Tomorrow night, CM Punk will compete on WWE programming for the first time in a decade when he competes in the 2024 men’s Royal Rumble match. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the 2014 Royal Rumble which also served as Punk’s final broadcasted WWE match before his sudden exit from the company and subsequent retirement from professional wrestling altogether for the next seven years.
Ahead of his long-awaited in-ring return at the Premium Live Event, Punk was the focus of a Royal Rumble vlog uploaded to WWE’s YouTube channel earlier today. Interspersed with footage of Punk speaking to the likes of Bayley, The Miz, and Dakota Kai backstage at Raw this past Monday, Punk noted that headlining WrestleMania was one of the reasons he returned to the company and that competing in the show’s main event has been a long-time childhood dream of his.
“The number one on the list is the same as it ever was. It’s been the same thing since I was, I don’t know, eight, nine, Ten? Certainly 15, certainly when I laced up a pair of boots for the first time, it’s to main event WrestleMania,” Punk admitted. “That’s always been the goal.”
Punk went on to discuss the reason why he’s so determined to main event a WrestleMania, noting that he wants to follow in the footsteps of headliners he idolized when he was young like Bret Hart, similar to other children wanting to emulate their heroes from across the sporting world.
“I watched guys like Bret Hart do it multiple times. So to me, as a kid growing up, I’m no different than a kid that watched Wayne Gretzky skate and wanted to put on a pair of skates. I’m no different than somebody who watched Michael Jordan and was like, ‘I love basketball.’ I want to follow in his footsteps, I’m just walking the path that the great legends before me helped pave and I want to accomplish the same things that they did. I want to breathe that air that they breathe at the highest mountaintop.”
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