September 12, 2016 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: CM Punk making UFC debut, PWG Battle of Los Angeles review, more

A 19-month journey will come to an end, or to a new beginning on 9/10 when Phil Brooks, better known as C.M. Punk, steps into the cage in one of the biggest matches on the UFC 203 PPV card.

While many people have tried to make analogies, using names like Brock Lesnar or James Toney, there is really nothing in UFC history really comparable to this. It was a weird experiment that many had written off as a failure six months into the story. From almost the start, people had proclaimed the day would never happen. But the reality is, Punk lives for proving doubters wrong, so him stepping into the Octagon, no matter how long it took and how many surgeries he would endure, was going to happen.

Stepping out of it is a different story.

There is a symbolic nature of his match being at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. The site of his first walk into the cage will come from backstage, the same site as his last walk out of pro wrestling, on January 27, 2014, when he and Vince McMahon got into an argument before an episode of Raw and he quit the company while being one of the company’s three biggest stars.

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