CM Punk Reflects on His UFC Challenges: A Journey of Resilience and a Return to the WWE
CM Punk’s career has been filled with wild twists and turns. From his first foray into professional wrestling with the Lunatic Wrestling Federation in the late 1990s to his initial run with WWE from 2006 through 2014, CM Punk’s story contains one wait-did-that-really-happen moment after another.
But the most unbelievable part of CM Punk’s career took place in 2014 when he joined the UFC — despite having no prior mixed martial arts experience. CM Punk announced he was signing with the UFC in December 2014, and he spent most of 2015 and 2016 preparing for his first UFC fight.
CM Punk fought Mickey Gall at UFC 203 in September 2016 and lost via submission almost immediately. Some fighters may have called it quits after losing like that, but not CM Punk. There was still interest surrounding his MMA career, as most of the legal USA sports betting sites always featured CM Punk in their UFC listings.
But things quickly went from bad to worse, as he lost his second UFC fight to Mike Jackson at UFC 225 in June 2018. At that point, even UFC president Dana White advised him to get out of the Octagon for good.
Eventually, CM Punk listened. He ended his UFC run and returned to pro wrestling in August 2021, first with All Elite Wrestling before reuniting with WWE in November 2023.
In April 2024, CM Punk was asked about his time with the UFC on The MMA Hour. He admitted even he has wondered, “What the f*** was I thinking?” But he also suggested he wouldn’t change how things played out. “I’m glad I did it,” CM Punk said. “Zero regrets.”
Well, maybe one regret. CM Punk did refer to his second UFC fight against Jackson, which took place in his hometown of Chicago, as the “worst two weeks” of his life. He struggled to cut weight and every CM Punk news story at the time took aim at his inability to shed pounds.
“I couldn’t cut weight properly,” CM Punk said. “I still made weight, I’m proud of myself for that…I get it, it’s easy to ‘LOL’ and make fun of me. Some people will look at that and be like, ‘That’s embarrassing.’ I f***ing made the weight. I made the walk. I am 100 percent proud of myself. And I would do it again, because that was me at my absolute worst, and I did it.”
CM Punk is right. It is easy to look back and laugh at his failed UFC career and wonder what he was thinking. So many people have done it. Just Google “CM Punk UFC” to see how many ripped him for giving MMA a try.
But you could argue that a CM Punk return to pro wrestling and, more importantly, a CM Punk WWE return may not have been possible without his short-lived UFC stint. The setback set him up for a comeback in the pro wrestling world, which may not have happened otherwise.