Samoa Joe Comments On CM Punk Joining AEW

Of all the shocking and surprising moments in wrestling in 2021, the highlight is arguably the return of CM Punk since 2014.

Over the years, Punk has been in the ring with some of the greatest wrestlers of all time, but the journey started with a trilogy of matches with Samoa Joe in ROH. On the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show, Joe joined the show and talked about Punk's return to wrestling, and why it didn't come as a surprise to him.

"If I know one thing about Punk- if he's out on something, he's out on it," Joe said. "You won't see him being around it, you won't see him looking at it, you won't see him staring at it. It's out of his life. I think the minute I saw him on the FOX set, I knew his eyes were turning back towards it, and I think he was just looking for the right place and right time. He wanted to be happy with it, and I think he is from what I've seen. I've gathered that he is and I'm stoked for him, happy that he's back."

As a guest on The Wrap, CM Punk talked about how he's felt "like trash" since returning to professional wrestling. Since his return, Punk has wrestled Darby Allin, Powerhouse Hobbs, Daniel Garcia and most recently, Matt Sydal.

Joe also went back and spoke about the matches he had with Punk in ROH and how much those matches meant to his career. The Samoan Submission Machine mentioned how he and Punk would come up with ideas for the matches together, and how that trilogy introduced him to a different side of professional wrestling.

"Tremendously important," Joe said. "From a lot of reasons, both from a career standpoint and from a business standpoint. It was an opportunity to explore bounds that personally I had never really explored before, doing the longer format matches, doing the 60-minute matches. It was a great creative effort any time you're in there with Punk. He's a tremendous creative mind, great collaboratively, going back and forth was always easy to come up with something great with him. It was a special time and it's something that I really enjoy. I definitely do highlight as a very important point in my career."

Being someone who wrestled both Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar, Joe spoke about what the key differences are between both wrestling legends. Joe compared Angle and Lesnar to predators, and what it was like to face both in his career.

"I liken Kurt and Brock as Kurt is an efficient cougar, an efficient panther," Joe said. "Quick kill, real slick. I've been around a few world class wrestlers in my time, and Kurt still has that nice drop toe hold that comes out of nowhere real fast and real quick. Then with Brock, Brock is just a rampaging bull. He's the juggernaut, he runs straight through things. What he can't out technique, he will out power. And that's the best way to describe the differences between Kurt and Brock. You're dealing with predators, just a slightly different species."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Kurt Angle Show with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.