CM Punk’s impressive tenure in WWE may never have transpired if not for WWE Hall of Famer Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat.
After signing with WWE in 2006, Punk would debut on TV the following year and would be regularly featured until walking out of the company in 2014.
Speaking on a recent edition of the “Wrestle Binge” podcast, Steamboat recalled working at a Ring of Honor event where he would first see potential in the future WWE & AEW World Champion. He said,
“It was Ring of Honor and they brought me up to be the special guest referee, and he was working with Samoa Joe. It was 12-15 years ago and they brought me as the special guest referee for the main event match. So I was the third guy in the ring and I listened to CM Punk lead the whole match for the whole hour, and that told me right there that this kid’s got it.
“The psychology part, what to do, when to do it, why to do it at this time, why to do it at the beginning and not at the end, so forth and so on. He had all the nuts and bolts connected and that impressed me.
“At that time, I went back to John Laurinaitis, who was talent development, and said that you need to take a look at CM Punk and get him up here for an audition. John said, ‘We’ve had him up here for a couple of times, we put him in the ring with one of our regulars for five minutes and didn’t see much.’ I said I was a referee in his match and he went through an hour Broadway and he called the whole match and this kid has the ‘I got it’.
“He’s got the ‘it’ thing and I think you should take another look and put him with one of our better, topper guys and let him do a 15 or 20-minute audition instead of a 3 to 5-minute, quicky in and out. So they got him up, he got in the ring for 20 minutes and he got hired.”
CM Punk was released from AEW earlier this month following an investigation into his backstage altercation with Jack Perry at AEW All In 2023.
Punk has claimed that he will be busy for the next two months, which would make him free in November, leading to speculation among some that he will return to WWE at Survivor Series 2023 in Chicago, IL.
