In a recent interview with Renee Paquette as part of her Oral Sessions With Renee Paquette podcast, former WWE Champion CM Punk discussed several topics, including what it would take for him to join AEW or WWE and how things may have played out had AEW been around earlier than 2019.

“Well, I think the landscape is currently much different than when I left right, you could play the game where you’re like, oh if AEW was an option, you would have gone right after you left the WWE. If you’re going to play that game, there’s no way they would have handled it the way they handled it with suspending me for two months and nobody contacting me and then, the next thing I know, I get release papers on my wedding day.

That would not have happened if there was an AEW, because then they probably would have approached me and been like, hey your suspension is up, ready to come back to work, like let’s work this out, you know or handle it like any other sports organization would have handled their star pitcher f***ing going home. They’re not just going to let him leave the team, they’re not going to let him go to a rival organization, what would it take, oh gosh, without wanting to insult anybody on either side of the fence, any WWE talent, any AEW talent, it would take above all an interesting scenario, a story that would be fun to tell and also, just the stupidest amount of money, but they could save themselves a whole lot of money if they just presented a fun storyline.

Now, what that is, I don’t know, I’m a pretty picky guy, especially at this point. I think there’s more interesting people on the AEW side of things for me to wrestle, but that’s just because I’ve never wrestled them before. The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, talking about your husband, I look at that and I go, well I wrestled him already, so it’s just less interesting than something new and on the WWE side of things, I don’t know that there’s anybody there currently that I haven’t wrestled that I’d be interested in wrestling.”

The interview is available in full at this link.