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Arn Anderson on Whether CM Punk Deserved a Better Run With the WWE Title, If He Was Surprised to See Punk on Backstage

January 21, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
CM Punk Money in the Bank

– On a recent episode of his ARN podcast, Arn Anderson weighed in on CM Punk’s WWE run. Anderson was asked by Conrad Thompson if Punk deserved a better run with the WWE Championship and went on to talk about how Punk was able to get WWE to trust him enough to do the famous “Pipe Bomb” promo. He also talked about whether he was surprised that Punk made an unnanounced appearance on WWE Backstage back in November and more.

Highlights from the discussion and the video clip are below:

On if Punk deserved a better run with the WWE Championship: “Well, I think he had a pretty good run, myself. If you look at everyone, and every piece of talent in its entirety. And who was pushed properly, who was able to do what on television, and who made money, what was the length of their tenure as champion, who did they beat to become champion, what were the circumstances when they were no longer champion. I think he had a pretty fair run.”

On Punk’s “pipebomb” segments and comparisons to Steve Austin’s promos: “I know he was able to talk them into trusting him to do the pipe bomb promos, and those are the things people seem to remember and what really got him over.

“You know, there’s nothing like being able to look at your boss and telling him to ‘F off.’ And that’s what got Austin over and made him special and he was the first to ever do it. And boy did he do it with authority, and like everybody that had a boss that they hated got in Austin’s hip pocket. And then the fact that he was a tremendous performer [and] tremendous businessman, he had all the tools he could really go bell-to-bell. He could talk, he looked great. He had everything. It opened the door for later down the road, Punk did the same thing with The Authority. And you don’t have that happen very, very often. It was a rare time in the business, and it has sustained him in the wrestling fans’ eyes to this day.”

On if he was surprised to see Punk on WWE Backstage: “Yeah, in that fashion I would have thought just because I was groomed one way in the business: ‘If we don’t make it big, it’s not big.’ To walk him out as a surprise on a show that’s not over yet and doesn’t have a following yet is probably not like advertising him for three weeks, ‘Coming, coming, coming,’ and let everybody on the planet know that he’s coming. Seems like to me, the more logical way to re-introduce him to the business.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit ARN with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.