On the most recent “Wrestling With Freddie” podcast, actor/former WWE writer Freddie Prinze Jr. discussed CM Punk’s departure from AEW. Prinze had negative things to say about Punk and stated that his interactions with Punk in WWE were not pleasant.
Prinze said, “What can I say here? Okay. I’m friends with some of the people that he’s had an issue with, first and foremost, so I should get that out of the way so everyone goes, ‘Oh, Prinze is biased’. Yeah, I’m biased, but I will say this. When you keep doing the same thing over and over, and you keep blaming everyone else, and it’s the world’s fault, right, like that Alessia Cara song, ‘You don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart.’ The world ain’t going to change for you or for nobody and the world don’t owe you sh*t. It’s your responsibility as a human being to find out your place in this world and make the absolute most of it, but the world doesn’t owe you a damn thing, and a lot of people end up in a similar situation every single time because they keep behaving a certain way that turns people off. It’s really hard to piss people off. It’s really easy to make them feel good. At a certain point, I think you have to turn that finger towards yourself and say, ‘Okay, what is it about me? What am I doing wrong’, or you have to have someone, a therapist, a wife, a best friend, who calls you on your sh*t, who says, ‘Yo, man. This is the third time, the third time, the third time. How many more before you figure out that this might be more of a you problem and less of a them problem?'”
“I know there’s going to be a lot of our listeners who disagree with me, you know, I respect where you’re coming from. I get it. You love him and a lot of the young people you might think are soft and maybe you think he’s tough. I get it. I’m not trying to say you’re wrong. I’m just trying to let you know where I’m coming from based off my experience with him, like, he wasn’t a nice guy to me and it would have been easy to be nice to me, and instead he would just blow me off every time I walked by when I worked there, and I was never going to work with him because he didn’t need my help. So I was always like, why are you going out of your way to be a d*ck to me if you and I are never going to work together? Ever, ever.
“I hate to sound cold and brutal like that, but I’ve talked about the Federation that I want to start here. I’ve spoken to professional wrestlers and said, ‘Hey, man, would you be down to help me out if I’m doing this?’ I’m not joking. Every single wrestler that I reached out to but one said, ‘Anything you need. I would love to help you. Just don’t hire Phil’, and this is over 10. It’s over 10, okay, and only one didn’t say anything and I don’t know how they feel about the guy, but everybody else was like, ‘Don’t hire Punk. Please don’t hire Punk. Dude, I’ll help you out, but if you hire Punk, I’m out.’ Like, it was everybody and that has to be a mirror that causes you to go, ‘Yeah, dude, it’s time to change.’ At least that’s what I think, and again, if you disagree with me out there, I got nothing but love for you. I may not agree with your take, but I respect it. I know. Everybody loves him and he’s one of the best to ever do this wrestling thing.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
