10 Amazing Wrestling Callbacks You Totally Missed
5. CM Punk: Extremely Online
![MJF Samoa Joe](https://d2thvodm3xyo6j.cloudfront.net/media/2023/09/84244a4edae5d020-600x338.jpg)
CM Punk, forever an enigma, positions himself as above the childish games of online wrestling circles - and yet haunts social media more than every engagement farm account put together.
The man who used to keep his own LiveJournal was also fond of a shoot interview, and in a famous example conducted alongside Samoa Joe, he told the story of a rib he once played on then-ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky. Mimicking Homicide, Punk called Gabe and pretended that "he" couldn't make Final Battle 2003 because he'd just been offered monster money to stay in Puerto Rico. Even though it was his dream to wrestle Satoshi Kojima, he just couldn't turn it down.
It was a shame. He really wanted to take the lariat!
Punk did this - with an escalating stream of "Lariat! Kojima!" nonsense - because Gabe's hysterical, end-of-the-world conniption fits were the stuff of legend and a source of great amusement within the locker room.
Fast-forward two full decades, and it was Punk who worked Kojima at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2023.
During that match - even in a role well beneath Punk, he was so fantastic at playing the stooging midcard heel - he cornered Satoshi and threw his bicep at him.
All the while, he yelled "Kojima! Lariat! Kojima!"