The wait for the UFC debut of former WWE Champion CM Punk is going to have to take a little bit longer. According to ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, the man born Phil Brooks has been out of action for several weeks since “tweaking” his shoulder during a scramble in a training session. He’ll be seeing a doctor on October 14th (next Wednesday), and he could be cleared to return at that point.
Duke Roufus, Punk’s head coach, told Okamoto that “He got caught in a scramble, so right now he’s taking a little time off. He was doing great before that. His progress has been good. He’s got a great attitude and he’s a hard worker. He got a place in Milwaukee where he lives all week when he’s here training, so he’s in it to win it. Our biggest thing is we want him to 101 percent before [we resuming training]. We don’t have a hard date for his fight to force the issue, so making sure he’s completely healthy is possible.” He said Punk is at about 50 percent right now.
This will probably fuel the fire for skeptics who think he’ll never actually fight. While the whole process is being shot for a documentary, it’s all been pretty secretive. Punk has talked about doing “scrimmages” (essentially graduating from sparring to amateur fights but behind closed doors since he can’t have actual amateur fights right now), but that’s about it from his side. UFC did release a brief clip of him hitting pads, which welterweight fighter (and Conor McGregor teammate) Cathal Pendred promptly made fun of:
CM Punk on the pads making me look like Muhammad Ali ?? pic.twitter.com/o6HQ1PNkJA
— Cathal Pendred (@Pendred) August 11, 2015
One would think the goal is for Punk to debut at UFC 200 in July, but we shall see.
