Seth Rollins Reveals The Root Of His Issues With CM Punk, Reacts To Him Jumping Ship
Yesterday at 07:47 PM
Prior to tomorrow’s episode of WWE Monday Night RAW on Netflix, Seth Rollins spoke with Jackie Redmond to comment on his feud and longstanding issues with CM Punk.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On the root of his issues with CM Punk: "Ooh, the root, man, that's deep, it's deep-rooted. This relationship between myself and Punk goes back a long way, 20 years. He's referenced it many times, I did come to him for training, I was a, look, Jackie, I was a huge fan of CM Punk, no doubt about it. I looked at him and I saw someone that I wanted to be like. He had a ton of conviction, he was honest, he was kind of a disruptor, he didn't fit the mold. And I saw a lot of myself in that and that type of personality, that cult of personality, if you will, that's someone that you can become attracted to. And so I looked at him as a hero, as someone that I could follow in his footsteps. He kind of laid out this template, and so I go to him for training. I do my best to kind of live up to his expectations. I see what he's doing, we have a very similar path as far as what led us to WWE, making our name for ourselves in the Midwest independent scene."
On Punk vouching for him to get in the door to WWE: "And then finally getting to WWE, it was a difficult road for him the whole time. And I was there watching, rooting him on, wanting the best for him cuz I felt if he did well, it was an opportunity for everyone else behind him, like me, to follow in those footsteps. And that's what happened, and he vouched for me. He helped get me in the door, WWE, when I was on the chopping block, all that stuff that he said was absolutely true. And then I got up to WWE and it was my dream job, I was on the road all the time. CM Punk and I were on the same shows, he was helping me after my matches. Everything was as I dreamed it, and we were becoming friends. It was more than just like a student and a teacher, more than an apprentice and a mentor. There was a friendship there, camaraderie because we were kind of cut from the same cloth."
On where everything went wrong with Punk: "And then everything went south, and that's kind of where the root of it is. You trust someone, you believe in them, you become close to them, and then they betray you with no remorse, no explanation, nothing. And if it was just me, I kind of feel I could have gotten over it, but it wasn't just me that he stabbed me in the back, right? It was every single friend that he had that worked for WWE. After he left in 2014, he wrote everybody off. Not just someone like me who, obviously he didn't care about anyway, but he wrote everybody off. All of his friends, people that he'd known for decades, and for no other reason than because they wouldn't leave this place and go side with him."
On CM Punk jumping ship: "And I look at it like times got tough and he abandoned ship, right? … He jumped off, he left this ship. It was sinking, it was in a rough spot, there was water coming in. And I was a deckhand, I'm new, I'm sitting here and I'm doing everything I can to get this water out of the ship, to keep it afloat for years and years and years. And during this time, it wasn't like he just sat on an island from far away and watched the thing start to go under, he was shooting cannons. He actively wanted the place to die. And I think because he's so selfish, he thought that that would make him some sort of missing piece, right? He wasn't here and this thing couldn't go on without him."
On making WWE better in Punk's absence: "But something happened in his absence, we put the ship back together. Not only did we put the ship back together, we built it bigger than it's ever been. And then a decade later, after everything he tried from the outside failed, he wants to come back onto the ship. And he thinks that it's just frozen in time and we all are in the same roles, and he can just look down and talk down to everybody who was in those positions before. But I'm not a deckhand anymore, I'm the captain, I run the ship."
On how this will be a fight, not a match: "It's gonna be a fight. There's no question about it. It's gonna be a fight. I mean, this is the biggest fight in our sport right now. This is the biggest fight in our industry. And a lot of people will say, Seth, maybe. Maybe you pushed this to WrestleMania. But nah, man, this is my WrestleMania, and I need it now after Survivor Series this year and I saw him hand in hand with Roman Reigns, that was like enough for me. Enough is enough. I let it go on for a year. We were on a collision course, he gets sidetracked. I go in a different direction. We come back to it and I just like that visual of him next to Roman. Roman's finger in the air and Punk doing this stupid little go to sleep thing. I just wanted to throw the remote through the TV.
"I was so viscerally internally destroyed. I was like, that's it I can't wait. I don't wanna wait anymore. I want the world to see it. I want them to see it. This is perfect. This Netflix, the debut, the world will be watching this match. And to answer your question, I don't know what it's gonna look like. You're gonna see a side of me that no one's ever seen. No pun intended, it's gonna be raw, it's gonna be visceral, it's gonna be violent. I've got to extract this demon from my soul, I've got to get it out of me. I've got to cut this cancer out of my brain or I'm going down and I can't handle it."
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