10 Fascinating WWE Backstage Facts About CM Punk
It was a long road back "home" for CM Punk, and wasn't ALL smooth sailing when he arrived...
CM Punk's WWE return was as much the story of 2024 as it was the last enormous twist in a 2023 with the now-standard amount of insanity expected from professional wrestling.
The man who started the year working for AEW but nowhere near the television product ended up back with a WWE he pledged to never return to. By the Royal Rumble he was back in his gear stealing the show in a closing stretch with Cody Rhodes. By the night after he was nursing an injury that ostensibly kept him out of WrestleMania. Until, that was, he ended up heavily involved in the Night Two World Heavyweight Championship mix, as he'd promised from the moment he'd returned.
One match but already some era-defining moments. This is the CM Punk way, to the point where even praising any of this will attract derision and divisiveness due to how much he splits the fanbase in two. His legacy is one that includes as much of what we're not supposed to know as what we do, inclusive of everything off screen that aids just how captivating he is when the cameras roll.
To wit...
10. He Got To Keep His Entrance Music
It took CM Punk five years to get it in WWE, but when CM Punk finally brought his last(ish) theme from Ring Of Honor to the market leader, he did so with the intent of never letting it go. This was confirmed as much by Living Colour's lead singer Corey Glover.
Speaking on the Drinks With Johnny podcast about Cult Of Personality, he said (h/t POST Wrestling);
"...he never let go of Cult of Personality as his entrance music, and the way he tells it was like, when he was in Little League in the suburbs of Chicago, the team’s entrance music was Cult of Personality. Evidently, they had a very progressive coach and he really dug the song. So he kept it his whole career...back in the day when Punk was first going to WWF (sic), they were like, ‘Okay, so we’re gonna get you your own entrance music.’ He’s like, ‘No, I already have entrance music.’ He made it a point that I’m not changing my entrance music. Because they had their own music division of the WWF and they were gonna have somebody make up a song that sounded similar to Cult of Personality. But that was gonna be his entrance music. ‘No, I don’t want that. I want the real thing.’ He’s like one of the talent that actually got that in his contract that wherever he goes, that goes with him."
WWE's had a mixed record with entrance themes over the past decade, but never has there been better time to hear the famous crackling sting of The Punker's theme than right now. The much-maligned Def Rebel have knocked out some stinkers of later, and a remixed version of the Living Colour classic doesn't bear thinking about.