He returned to WWE in 2023, a little more that two years after coming out of seven year hiatus to work for AEW.
But about five years earlier, there were also rumblings of a reunion between Punk and the company he walked out of in 2014. It seemed those might have just been about Punk’s run as a panelist on the short-lived WWE Backstage studio show FOX produced for FS1. But during a visit to chat with Barstool Sports’ Robbie Fox on his My Mom’s Basement podcast, Punk shared that he did meet with Vince
McMahon and Triple H before taking the FOX gig.
“I think the Twitter and the internet perception is I tried to go back to WWE and they didn’t want me, so I did the FOX show. That’s not what happened at all.
“I had a hilarious clandestine meeting in the Borgata in Atlantic City with Vince [McMahon] and Triple H… I don’t even know. What is it, 2025 now? This had to be 2018 or 2019. It started because Vince just started calling me. I had agents telling me, ‘Hey, they want to talk to you.’ And I was like, ‘Whatever, I’m not interested.’ Then Vince just started calling me directly. He was like, ‘Hey, I’m eliminating the middleman. We gotta…’ and I was just like, ‘This is insane’...
“We had a meeting. We had a handshake agreement…and then he ghosted me.
“So, that’s why it didn’t happen. Unbelievable. I’m gonna write a book someday… It’s a great story. It’s a fantastic story.”
Punk says he actually was open to returning at that point, but seems like only for one reason:
“I was very much just like, ‘Yeah, okay. Pay me’, whatever. I took some stuff personally. Like, years have gone by. Alright, I’m over it, recognized that it’s a business. You don’t want me to take it personally? Just pay me.”
While that meeting didn’t immediately lead to Punk’s WWE return, it may have been instrumental in it happening years down the road:
“That was probably the first time that me and Triple H started chipping away at any problems or drama that we had in the past. That was the first instance.”
The full episode of My Mom’s Basement with Punk’s appearance will be out Mon., July 21.
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