CM Punk has been wrestling with a scary problem for more than two decades — and fans watching him work through matches probably never had a clue. Punk says a fractured skull he suffered in 2002 left him dealing with recurring vertigo, and there have been nights where he was wrestling while the entire world was spinning around him.
Punk revealed the issue during the new Hot Ones: Extra Heat special on Netflix, which was announced for immediately after the September 14 episode of WWE RAW. The conversation eventually turned to injuries, and Punk brought up one that has followed him for nearly his entire career. Punk said he fractured his skull during a June 2002 Jersey J-Cup match against Reckless Youth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The injury did more than just crack his skull — Punk says it messed with the bones in his inner ear that control his equilibrium.
“I fractured my skull once. This is the one that reoccurs every once in a while, because after I fractured my skull, I developed vertigo really bad. Also, one I haven’t really talked about too much but what happened was I fractured my skull, and there are some bones in your inner ear to help with equilibrium and those kind of basically were like dice inside a cup and got rattled around and thrown around.”
And that problem never completely went away. Punk said those bones can still get knocked loose, and when that happens, something as simple as lying down and looking straight up can send everything spinning.
“So, sometimes those still get knocked loose, and if I lay down and look straight up, the world spins.”
Then Punk dropped the part that makes some of his matches look completely different in hindsight. He says fans have watched and praised matches where he was actually dealing with a full-blown bout of vertigo while trying to get through everything happening in the ring.
“So there’s been a lot of matches that you see that you know a lot of people are impressed with, where I’m full on going through a bout of vertigo and I don’t know what’s going on.”
Punk has discussed just how dangerous that skull fracture was before. Earlier this year, he called the fractured skull the worst injury of his career and admitted he “could have died”. Now he’s revealing that the damage is still capable of screwing with him more than two decades later.
Leave it to Punk to still find a way to laugh about it. After explaining that vertigo can hit him during matches, Punk found himself the perfect excuse for one move fans have spent years roasting. That joke aside, Punk just revealed something pretty wild about a career already loaded with injuries. Fans have watched him fight through some brutal matches over the years without knowing that, on certain nights, he says he was doing it while the entire room was literally spinning around him.
What do you make of CM Punk revealing that he has wrestled matches while dealing with vertigo? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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