The Day In Punk: Mick Foley well wishes, weight problems, a return to wrestling?
We are ticking down slowly to the MMA debut of CM Punk this Saturday at UFC 203 and Thursday was filled with, honestly, not a lot of big news leading into what UFC hopes will be a well-purchased PPV.
Punk did a lengthy interview with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani that went live Wednesday night with some notes of interest for wrestling fans covered by Joseph Currier earlier today. Most noteworthy to yours truly was the revelation that the WWE lawsuit has been draining on him mentally and financially, and the weight cutting issue he may or may not be having.
On the former, he referred to some in the WWE locker room as “slobs”, and said they are lacking locker room enforcers like Bob Holly or the late Eddie Guerrero.
On the latter, it seems like he’s telling the truth, but you wonder if there’s a little bit of a non-story being floated out there to perhaps get Mickey Gall thinking that he’s going to have an easier time than he thought. If true, the fact he never did a practice weight cut may come into play but we’ll see how he looks Friday morning when he weighs in.
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Speaking of that weigh-in, Punk intimated that he wants to be among the first people to take part in the early UFC weigh-ins at 9 AM local time. As soon as that happens, we’ll update you. The magic number is 171 pounds.
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A few additional appearances if you just can’t get enough:
– Punk on Marvel’s podcast
– A talk about UFC and wrestling with past JNPO guest and SI.com writer Justin Barrasso
In the Barrasso talk, he said he’s open to a return to wrestling with New Japan (“A long time ago I stopped saying ‘never,’ but that’s a loaded question. I don’t know the answer. No matter what I say, it’s going to take on a life of its own.”), that Brock Lesnar offered help when he first announced the move to MMA (“He lives in the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan, and I texted him once and it bounced back to me right away.”) and cited guys like Rocky Romero and Samoa Joe staying in touch through the process. It’s well-worth the read for the Japanese wrestling memories as well.
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Punk and five other fighters on the card took part in the pre-event press conference today. Here’s the video in case you missed it, but you didn’t miss much of anything. Instead of any kind of promo or soundbite-rich statement, we got more of the same. Like or not, he’s holding true to his philsophy of not talking trash or using any of his pro wrestling past in his new profession.
The only real thing of interest to me was Punk’s slightly elongated stare at Mickey Gall after they squared off. We’ll see if anything with his mindset changes when he squares off again with less clothes on Friday afternoon in the public weigh-ins.
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While there hasn’t been a run of WWE talents wishing Punk well to this point, Raw GM Mick Foley bucked the trend and shared some positive words that was on UFC’s Facebook page:
Lots more Punk stuff coming up tomorrow here on the site. Buckle up!
