We are exactly three weeks removed from the conclusion of CM Punk’s MMA story. And in the end, the good guy died a tragic death. CM Punk knows what it’s like to be the bad guy. During his WWE career, Punk had been successful as a babyface and a heel, even serving as both during his 434-day world championship reign, where he began the reign as a good guy and then grew pipe hot when he went heel in the middle of it. In the UFC, CM Punk said and did all the right things to be considered a babyface from the moment he was signed. And immediately after suffering his first loss to Mickey Gall, Punk cut the ultimate face promo with an uplifting message to people about failure and perseverance:
“I know there’s a lot of doubters, but, listen, life’s about falling down and getting up. It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it’s about getting back up. So if there’s any kid out there that’s told by a parent, or a coach, or a teacher, or somebody that they look up to, somebody that’s supposed to push them and believe in them and they’re told no, don’t listen to them. Believe in yourself. Sometimes the outcome isn’t always what you desire it to be, but the true failure in life is not trying at all.”
And even leading into his UFC 225 bout against Mike Jackson when faced with criticism for the fight being placed on the main card, Punk’s humility continued, stating that he would be fine if the fight was placed on Fight Pass. All he wanted to do was follow through on his words in the Octagon with Joe Rogan after his first loss and try again. But even though Punk was the good guy in the UFC, that doesn’t mean he was cheered on by the majority of the fans. Ironically, this happens often in the wrestling business, when the fans refuse to accept a babyface no matter what he does or what he says. So even though Punk was doing all the right things: training his tail off for four years, being open to fighting whomever put in front of him, etc; and even though he said all the right things, there were many fans who refused to be won over by Punk or his charm because he was an outsider…an unworthy one at that. But now that the experiment is over and CM Punk went 0-2 in devastating fashion, CM Punk should be remembered as a good guy by everyone, even the most hardened MMA purist because, paradoxically, his UFC tenure helped showcase how legitimate of a sport MMA has become.
There seemed to be two groups within the camp that was anti-Punk as far as expectations for his UFC tenure: either he was going to fall flat on his face and learn the hard way what it means to be in a real fight, or that the results of his two fights didn’t matter because he didn’t deserve the opportunity in the first place. Regardless of which of these groups one subscribes to, CM Punk has presented his fans and his haters the largest profile example of how legitimate a sport MMA is. Now, I know many people will say that they knew CM Punk would lose both times and badly. That may be, but the data shows that, generally speaking, the public did not know how CM Punk would perform. Take that in for a moment. A fighter who was 0-1 and then 0-2 was still given a chance to win in the premiere MMA organization in the world. Let us not forget that coming into the Mickey Gall fight, Punk only opened as a +250 underdog which was bumped up to +345. A healthy underdog to be sure, but not of monstrous proportions. In fact, Punk was not even the biggest underdog of the card. And at UFC 225, though admittedly in large part due to a lack of respect for his opponent, Punk was only a small underdog for the fight, closing at +165. So in both fights, Punk was given a chance to win. That fact alone brings question to how legitimate or difficult the sport was viewed as being by bookies and by betters.
What those numbers show is that a large portion of the public believed if you take a guy off the street who has any semblance of an athletic background and put him in a top camp for a long stretch of training, who knows? He might have a shot. To put that in perspective, consider if that same thought would be employed in tennis or the NBA. If you take a guy off the street and give him the best tennis coach in the world and in a few years have him play even the lowest ranked man in the ATP rankings, I believe he’d be a much bigger underdog than +345. Likely going deep into the four-figure range. Or if you take a guy with no prior basketball experience and give him Greg Popovich as his coach for a few years, and you put him against even the biggest bench warmer in the NBA in a game of one-on-one (at the same height/position), again, I think we’re looking at more than +345. The same logic can be applied to the PGA tour or any sport where there is a league that claims to have only the best competing.
So apparently, the public was not completely swayed at how legitimate a sport MMA really is. After all, fighting is primal, right? Anybody has a puncher’s chance at the end of the day, right? Sure, but Punk’s two UFC outings demonstrate just how unlikely it is that this would happen more so than James Toney and Kimbo Slice before him, but in Toney’s case, he did not take the sport seriously at all, and his lack of effort and age played a factor in the result. And as for Kimbo, he did not come in with a following quite as large, and more importantly, he actually owns a UFC victory and went on to have some success in his MMA career with a 5-2 record, even though he began as simply a street fighter. But with Punk, he was the proverbial guy off the street….a main street with a bustling audience, but a street nonetheless. And nine years after the Kimbo Slice experiment and 20-plus years after the caveman days of the UFC, when the sport was flooded with many untrained fighters, CM Punk has just provided for the entire world an example of how far the sport has come for all the casual fans (and even some hardcores) who now have this litmus test at their disposal to demonstrate that the UFC is on par with any other professional sport in terms of legitimacy and difficulty for the guy off the street to excel at.
So even if you’re a Punk hater, you have to acknowledge that the more legitimate the sport appears, the better it is for its future. So yes, CM Punk of all people, though involuntarily and near literally kicking and screaming the entire time, helped demonstrate the sport’s legitimacy. And for that, CM Punk becomes the MMA version of the pre-2016 Chicago Cubs he fervently roots for: the loveable loser for both his supporters and detractors.
