CM Punk Reveals Why WWE Unreal Makes Him Uncomfortable

CM Punk has finally explained why he isn’t exactly comfortable with WWE Unreal and the entire format of the show.

While speaking on the Progressive podcast, CM Punk talked about why he feels uncomfortable with the WWE Unreal show. He said that in wrestling, especially if you’re old-school like him, you’re always taught to protect the business.

That means not letting people see too much of what happens behind the scenes. Even though fans have known for a long time that wrestling is planned, there’s still a tradition of keeping some things private.

“It’s that my entire existence in my profession, professional wrestling, you’re taught and you’re brought up—and if you’re old school—you protect the business. It’s always been that way. I feel like since the ’20s or ’30s, everybody knew wrestling was predetermined. They talk about how they didn’t know, and they talk about how, you know, in the ’80s we just kind of blew it wide open and now everybody’s—we’re exposing the business and this and this and that.”

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The Second City Saint understands that most people already know how things work, and the show is just trying to give fans a look at what really happens backstage, kind of like the football show Hard Knocks. That show shows players, coaches, game plans, and their personal lives. Punk knows that WWE Unreal is doing something similar for wrestling.

But for CM Punk, it still feels weird. He was taught to keep the secrets of the business and not share too much. So, showing all the backstage stuff just doesn’t feel right to him.

“I think if you’re living under a rock, you don’t know, but most people do know. I think what this show is going to do is just show us kind of backstage in our environment, interacting with each other. And that’s really for the fans. You see it all the time with football shows, like Hard Knocks—like that’s a big one. You’re in the room. You’re seeing the special teams. You’re seeing the X’s and the O’s. You’re seeing the relationships between the coaches and the players and their families and all that. And that’s sort of what we’re doing. We’re following suit in a way.

It’s just really strange for me, at least, because I’ve always been taught you protect the business. You don’t let the insiders in on all the inside information. It just—it goes against everything I think that was instilled in me when I first started. And to be fair, like, I’m just an uncomfortable person.”

CM Punk also said he’s not very comfortable being filmed all the time. When he saw the trailer, he got nervous and started sweating. He never really knew when the cameras were rolling or who had microphones on. He even joked that there’s likely a lot of clips of him looking right into the camera and telling them to stop filming him.

“I think we watched the trailer right before we came in here, and I immediately—I could feel my face. I’m bright red. I’m sweating. And I’m just like, ‘Oh, geez. Oh boy. Okay. All right. Here it comes.’ I was never sure when they were filming, what they were filming, who’s miked up. You could probably make a really good blooper reel of me looking directly down the lens of the camera going, ‘What are you doing? Get out of my f****** face. Don’t film this.'”

WWE Unreal will be releasing on July 29 and ultimately, it will give fans a major look at the inner workings of the business. CM Punk clearly isn’t a fan of this concept and it’s likely others will feel the same as him.

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