This past Saturday, CM Punk kicked off NXT Deadline alongside the brand's General Manager, Shawn Michaels. Proving that anything can happen in WWE, the Best in the World and Heartbreak Kid took a selfie together and had a fun back and forth the live audience ate up.
WWE Hall of Famer Booker T was obviously in the building and recently revealed what happened when he crossed paths with Punk backstage at the NXT PLE.
"CM Punk wasn't hiding. He wasn't hidden away in some room making a surprise appearance. He was running around, mingling. I ran into CM Punk in catering. He was sitting there talking with a couple of friends. I got me a little meal and sat down. Before I sat down, I walked up to CM Punk and I said, 'CM Punk! What up man?' He stands up and he goes, "What's up man, you flip flopper." I go, 'You know how the business is, sometimes you're a heel, sometimes you're a babyface but welcome home.'"
Adding that they exchanged some "small talk," Booker T went on to say the former AEW star "seemed to be at peace."
"He seems to be ready to rewrite the legacy of CM Punk and finish this thing off properly. How many times have I said it? At the end of the day, we all want to get a chance to finish this thing right and then thank the fans for that rise. He seemed like he was a great space. I can't say anything bad about him. I know people wish that I would say something bad about CM Punk. It ain't kissing ass or anything like that either. He seemed like he was in a calm space."
This is clearly a very different Punk and, even just visually, he looks far healthier than he did during his time in AEW. Mentally, it seems he's in a much better place and described him as the "regular CM Punk that I always knew."
Booker also seems confident that Punk is aware of exactly what WWE wants from him and how his dynamic with this company's wrestlers will be much different from those he clashed with in Tony Khan's promotion.
"When he said I'm not here to make friends, he's here to make business. But in this kind of business, you gotta have friends in order to do business. Because you're working with a lot of guys that you have to trust in the middle of that ring. You gotta care about the guys that you're working with, it's just that simple...I'm not saying that to CM Punk at all because he knows that. There's a reason why things didn't work out in AEW because a lot of those guys probably didnt care about each other."
A big part of why things went wrong for Punk in AEW is that other wrestlers - "Hangman" Adam Page and Jack Perry, for example - went into business for themselves. That doesn't happen in WWE and, based on everything we've heard, the Second City Saint has been welcomed backstage and any hard feeling have been put to one side.