"It wasn't my hill to die on so I let it go." Punk wanted to reinvent himself and come back to action with a new look. This included new MMA style fight shorts littered with sponsors. He wanted to do this as it would primarily be a new form of income, adhering to the topic of this story. Punk outlined how Vince turned down the idea due to the fact other superstars and Raw's pre-existing sponsors would get mad and pull their finance from WWE. A year later Brock Lesnar would return and have sponsors on his shorts which obviously upset Punk. On the podcast he would begrudgingly say: "Good for him." Of course Brock's sponsors were from his time in UFC and the deals with them were still going on at the time. The fact this was a battle Punk lost only added fuel to his respective fire. "In my mind this was cutting edge and this is going to be a new means of income, for not just me, but for the boys because I was still in that mentality to help everybody out." How sincere the second half of that sentence is, only Punk knows.
