More than one year after signing with UFC, former WWE superstar CM Punk finally has an opponent for his mixed martial arts debut.
Mickey Gall, who defeated Mike Jackson by submission at UFC Fight Night 82 on Saturday, has been given the task of challenging Punk, per UFC President Dana White:
An official date for Punk’s UFC debut has not been set, but Damon Martin of Fox Sports noted White said after the event the company is targeting UFC 199 in June, which will be headlined by Chris Weidman vs. Luke Rockhold for the middleweight title.
Speaking to reporters after his first UFC fight was confirmed, per MMA Fighting, Punk referred to himself as a mystery because this is uncharted territory for him:
While Punk’s MMA skills are certainly a mystery, especially since he’s beginning his professional fighting career at the age of 37, Gall is a bigger unknown by virtue of most people having never heard of him.
The 24-year-old doesn’t have an extensive professional resume, with his win Saturday just the second of his career, and it happened during the UFC Fight Pass portion of the preliminary card, but he’s oozing confidence.
Gall told Martin after the win what he expects to see happen against Punk: “I’m excited to fight a superstar. I’m going to beat up a superstar. I’m excited for that.”
Ben Fowlkes of USA Today also posited a theory that Gall’s quick victory over Jackson may have worked to his advantage moving forward:
Bryan Alvarez of Figure Four Weekly did question the way UFC decided to start promotion for Punk’s debut:
It’s a valid question because Punk immediately becomes one of the best-known names in UFC by virtue of having been in WWE for nearly a decade. MMA fans don’t often like comparisons to WWE because the latter is a sport with predetermined outcomes, but UFC is also a business.
While there’s no doubt that Punk’s debut will get a bigger push from UFC as the fight date approaches, the official announcement of his first fight should have been treated like a bigger deal than just a staredown on Fight Pass.
Looking ahead to the actual fight, Punk’s age has been a talking point in the past, with White saying on the Grant and Danny Show in Washington, D.C. (per Martin), prior to Saturday’s event that there’s no set plan for the former WWE champion after his first match:
So CM Punk was a wrestler in the WWE, he was a big fan of the UFC and he ended up leaving the WWE and he said ‘Dana, my dream is to fight in the UFC, I want to fight in the UFC, will you let me fight?’ so we’re giving him a fight. We’re bringing in a kid who has obviously a little more experience than he does, if he wins this fight this Saturday he’ll be 2-0 and Punk is 0-0. We’ll see how it goes for him. He will decide what he wants to do after that.
This is certainly a special circumstance for UFC and Punk. He’s going to be unfairly compared to Brock Lesnar due to being a former WWE superstar transitioning into mixed martial arts.
Lesnar moved to MMA at the age of 29 in 2006, honed some of his skills in K-1 and then signed a deal with UFC. He also came into the sport at a time when UFC’s heavyweight division was in a state of transition, with stars like Randy Couture and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira entering the twilight of their respective careers.
Punk is nearly a decade older than Lesnar with zero in-ring experience outside of his training and is fighting in a loaded welterweight division. He could easily make this a one-and-done event just to say he fulfilled a lifelong dream, which may be anticlimactic for fans given all the hype around his arrival 14 months ago.
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