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CM Punk provides behind the scenes details about what led to his WWE return at Survivor Series 2023

Aaron Rift

During an appearance on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, CM Punk commented on the process of him returning to WWE at the 2023 Survivor Series PLE. Here is what Punk said…

“Slight percentages, I think over the years start that ball rolling. But to really get in, the action of it started the week of, I think, Thanksgiving, maybe. I’d have to look I had a calendar to figure out dates exactly. I remember times and places of where I was, when I would get phone calls and such… Yeah, so Monday. Monday before I came back. I think the call… I’m always so nervous about pulling the curtain back on stuff, but I think the call was more of, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you about coming back. We’d love you for Royal Rumble.’ Because they assumed that I probably had some non-compete or something like that and were floored when I was like, ‘No, man, ready to go.'”

Punk talked about his conversation with Triple H later in the week…

“That’s when the ball really got rolling because it was a very I asked him if he wanted to talk on the phone, and he said, ‘no, I would actually rather… I would like to FaceTime you so I can see you.’ And I was like, ‘oh, that’s interesting.’ And we just talked about a whole lot of stuff and about stuff that was at one point serious to probably both of us that is silly now. And we just laughed, buried a hatchet. And then we started talking business. And I was like, ‘Man, this is like Thanksgiving. I don’t want to bother you. You’re with your girls. We can talk about it later’. But then I was just like, ‘Well, Friday, and then the show’s Saturday.’ It all got done very, very fast. My lawyer was not stoked to be working overtime on Thanksgiving.”

During the interview, Punk said that he doesn’t think he would be back in WWE if it wasn’t for Nick Khan being the CEO. Punk also talked about how there were talks for him to come back before the Covid-19 pandemic that didn’t pan out.