CM Punk was one of the original "Paul Heyman Guys" in WWE as he was brought in to OVW when Heyman was put in charge and then debuted on ECW.
Punk and Heyman would work closely off-screen, and bring their relationship to WWE when Punk won the WWE Championship in 2012.
Speaking on No Contest Wrestling with O’Shea Jackson Jr. and TJ Jefferson, Punk recalled his early days working with Heyman.
"I go down to OVW and boom, they put Paul Heyman there. At this point, I can't learn from Jim Cornette, excited I get to learn from Paul Heyman. I make friends with Danny Davis, who is equally a legend and has done everything. I dedicated myself to learning as much as I can in that window I thought I had until I get fired. That meant Heyman would fly into Lousiville at 9-10 p.m. on a Tuesday, I'd pick him up at the airport, we'd go right to the Davis Arena, and I'd either watch him just write TV and format it, and he did it like it as me making a cup of coffee. He's doing all this stuff and he slides it over to me, 'What do you think? What don't you understand?' I learned how to format a show, I learned how to time out a show, half second in and out for commercials. I learned all this stuff. 'What do you think of this idea? What would you do?' He starts asking me questions and next thing I know, that's on the television show. I'm like, 'Am I writing the television show?' The business being the way it was, I did not want anybody to find that out. That would have been more heat on me. We'd do TV on Wednesday night and all Wednesday night I'm in this little closet of a room with Danny Davis and Paul Heyman editing the show. I learned how to edit it. They're sitting and screaming at each other. These two old school dudes, just yelling at each other. I just tried to learn as much as I could. That was my first experience with Paul Heyman.
"I learned very fast, 'He's down here because other people don't like him either.' Me becoming a Paul Heyman guy was more of a Scarlett Letter than anything else. 'We don't like Punk. Heyman likes him? We hate him.' It was one of those things where I was kind of confused, but my attitude was, 'Me? No, you.' I was very much under the impression, and there is an alternate universe out there where this did happen, where I took all the knowledge I learned in that short amount of time, I got fired, and I went back to Ring of Honor."
Punk and Heyman were reunited on-screen in June 2024 as Heyman looked for Punk to help against the new Bloodline.
Elsewhere during the interview, Punk named his hypothetical bar fight team. You can find his answer by clicking here.
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