Tag: cm punk

CM Punk’s new career as an MMA fighter got off to a painful start on Saturday.

Punk proved no match for Mickey Gall at UFC 203, as Gall wasted little time taking the former WWE wrestler down and scoring a first-round victory via rear naked choke.

“In life you go big or go home,” Punk told UFC color commentator Joe Rogan in the cage when it was over. “I just like to take challenges. This was a hell of a mountain to try to climb. I didn’t get to the summit today, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.”

It was impossible to blame Punk—who retired from professional wrestling in early 2014—for wanting to try his hand at legitimate fighting. He has long been a regular spectator at UFC events and his love for the sport has always seemed sincere.

But at nearly 38 years old and with no competitive athletic experience to speak of, it was always unrealistic to think he could transform himself into a UFC-level fighter with less than two years worth of training.

Gall himself underscored that point again and again while making the media rounds this week. Indeed, Punk’s willingness to have his first-ever fight take place in the UFC had been divisive among fans:

Once the bout got underway, Gall made Punk look every bit the rookie he was.

The 24-year-old New Jersey native dropped low and took Punk down with double-leg during the bout’s opening moments. From there, he landed heavy shots from inside the guard until transitioning to Punk’s back during a scramble.

Gall continued to land winging punches from both sides until Punk (real name: Phil Brooks) opened his defenses enough to allow the choke attempt. It took two tries—once with each arm—but Punk ultimately tapped out after just two minutes, 14 seconds of total action.

Afterward Gall, who was making his second appearance in the UFC, used his time on the mic to call out another of the fight promotion’s pet projects—Sage Northcutt.

“This might [have been] a gimmicky fight, but I’m no gimmick,” Gall told Rogan. “I’m not going f—king anywhere.”

For Punk, some positives came out of this experience, if you chose to look hard enough.

Gall outclassed him inside the cage, but the professional wrestler’s presence alone made this UFC card feel special.

He flashed his theatrical chops at the weigh-in, staring Gall down during their faceoff and then grinning to the crowd as the other fighter retreated from the stage. When Punk’s walkout music hit inside Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, it felt like a legitimately cool moment.

The size of the spectacle didn’t appear to swallow him and he seemed more excited than nervous to make his MMA debut on such a big stage. Again, he grinned and glowered at Gall as he walked to the cage, stopping just shy of the Octagon door to turn and fire up the crowd.

The actual fighting part of the job still seemed to elude him, but the showmanship and entertainment aspects of the fight game clearly came naturally to him after so much time spent in the world of professional wrestling.

Punk also told Rogan his MMA career won’t be one-and-done.

“I’ll be back, believe it or not,” he said. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life … I know there’s a lot of doubters but, listen, life is about falling down and getting up. It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it’s about getting back up.”

To see Punk so quickly and easily defeated by Gall was not necessarily a surprise, after all. He came into this bout as a 3-to-1 underdog according to Odds Shark.

Since signing a multifight deal with the UFC in December 2014 he relocated from Chicago to Milwaukee to train at the gym of renowned coach Duke Roufus.

The training footage that emerged as the fight drew near—in the form of a documentary miniseries produced by the UFC and at least one live social media event—had not been impressive. Punk still looked like a middle-aged man who had only recently taken up fighting.

He looked, frankly, like a guy who would lose a fight to any actual UFC fighter in about two minutes.

That’s exactly what happened, even though Gall only just qualifies as a “UFC fighter,” despite looking good in his pair of Octagon appearances. The fight company found him on UFC President Dana White’s internet reality show and brought him in for the express purpose of fighting Punk.

Once it’s all said and done, however, it might turn out it was Gall who used Punk to springboard himself to a successful UFC career, not the other way around.

It’s anyone’s best guess whether Punk will actually make good on his promise to fight again. It’s possible, however, that his second fight should not be in the UFC. The organization already had to make a special effort to go out and find Gall in order to give him a halfway competitive opponent—and things still didn’t go so well.

Is it even possible the UFC could find someone less qualified for Punk to fight the second time around?

No, it would likely be better for everyone if Punk’s MMA career proceeded along more traditional lines from here. If the guy has any hope at all of fashioning himself into a workable professional fighter, he should do it on the independent circuit.

He should ink a deal with a smaller promotion and take some lower profile bouts against opponents of his own experience and ability levels. If he is serious enough about the sport and talented enough to string a few wins together, then bring him back to the UFC for a second chance.

Otherwise, there’s likely no point in him pursuing his newfound fight career any further.

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