In an interview with Sports Illustrated Media podcast, Paul Heyman spoke about CM Punk’s new UFC role and if he’ll ever return to WWE. Here are highlights:
On whether CM Punk knows that the odds are stacked against him: “Phil Brooks is not in his mid-thirties, he’s cruising rapidly into his late-thirties. He doesn’t have a documentable athletic background. Do I know that he has been in the gym with the best Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners in the world for several years? Sure I do, but he’s never been in a competition. I don’t know of any sports he played in high school. He went straight from high school into the wrestling world so there’s no college background there. Brock Lesnar was an NCAA Division I champion, who was a champion in junior college, he was a bad ass wrestling in high school and he was wrestling since he was five years old. He was a competitive athlete so that’s a different jump to make. Phillip Brooks does not have that background. It makes it all the more improbable, which is exactly why he’s so driven to do it. Because he looks in the mirror and he sees not only a rebel and an uncompromising spokesman for the beliefs that are near and dear to him, but he sees someone that will defy conventional wisdom and pull off miracles if that’s what it takes because he has one shot in life and he wants to do something quite special with it.”
On Punk possibly returning to the WWE: “As of right now, ain’t no way he’s ever going back. I don’t know if I can make that same statement in the future. I know his mindset is there’s absolutely no way. As for his mindset where he is in his journey, I think every moment he takes a breath is one moment closer to his debut. I think the only thing that he sees in his mind right now, 24/7 he is envisioning the moment they lock that Octagon and the referee says ‘fight’.”
On Punk’s drive: “He’s a really driven individual and he’s uncompromising. So he’s uncompromising in his own beliefs and he’s uncompromising in his own values and he’s uncompromising in pursuing his own desires. I’ve said this before, it gets quoted back to me all the time, experience is the greatest inhibitor of creativity that you’ll ever meet in your life. It is also the greatest inhibitor of pursuing one’s dreams. Because you learn in terms of creativity of what not to do, but in terms of pursuing your dreams you learn all the reasons why something will fail. If you show me someone who’s afraid of failure, I’ll show you someone who is not a groundbreaking, innovative, pioneer of a certain industry. How many different ways could you have explained to Bill Gates why not to go in the direction he went in his life? They just released a movie on Steve Jobs. This guy broke every rule in the book, every convention and he was unrestrained in his pursuit of what everyone thought was crazy. Same with Vincent Kennedy McMahon. He broke every rule and could be given every reason not to do the things that he did.”
