CM Punk wasn't exactly a fan of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson when he returned to WWE in 2013 and took his WWE Championship so he could main event WrestleMania with John Cena.
At the time, the Second City Saint was working at least 300 days a year as a full-time pro wrestler. Johnson, meanwhile, was making sporadic appearances booked around his busy Hollywood schedule.
The Rock has once again returned to WWE and looks to be inserting himself into WrestleMania again by attempting to acquire Cody Rhodes' "soul."
At Elimination Chamber this evening, Punk competes inside the Chamber to earn a shot at the American Nightmare's Undisputed WWE Championship. Rhodes, meanwhile, will give the Final Boss his answer.
Talking to Mail Online, Punk shared his take on how The Rock could impact WrestleMania...and it seems he's had a bit of a change of heart when it comes to Dwayne.
"I’m sure it will. I’m sure it’s gonna trickle down and affect everybody. I think one of the difficult parts of this being so big and there’s so many moving parts, and you’re seeing it with [John] Cena now. Definitely, I have a different perspective now than I did ten years ago, when I was working with The Rock. It was easy for everybody to say, ‘You’re not here. We’re grinding, we’re doing this.’"
"The schedule now is so much limited than it was ten years ago. I can’t point a finger at somebody else now and say, ‘Well, you’re not here.’ Plus, a guy like John Cena, to me, he’s a busy dude. He’s earned that right. He’s stated that he’s retiring. This is going to be his final run. So I’m less inclined to say, ‘You should be here doing this, doing that.’ Sometimes, the tickets sell themselves when we’re in these international markets, and you hear ‘John Cena retirement tour,’ that’s gonna put butts in seats."
"John Cena doesn’t necessarily need to show up every week. He’s busy filming a movie, and I understand that. But there’s a flip side to that coin where there is still a locker room full of pro wrestlers, and they will get a chip on their shoulder, and there will be resentment because there are people that feel, ‘Oh, I’m here every week. I’m doing this, I’m doing this.’ But really at the end of the day, I think everybody just wants to rise to that level, and along the way, yeah, we’re gonna poke, we’re gonna prod. We’re gonna say, ‘Hey, Rock. You showed up here. How come you’re not here? Why aren’t you doing this?’"
"I think the fans do that too. I think they enjoy it when they see us do it, too. There’s no denying what a giant box office star The Rock is. I think peeling back a little bit and him being ‘Final Boss’ instead of being happy-go-lucky Rock, I think that is a character that can say, ‘Yeah, I’m not here all the time. Yeah, so what? I’ll show up for eight minutes every six months, and it’ll still be the biggest.’ I think there’s freedom, and there’s an air to play with that a little bit, and it makes it better and more real and more exciting for everybody. But yeah, piss off for not being here every week, guys. Come on [Laughs]."
You can see the latest development in The Rock's bizarre feud with Rhodes in the X posts below.