CM Punk Says Pat McAfee Will ‘Get Checked’ for Disrespecting Wrestling

CM Punk isn’t backing down from Pat McAfee—and this time he’s doubling down by calling him a “tourist” in wrestling and warning that he’ll personally “get checked.”

Following McAfee’s Twitter response to Punk’s RAW promo last week, Punk addressed the situation again during his April 14, 2026 appearance on the All The Smoke podcast. Instead of softening his stance, Punk leaned further into the criticism and broke down exactly why he has a problem with McAfee being in the wrestling space.

Punk started by zooming out and talking about wrestling’s long history of bringing in outside personalities for visibility, making it clear he believes that approach doesn’t always translate into real value for the business.

“Wrestling, I think, has always—sometimes to a fault—embraced people that we believe can get eyeballs on our product. And eyeballs on our product and people actually investing and buying tickets are two wildly different things.”

From there, Punk shifted directly to McAfee, explaining how he views his journey from fan to mainstream personality—and where he thinks things went wrong. Punk then clarified that his issue isn’t with McAfee’s success outside wrestling, but with how he operates within it—especially when he feels the business is being disrespected.

“I think Pat was a wrestling fan who became famous outside the bubble and was afforded an opportunity to be invited in. And somewhere along the line, he forgot that he’s a tourist. And to me, the invite can be easily rescinded, you know? Pat’s great at what he does. Pat is not great at what we do when he disrespects the business and says some things out of pocket. He’s going to get checked—and he’s going to get checked by me.”

He also directly addressed McAfee’s recent comments about ticket sales and business metrics, arguing that McAfee doesn’t have the experience to speak on those topics in a meaningful way.

“You can’t be running your mouth about ticket sales and all this other stuff when you’ve never sold a ticket in your life. It’d be like me trying to tell an NBA champion how to shoot a free throw—that s*** ain’t going to happen.”

Despite the intensity of his comments, Punk ended by acknowledging that the situation may not immediately turn into something bigger, making it clear that it’s not his primary focus right now: “I would prefer to not have to deal with Pat. Like I said, it’s Cody’s thing, but we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens.”

Bottom line: this isn’t cooling off anytime soon. Punk just drew a line, McAfee already fired back once, and with WrestleMania 42 right around the corner, this has all the makings of something spilling over onto WWE TV in a big way once again.

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