CM Punk stepped into the UFC with the entire world watching, but none of that scared him as much as asking AJ Lee to marry him.
Punk opened up about the proposal on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story? podcast, explaining that the idea of getting punched, choked out or embarrassed inside a cage felt small compared to buying an engagement ring without knowing whether AJ would say yes.
“You think for a second I give a fuck what somebody says about me stepping into a cage when the scariest moment of my life was buying a ring and not knowing?”
Punk said he had no clue how AJ felt about marriage at the time. He also knew almost nothing about jewelry, ring sizes or how much he was supposed to spend.
“I don’t know about jewelry. Does she like jewelry? I knew I had to ask her this question. What if she says no? That’s scary.”
The two had known each other for much longer, but Punk said they had only been properly dating for about six months when he decided he wanted to marry her. Punk didn’t need years to make up his mind.
“When I got the bright idea that I was going to ask her to marry me, I think we had only truly, literally been dating for six months.”
“Ask me how I knew. I knew.”
Getting the ring turned into a mission of its own. Punk secretly found out AJ’s ring size through someone at WWE and then started questioning every detail of the purchase.
“I was going to spend money on this ring, and I was like, ‘Am I spending enough money? How big is it supposed to be?’”
Punk regularly sent AJ flowers, so he decided to hide the proposal inside something she had already grown accustomed to receiving. He arranged for a flower delivery while they were out buying groceries and wrote the question on the card.
“On the card, I wrote, ‘Will you marry me?’”
The plan immediately started falling apart once they got home. AJ brought the flowers inside, placed them on the counter and started putting away groceries without reading the card. Since Punk normally left the cards blank, she had no reason to check it.
“She got the flowers, put them on the counter and started putting the groceries away. I was looking at the flowers.”
AJ even told Punk to stop standing around and help with the groceries while he waited for her to notice the message.
“She turned around and said, ‘You can help me put the groceries away.’ I was like, ‘Oh, yes. Sorry.’ She’s not paying any attention to the flowers.”
Punk admitted he had completely sabotaged his own proposal by never writing anything meaningful on the cards he sent her.
“Because there’s never anything written on the card. Imagine that—I shot myself in the foot on that one.”
Things got even worse when AJ thanked him for the flowers, walked into the other room and turned on the television. Punk was left frozen in the kitchen, sweating and staring at the flowers while trying to figure out how to get her to read the card without ruining the surprise.
“She went and sat on the couch, turned the television on and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m standing in the kitchen like a horror movie.”
AJ eventually realized Punk was acting strange and returned to the flowers. She grabbed the card and read what he had written. Punk used the moment when her back was turned to get the ring ready.
“She snatched the card and opened it. While she turned around to read it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, get the ring out.’”
Once AJ turned back around, neither of them spoke. Punk was so nervous that he had to ask AJ whether he was supposed to get down on one knee.
“We both stood there with tears in our eyes for what felt like five minutes.”
“I think I said, ‘Do I get down on my knee?’ She was like, ‘Yep.’”
He finally dropped to one knee and asked the question face-to-face. Punk said he was sweating so badly that it ran into his eye. Before AJ read the card, he even considered abandoning the plan and escaping.
“I got down on my knee, and I said, ‘Will you marry me?’ She said yes.”
“I was literally thinking, ‘I can run away right now. It hasn’t happened yet. I can abort the mission.’”
The proposal may have gone completely off the rails before AJ found the card, but Punk got the answer he wanted. He survived the scariest moment of his life, AJ said yes, and the two were married in 2014.
What do you think of CM Punk’s proposal story, and would you have panicked when AJ Lee ignored the card? Leave your feedback in the comments below.
