CM Punk Reveals What Prompted His Pipe Bomb 2.0 Bashing Pat McAfee and TKO Overpricing WWE Tickets

CM Punk has revealed the motivation behind him recently dropping a pipe bomb-esque promo on Raw.

CM Punk Reveals What Prompted His Pipe Bomb 2.0 Bashing Pat McAfee and TKO Overpricing WWE Tickets

CM Punk on Raw with the WrestleMania sign in the backdrop [via- WWE]

In Short
  • CM Punk's recent promo was driven by backstage frustration over low ticket sales for WrestleMania.
  • He criticized Pat McAfee for his comments about WWE, which he felt disrespected the entire company.
  • Punk emphasized the need for affordable ticket prices to allow more families to attend WrestleMania.

CM Punk has revealed what led to him dropping a pipe bomb on the 4/7 edition of Monday Night Raw. While he mostly kept it around Roman Reigns, the ‘Best in the World’ eventually decided to address the elephant in the room as well. It was Pat McAfee and him ranting about low ticket sales for WrestleMania.

McAfee was revealed to be in cahoots with Randy Orton in his pursuit of his 15th world title against Cody Rhodes. The material that McAfee used in his promo was reportedly done above WWE CCO Triple H‘s head. McAfee allegedly came up with it on his own and received the approval from someone up the food chain to go ahead.

Punk asked McAfee in his fiery rant to ring up that agent of his who was foolish enough to shoehorn him into this business and tell him to lower the ticket prices. The 47-year-old put emphasis on the need to make the tickets affordable once again so that more families could watch him step on Reigns’ throat at WrestleMania.

What prompted this was an overall feeling from not just me or not just the boys, but hair and makeup, production, management, the crew. A lot of people were feeling a little bit disrespected and pissed off. So, I had a job to do in my mind. Um, I have to go out there and promote my WrestleMania match with Roman, who’s not in the building. It’s not an easy thing to do…

CM Punk via All the Smoke podcast

The World Heavyweight Champion recently joined the All the Smoke podcast. Show host and former NBA player Matt Barnes asked Punk what prompted that all-time promo. ‘The Second City Saint’ said it not only stemmed from him or the locker room feeling disrespected after McAfee ran down the entire company, but it also pissed off the other crew members in WWE.

Then be it those helping out the talent with their hair and make-up, those in the production truck, and also the people in management. Punk stated that he was supposed to promote his WrestleMania match with Roman Reigns, who wasn’t in the building that night, which made it even more tricky for the world champ to do his job.

The Chicagoan was focused on getting more people invested in his showdown with Reigns while also sticking up for the business. The aforementioned promo from CM Punk mirrored the backstage frustration stemming from WrestleMania having several thousand tickets remaining due to price gouging. He was not given a particular script to follow but had some bullet points to speak on.

CM Punk felt like WWE dangled the WrestleMania main event like a carrot in his first run

It almost sounds like a broken record at this point that CM Punk has dreamt of headlining WrestleMania since he was a little kid. He was kept from it during his first tenure with WWE, and that childhood dream of his didn’t come true until 2025. Now that he has had enough time to think back on it, Punk said in the aforementioned interview that making it so obvious what main-eventing WrestleMania would mean to him worked against him.

CM Punk
CM Punk [via- Cageside Seats]

‘The Cookie Master’ believes that it was dangled like a carrot because people in charge knew that Punk was chasing it and could be manipulated based on that. Punk stressed that he wouldn’t have bothered to go back to WWE if he had closed out WrestleMania beforehand. It would’ve then become a “been there, done that” experience for him.

And for him, it’s all about going through different kinds of experiences to be the absolute best version of himself, for which one needs to surround oneself with better people, or wrestlers, or someone that’s smarter, like a coach. ‘The Voice of the Voiceless’ affirmed that he’s always in pursuit of trying to become better every single day, and he needs to keep performing at the highest level to withstand that pressure.

At last, the former AEW champion said that he would’ve been less inclined to return to WWE if he had main-evented WrestleMania already. This Sunday in Las Vegas, CM Punk will defend his World Heavyweight title in his first singles WrestleMania main event match. ‘The OTC’ has vowed to fix the mess that Punk started two months ago after Reigns won the Royal Rumble match.

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