Five days ago, All Elite Wrestling and Tony Khan terminated their contracts with Phillip Jack Brooks, better known to pro wrestling fans as CM Punk. Hours after his termination was made official, Khan addressed the AEW fans in person and in video form on AEW: Collision. During the post-AEW: All Out media scrum the next night, the AEW President declined to address whether Punk’s release from the company included a non-compete clause that would prevent him from immediately popping up elsewhere, like WWE.
With speculation running rampant about Punk’s next move, his former WWE Backstage co-host Booker T weighed in on his Hall of Fame podcast about whether he thinks The Second City Saint will return to WWE.
“No, I don’t think so at all,” he flatly stated. “I don’t see that happening. Go back and look at some of CM Punk’s quotes about WCW, excuse me, about WWE over the last seven or eight years. Nothing, nothing positive, and my thing was, I always said, you never know when you might want to cross that bridge again. You just never know. And to think that might be the company you’re gonna stay at forever, that’s kind of wishful thinking.
“I left WWE. I had problems with WWE when I left, but you’re not going to see one story out there on the internet as far as Booker T shoot interview about WWE. Booker T says this about such and such. Booker T talks about this guy. You know why? Because that’s stuff that I don’t think the public really need to know. I don’t think the public needs to be privy to that kind of information, a personal beef that I have with somebody.”
The WWE Hall of Famer then went on to talk about how, in any other line of work, like working at a gas company, you don’t want to leave on bad terms. Down the road, you may want to take your old job back, and your former employer could be open to re-hiring you if they still like you.
“You got to be smart,” Booker continued. “I just don’t think when CM Punk left WWE, I just don’t think he was smart about it, more than anything, because I always feel like there’s a road back, but I think I CM Punk may have blown that bridge up.”
If you use any quotes from this article, please give a h/t to Haus of Wrestling and credit the Hall of Fame podcast with Booker T and Brad Gilmore