10 Wrestlers Who Hate CM Punk’s Guts
6. Elijah Burke
CM Punk’s journey through the ranks of the WWE started with the company’s 2005 relaunch of Extreme Championship Wrestling. Whilst the severely watered-down version of ECW never caught much positive attention, at the very least it allowed Punk to get a foothold within the overall WWE roster.
In 2012, Wrestling Inc. asked CM Punk who his least favourite wrestler to work with was and the Straight Edge Superstar was as brutally honest as ever:
"Good question. I always get, 'Who's your favorite opponent?' So, this is great because I enjoy talking trash. Does anybody even remember Elijah Burke? Yeah? Ahh, he's terrible. He's absolutely the worst. Absolutely the worst. Talk about a diva. Man, oh man. Sorry if you like him."
Whilst Punk didn’t go into the details, this response was met with mixed reactions. Sure, Burke hadn’t really gained the momentum that the company had hoped out of him and he was released from his contract in quite short order. On the other hand, it was surprising to hear Punk so candidly describe a worker so poorly.
In a guest spot with That 90s Wrestling Podcast, Burke smugly said of his former opponent: “when the curtain is pulled back, I guess we all found out who the prima donna was. I guess we all found out who was difficult to work with”. Burke also remarked that Punk never made these comments to his face.