10 Wrestlers Who Went To Extreme Lengths To Join AEW
5. CM Punk Turns Down WWE's Big Money
It likely won't come as too much of a surprise to hear that Tony Khan's landscape-shifting promotion weren't the only company interested in offering The Best in the World a way back into the biz after seven long years away from it.
Sure enough, around the time CM Punk decided to take his name out of the UFC's USADA testing pool in 2020, his former employers were already nudging The Voice of the Voiceless about a potential comeback to all things WWE.
It's worth noting that around this time Punk had made it rather clear what his asking price would've been to step foot back into Vinnie Mac's former company, telling Pardon My Take (via Fightful) that "the conversation would have to start at somewhere like, 20, 25 [million]."
Despite WWE no doubt being happy to throw a staggering amount of cash at Punk if he was willing to jump through their required hoops, though, the former WWE Champion quickly realised all the money in the world wasn't worth the hassle of playing games with the Sports Entertainment giant.
As he confessed to ESPN later on:
"I remember one of the first things I ever said to them was, 'Above all, don't play games.' And they played games. Some things never change."