CM Punk Criticises Vince McMahon In New Interview
The UFC employee takes another shot at his former boss.
In another installment of the ongoing bitterness between former WWE star and the company where he earned his fame, current UFC employee CM Punk once again used his platform to take a shot at his ex-employer Vince McMahon.
In an interview with MMAFighting.com's Ariel Helwani on Helwani's podcast The MMA Hour, Punk had this to say regarding the reaction of his new employers to his recent setback due to a back injury:
" wonderful, in my opinion. I was in with Dana and Lorenzo , and we were talking, and Dr. Sanders just came up and he goes, 'alright, here it is.' He laid it all on the table for us. Of course, Dana lets out this big sign, and he's like, 'uhh, we can't get a break.' So immediately I do into, 'well, maybe there's a shot I can get? Maybe I can do cortisone, whatever?' And Lorenzo and Dana stop me, and they went 'no, no, no, it is what it is. We just want to get you fixed and get you healthy. We have shows every month, don't worry about it.' It's just, the timing sucked. I'm literally about to walk out and do this thing, And they were great.
It's hard not to compare and contrast to where I used to work before. It was just a relief to finally have a boss who was like, 'no, no just get fixed, we want you 100%, we want you to be healthy,' not interested in throwing a band-aid on a bullet wound just to parade me out in front of people. So it was a relief, and it felt nice."
Paraphrased Taylor Swift quote aside, this seems like an unwise statement for Punk to have made considering he's currently being sued for defamation by WWE physician Dr. Chris Amann for remarks he made on Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcast regarding the care he received under Amann. Punk has alleged he was pressured to work through serious injuries and was misdiagnosed while suffering from a MRSA staff infection. For his part, Punk claims that Amann was encouraged by WWE to file the lawsuit to offset the negative publicity his remarks brought upon the company.
CM Punk is also neglecting to realize that the primary reason he's not being pressured to fight before he's ready is because he was signed strictly based on name recognition alone, has no actual combat sports experience and barring some sort of miracle, will be a very short term investment for the UFC that they would like to turn an early profit on before the most likely outcome of his fighting career crashing to a halt in violently spectacular fashion.
In addition to that, he's not a main event fighter who the company relies on to sell pay-per-view events and thus has very little pressure being placed upon him, making the comparison a bit unfair. Dana White himself has been quite outspoken disparaging fighters who've had to pull out of match-ups due to injuries, so acting like it would be out of the norm for him to do so is disingenuous on Punk's behalf.
At this point there is no tentative timetable for CM Punk's UFC debut, although he remains confident that he will be locked inside the cage before 2015 draws to a close.