Top WWE star Seth Rollins appeared on Club Shay Shay to discuss various topics, including whether he has reconciled with World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk.
Rollins said, “No. I wouldn’t say so. I mean, there’s obviously some sort of working relationship. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to go out there and have matches. But there’s just so much — it’s so complex. I think maybe once we’re both away from the business, or retired or hung it up, there might be an opportunity for reconciliation there. It’s just so hard for me to separate the CM Punk that there is now from the CM Punk that was a really rotten friend to me 10 years ago. And so, it’s just — those wounds take time to heal, I think. Whether or not he cares to make the effort to do that, and I care to care if he makes the effort to do that, I don’t know. I don’t know if either of us have the time for it at the moment.”
On if WWE sat them both down and agree to work together:
“No. There was never a time where the two of us were sat down and had a conversation like that. There were conversations had before he came back about whether or not it’s something that I could be okay with. And you know, he’s back. So, I always feel like if there’s business to be done, that’s bigger than me. That’s bigger than my grievances. So you know, at the end of the day, it’s not my sandbox. I don’t make those decisions. I think WWE would be just fine without CM Punk. But I do think there is a large portion of our fan base that is very happy that he is back.”
On his history with Punk:
“We know each other through wrestling. So, when he’s with WWE and he was — I knew him before that. I knew him when I first started wrestling. Because he’s from Chicago. So I would go watch him on independent shows, and I wanted to be trained by him when he ran a school back in 2004… I stayed in touch. I’d go watch him on shows, I was a fan of his. He knew my upbringing. He saw that we were kind of cut from the same cloth, and he was somewhat of a mentor to me when we got to WWE. And he also vouched for myself and John Moxley to be brought up from developmental to the main roster. So everything was good. He let me sleep on his couch. He let me ride his bus occasionally from time to time. He’s a really good guy. And you know, I would have done anything for him. And then he leaves the company and basically just completely ghosted. Just stopped being a friend. And I reached out to him multiple times to try to talk to him, and there was never any animosity between us. There was never like a falling out between the two of us. He just didn’t like the fact that I stayed working for the company… I wasn’t the only person that he felt this way about [him]. He lost a lot of friendships over this. He did this on his own.”
On Punk taking shots at WWE during his time away:
“And I think that would have been one thing. But then on the back end of that, he spent many, many, many years taking kind of potshots at what we were doing, what we were trying to do in WWE without him. And look — when he left, he left a pretty significant void. He was at the top. He was a top star, and we were trying to rebuild and we didn’t have a lot to work with. We were trying to make the thing great. And he took a lot of shots on podcasts and interviews at me, and at people who were trying to do good things for the industry that he supposedly loved. And at that point, WWE was my home. And so when you’re starting to talk bad about my home and the people that I love and the people — I take that personally, right? Because we were friends and you didn’t want to talk to me about anything when you left, how am I supposed to not take that personally, you know? So yeah, it was hard for me. And I did write [Punk] off, and I did say ‘F you.’ Like, ‘I ain’t got time for that, man. I ain’t got time for people like you.’ You know, that negative energy trying to tear down everything we’re trying to build here. I ain’t got time for that. And so, it really, really bothered me when he came back, because I go, ‘Dude, you were gone. We did this. We did this without you. Not only without you, but in spite of you. We did this in spite of you. You tried to make this not happen, and now you want to come back and reap the rewards? We got better and we got bigger, and everything is better now. And it had nothing to do with you. So that was really hard for me.”
On what Punk could have done differently:
“Like I said, it’s just a lot to get over. I think, literally if he would have just replied one time to one text, or one call, and said ‘Hey man, I’m not ready yet.’ Or, ‘Hey man, it’s not you–‘ Just one time, anything, would have changed the whole narrative for me.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
