Ryback Reacts To CM Punk Calling Him A Roided-Up Dumb F*ck

For the first time since bolting from WWE in January, CM Punk addressed the circumstances behind his departure from the sports-entertainment organization in a two-hour interview with Colt Cabana on the “Art of Wrestling” podcast. The podcast was released Thursday and is available below.

Beginning at 51:50, Punk gripes about his experience working with Ryback, who he brands as a dangerous worker and steroid user. Punk says wrestling Ryback “took twenty years off my fucking life” and blames him for injuring him on multiple occasions.

“I’m already beat up and I have to wrestle steroid guy,” Punk says as he recalled being asked to work a program with Ryback in the fall of 2012 since management felt he could carry him in matches. “I call it like I see it. He’s very hurty, sometimes deliberate. There was one time he kicked me in the stomach as hard he could and he broke my ribs, right at the tail end. I never got an apology for that. He was something else. A real piece of work that guy.”

Later in interview, Punk takes a jab at Triple H for failing to elevate Curtis Axel after promising he would. Punk offered to work with the third-generation wrestler, but WWE officials ignored his request. Instead, he was continuously booked in matches with Ryback—now paired with Paul Heyman—who he had requested to management to not to work with. Punk later agrees to work with him and gets injured in their first encounter.

“I go up to Ryan [Ryback’s real name] and I go, ‘Hey man, clean slate. Let’s fucking kill this. Let’s fucking show them that you’re better than they think you are. Let’s show them I’m better than they think I am and let’s turn this mid-card shit into a fucking main event,” said Punk.

Imitating Ryback’s voice, “‘Yeah, I’m really excited, blah, blah, blah.'”

Punk recalls, “First night out, Gorilla Press through a table…fucking misses the table. Dumps me on the concrete fucking ground. Tilts my fucking pelvis, fucks me up for weeks.”

Punk later asks Ryback if he hurt him on purpose or if he’s “dumb as fuck.”

He continues to Cabana, “I’m compensating because my knee is still fucked, both my knees, you know what I mean? The one I just had surgery on six months ago and the one that was fucking torn up and I refused to have surgery on. I just wanted to rehab it, which I did. And now it’s at the point where I walk up to him and I go, ‘You can’t tell me you didn’t do that on purpose because you’ve done it so many times now. You either tell me right now you’re dumb as fuck and you suck, or you did it on purpose. And he was like, ‘I’m dumb as fuck. I’m sorry.'”

Punk says, “At that point, there was nothing I could do. In my mind it was like, ‘Great. Fuck, there’s nothing I can do.'”

While Ryback didn’t directly respond, he did post a tweet featuring eight Ryback action figures standing over a destroyed CM Punk figure.