Andrew Ravens
Reports suggesting there are issues between CM Punk and WWE have been debunked by Fightful Select‘s Sean Ross Sapp, who went to considerable lengths to verify the claims before concluding there was no credible sourcing behind them. During a recent Fightful Select Q&A session, Sapp addressed the rumors directly and explained what his reporting process revealed.
“We already have. We spoke on those rumors a couple weeks ago. Those are the ones that he’s talking about. It’s just we’ve gotten nobody to confirm that. Nobody on the creative team, nobody in WWE, nobody that even disliked him,” Sapp said. “I reached out to people that I knew disliked him to see if they even heard that hot goss. They had not heard that. Like, it was news to them when I brought it up. Like we approached the pay cut rumors, all that stuff. Just nobody was buying it. So if it’s true, people in WWE just had not heard it. It’s always possible. It’s true. I will say, usually CM Punk news gets out there pretty swiftly, but him being off this long was definitely not the plan.”
Punk last appeared on WWE programming on the Raw following WrestleMania 42, where he and Cody Rhodes were involved in a promo segment that teased a future title program between the two. That night came shortly after Punk had lost the World Heavyweight Championship to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 42 itself. The combination of the title loss and the absence from television prompted speculation that something had gone wrong behind the scenes, leading to the reports Sapp investigated.
His findings were definitive in one direction — nobody within WWE, including individuals known to have had difficult relationships with Punk in the past, had heard anything to support the narrative. Sapp’s note that Punk’s extended absence was “definitely not the plan” is worth filing alongside the debunking, as it suggests the length of his time away from television has surprised people internally even if the underlying relationship between Punk and the company remains intact. With Punk expected to return to Raw this Monday in Chicago, the weeks of speculation appear to be approaching an end.
