or 2019.

“And it’s just cause Vince just started — I had agents, they were telling me, ‘Hey, they want to talk to you.’ And I was like, whatever, I’m not interested, you know? And then Vince just started calling me. He was like, ‘Hey, I’m eliminating the middle man. Like, we gotta.’ And I was just like, this is insane, you know?

“And it just so happened that like, well, I’m going to be here. All right, we can get there. Okay, all right. We had a meeting and we had a handshake agreement and then he ghosted me.”

Punk said that meeting was the first time that he and Levesque started working through their past issues. The two were adversarial in the past, but their relationship is now in a good place.

“I was very much just like, yeah, okay — like, you know, pay me,” Punk said about the 2018 or 2019 meeting. “I took some stuff personally. Years have gone by — like, all right, I’m over it. Recognize that it’s a business. Like, you don’t want me to take it personally, just pay me.”

Punk did make a deal with Fox in 2019 to serve as a panelist for WWE Backstage, a relatively short-lived WWE talk show that aired on FS1.

If Punk defeats Gunther in their match at SummerSlam, it’ll be the first WWE gold Punk has held since 2013. The PLE is being held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on Saturday, August 2 and Sunday, August 3.

Punk and Rhea Ripley’s full interview on My Mom’s Basement can be watched below. They were promoting the upcoming WWE: Unreal docuseries that premieres on Netflix on July 29.