After going 0-2 in his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) career, the CM Punk experiment has officially come to an end — probably for the best — as company president Dana White declared during the UFC 225 post-fight presser that the former WWE superstar would not get another opportunity to prove himself.
And during a recent appearance on the MMA Roasted podcast, the outspoken head honcho says he isn’t too convinced CM even wants to do it again after getting beat down by Mike Jackson last Saturday night (June 9, 2018) in Chicago, Illinois (see it again here).
“No. I don’t think he really wants a third chance,” he said via MMA NYTT. Still, White has a ton of respect for the novice fighter for actually stepping up to the plate and doing what many of his critics won’t dare to.
“After this last fight, the guy has got balls man, he’s got guts. He went on the world stage and he gave it two shots man. A lot of people talk s*** about CM, well get in there. Come on over. Have a fight and fight one of these guys,” he said. “It’s easy to sit in your living room and talk s***. This guy was a huge star in WWE and he came over here and put it all on the line twice man in front of the whole world. If people can’t respect that, then their a f***ing idiot.”
Training at Roufusport in preparation for his MMA venture, Punk had some of the best trainers and fighters in the word lat his disposal trying to teach him as much as he could learn in a short amount of time. While his team was confident he had what it took to fight at the highest level based on his training, the results simply didn’t spill over into the cage.
So why wouldn’t anyone in the gym take him to the side and tell him fighting wasn’t for him?
“You can’t tell somebody ‘don’t do the thing that you want to do the most. CM Punk wanted to be a UFC fighter and he wanted to come here,” said White. “He wanted it so bad that he dropped everything and focused on nothing but mixed martial arts. If you talk to his team, next time you talk to Dick Roufus or Pettis, or any of those guys and talk about how this guy was driving back and forth from Chicago, how he would drive for hours and then train forever, you know. They all ended up respecting him. The guy went in there and put it all on the line.”
His dedication to to training was never the question, it was more so his fighting and athletic ability.