CM Punk Talks About Working With People He Doesn’t Like In WWE, How He Doesn’t Pitch Ideas Any Longer

CM Punk appeared as a guest on ESPN Pardon My Take on Wednesday to promote his match alongside AJ Lee against Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch at WWE WrestlePalooza on ESPN this Saturday, September 20, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, IN.

During the discussion, “The Best in the World” spoke about not having to like everyone you work with as long as you’re working with professionals, as well as how he no longer really pitches creative ideas for himself behind-the-scenes.

Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts. Also below is a complete video archive of the September 17 episode.

On how he doesn’t really pitch ideas for himself anymore: “I think there’s a little bit of magic that can happen, because, to me, there’s a lot of great minds that I work with. There’s a lot of people who have more experience than me, and maybe back in the day I would say, ‘No, I know what to do.’ Now I’m more — I guess I’m just kind of chill now. Whereas before it was more rebellious. And now, to me there’s a magic about maybe taking something that you didn’t see or you didn’t think of — somebody else’s idea — and going, ‘Oh, you know what, yeah, okay, I can do that with this. And, hey, what if we did this?’ I don’t really pitch things, and I’ve taken a page out of Cena’s book — they deal ’em, I play ’em. I have ideas and I have suggestions, and more often times now it’s for other people, not for me. And I just kind of roll with it.”

On not having to like who you’re working with as long as you’re working with a professional: “I’m not going out to dinner with anybody. That’s the magic of our business, too. If you’re a true professional, you don’t have to even remotely like the guy you work with. The business is built on trust. If somebody is going to try and double-cross me, that’s a whole different problem, but I work with professionals who aren’t going to do that because I think they do realize, if they do that, there’s going to be some sort of a problem. I’m not going out to dinner with these guys. Some of them don’t like me. Some of them, I don’t care for. That’s the magic and the line we get to weave in and out.”

(H/T to F4WOnline and Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)