Ahead of WrestleMania II, Jesse “The Body” Ventura infamously made an attempt to unionize the WWF locker room. The flamboyant and jacked Superstar saw the money that Vince McMahon was beginning to make and felt that the talent deserved their fair share. While the message seemed to have resonated with the talent, it did not with McMahon, who threatened to fire Ventura if he ever did something like it again. In the wake of that failure, talks of a pro wrestlers union have fallen largely silent, with exceptions like the buzz Zelina Vega created after her initial WWE termination. One man who has often spoken out about the treatment of pro wrestlers by their employers is CM Punk.
In an interview with 670 The Score, Punk was asked what he thought the ideal circumstances would be for pro wrestlers to unionize.
“Man, how much time we got?” he laughed. “You bring up this question, and I’m a SAG union member, and we’re currently on strike, and our representatives are sitting down across the table from CEOs, currently. Like, as we speak, trying to hash out this strike that we got going on, and I would love nothing more to go back to work, but I’m also somebody that, I guess it’s easy for me to say, you know, ‘Hey, give us this, give us that, pay us fairly, we need a fair deal.’
“I’m more worried about the people who work in film, like grips and assistant ADs, and people who haven’t been able to supplement their income in any other way. For professional wrestling? Yeah, wrestlers should 100% have a union. And I’ll always say this, and I mean it in the most loving way: wrestlers will never unionize because wrestlers are stupid and selfish.
“It’s just the way it is. There’s always going to be somebody else around the corner who wants what you have or possibly just doesn’t want you to have what you have, and they will do whatever a promoter wants you to do for less money. And that’s unfortunate; the boys never stick together.”
Punk was then pressed about whether he thought the lack of a pro wrestlers union was truly due to the talents themselves sabotaging one another or if it was because of carrots that promoters were dangling in front of their faces to persuade them not to.
“I think it’s a lack of places to work, and it’s like a wage gap disparity thing. It’s like a class war. When your boss is a billionaire, and you don’t want to rock the boat, so to speak. And this isn’t just in wrestling; I think this can be applied to anything. More oftentimes than not, people will just want to keep their heads down, not get in trouble, and just kind of go about their day.
“For better or worse, a lot of people have mouths to feed. There are people with kids, there are people with families, they’re taking care of other people, and they can’t afford to lose their jobs. Fortunately for me, I’ve never been that guy. I’m always just kind of like, ‘Yeah, I don’t need I don’t need the money. So, this is wrong.’ And I get to tell people it’s wrong. I don’t think the platform that I have is worth anything if I don’t speak from the heart about issues that I feel are important.”
He concluded by saying, “People have to stick together, and wrestlers, wrestlers are just never ever going to stick together.”
If you use any quotes from this article, please give a h/t to Haus of Wrestling and credit 670 The Score