WWE World Heavyweight Champion “The Best in the World” CM Punk recently spoke with All That Smoke about various topics, including the significant changes in the pro wrestling business since he was last in the company nearly a decade ago.
Punk said, “Yeah I mean, the business is completely different. The wrestling business as a whole, I think, has changed. WWE has changed. Again, we were talking a little bit about load management. When I was running 10 years, I didn’t take a break. I got called up to the main roster, and I was fortunate because I was on everything. And I mean everything. Every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. We used to tape Smackdown on Tuesdays. So right after Raw, you just roll to the next town. It would tape to air on Friday. I mean, that’s five days a week. So I’m flying home Wednesday morning. I have maybe Thursday, and then Friday morning I’m right back out. I did that 10 years. And then that’s one overseas tour a month, that’s two week European tours a year. That’s, I don’t know how many different pay-per-views in different countries. But it was it was so great because I was young and I was not married and I did not have kids. I had no responsibility. Like, I bought a house that was just ‘lock it and leave it,’ and I locked it and I left it. I lived out of a suitcase. I lived like a pirate and it was the greatest thing for me. But I always would look at the people who had husbands or wives as kids at home and I saw how hard it was.”
On how that’s changed:
“That’s the best thing about the business is how different it is. A guy like Cody can balance it well. Where Cody is everywhere, and he’s the face of the company and he’s on everything. And he feels he’s not neglecting his daughters and his wife, which is paramount. Like, that should be 100% number one. A lot of us aren’t felonious old ’70s and ’80s wrestlers who, we just want to try to get away from home. We like being home, right?”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
