“You go BIG or you go home” – @CMPunk #UFC203 https://t.co/H4LEnkXwmI
โ #UFC203 (@ufc) September 11, 2016
He trained hard. He fought hard. He lost quick.
CM Punk suffered a defeat by submission tonight in his debut UFC fight against Mickey Gall. Following his transition from the WWE to the octagon, fans have been eager to see how he would perform. Some would say they were disappointed.
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Coming from WWE, many questioned whether Punk possessed the skills necessary for success. Others have outright criticized him, pointing to his age of 37 as being well past his prime.
But even though Punk lost tonight, his coach, Duke Roufus, is already thinking of the future.
“If it were anyone else I wouldn’t have [coached them],” said Roufus. “It’s my friendship with Punk that had me do this. I wouldn’t do it with most guys [coming over from pro wrestling]. It’s been awesome, and I have no regrets at all. It’s been an incredible journey, and it’s not just a one-fight thing. He has a multi-fight contract with the UFC and this is his new profession.”
Punk has some hard training ahead of him if he hopes to win his next bout, which means he’ll have to put his other passions on the back burner. He’s a huge fan of comics, and has even written his own.
“The experience on Drax was awesome,” Punk told Comicbook.com before the fight. “It was kind of a crash course in writing comic books for me; dealing with writers, with artists, with editors and stuff like that, and I would always groan, ‘I gotta write my pages,’ but now I miss it.
Punk went into the octagon with the attitude that it was “clobberin’ time,” but for this fight, it was him that got clobbered.