Seth Rollins says he has ‘deep-rooted animosity’ for CM Punk

Seth Rollins recently went into detail regarding his animosity toward CM Punk. 

Rollins told Jimmy Traina on the SI Media podcast that he believes Punk’s perspective on the industry has “been extremely self-serving” and that Punk has “played the martyr role to a tee.” 

Rollins said of his issues with Punk: 

A lot of it’s personal, a lot of it’s stuff that I don’t really want to get into but for the most part, I just think he’s been really selfish when it comes to his perspective on the industry. I think he’s been extremely self-serving, has played the martyr role to a tee.

Look, I got a lot of good things to say about parts of my relationship with him. He helped me in places when he didn’t have to, whether that was for his own good or not I’m not entirely sure but regardless, it helped me get where I needed to go and do the things I needed to do.

For a guy who, when I met him, made it seem like he was all about giving back to the business, he really turned into a pretty selfish guy and really wanted to take more from the industry.

Rollins continued to address Punk talking down to him and WWE over the years. 

He said some really bad things about me. Talked down about me for years, and the company for years. I’m talking some really bad stuff, called me like a bootlicker and crap like that. You don’t know me, you don’t know what I stand for.

I’m a loyal person and I just felt pretty insulted by a lot of the ways he treated me, treated the place that I work for, treated friends that I worked with. I don’t need to get into any of the stuff with Colt Cabana. If you want to go and look at that kind of stuff, that’s out there.

Just the way he treated people. The way I felt like he was only looking out for himself and then the way he talked down about me and my friends and the people who are here putting the hard work in in WWE trying to make this thing as good as we possibly could because we love the industry, truly love it, not just what it can do for us. We actually love it, want to give back to it, and want to make it the best it can possibly be. And I always just felt he was a fraud in that sense, or at least, he turned into one at some point in the last decade. 

That’s the long of it. It’s a deep, deep-rooted, I wouldn’t call it a hatred, but a certain animosity. There’s animosity there, no doubt about it. 

During the conversation, Rollins also claimed he was not given a heads-up about Punk returning to WWE before Cult of Personality hit at Survivor Series. He said his reactions that night at ringside and later in the back were all genuine. However, our own Dave Meltzer reported Rollins did know Punk would come out at the end of the show and his reaction to it was all part of a building angle.

“As far as the Seth thing goes, that was all an angle,” Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio. The idea was to play off an interview Rollins gave in January where he referred to Punk as a “cancer.”