UFC 203 Editorial: Get off your high horse, and get over CM Punk

So. CM Punk actually happened.

On September 10th, 2016, Phil Brooks, better known by his pro wrestling stage name CM Punk, stepped into the Octagon to face Mickey Gall, a charismatic young submission specialist with just two wins to his name.

Many in the MMA hadn’t expected him to make it, seeing his foray into MMA as little more than a wealthy, retired entertainer indulging a private fantasy. They weren’t really wrong about that last part, but Punk had shown up, surviving two life-altering injuries and a year-and-a-half of training since he was first signed by the UFC. Now, at UFC 203, Punk was ready to prove his place among the professional fighters.

As it turns out, that place happens to be right at the bottom. Gall took Punk down as he marched to center cage to throw his very first punch. The aging “wrestler”–whose nonexistent martial arts background included no actual wrestling–managed to defend for about two minutes before Gall’s forearm snaked its way beneath his chin and forced him to tap.

Afterward, Punk took the mic and thanked the fans for coming out to watch him fulfill a dream, saying that he considered himself a winner despite the result. “In life you go big or you go home,” he told the Cleveland crowd. They buzzed, having booed him before the fight but now sitting on the verge of applause. As seasoned on the mic as he was unseasoned on the mat, Punk tipped them over with a little paraphrased Balboa: “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.”

Some things happened then. Gears began turning in the heads of the MMA literati. They had scorned Punk’s signing, you see, mocked his technique, and wished daily for his humiliation. Now that Punk had accepted his defeat and shaped it into some sort of moral victory, what were they supposed to do?

It was like that all-important moment when a “yo mama” joke goes awry. Because the dicey thing about mom jokes, you know, is that not everyone has a mom. There is always a chance, however slim, that the kid whose mother you just accused of having her own ZIP code will turn around and tell you that his mother is dead. And then you have two options. You can apologize, and risk falling victim to a lie, or you can call bullshit, and press on with the maternal assault.

Some portion of the MMA world saw CM Punk lose, heard him extoll the virtues of hard work and risk-taking, and decided for option two. “Good. I’m glad she’s dead.”

EARNING IT

The main complaints of Punk’s biggest critics were twofold. On the one hand, he hadn’t done a damn thing to earn that UFC contract in the first place. He jumped to the head of the line, banked on his name, and expected a little over a year of training (which rumors suggest was inconsistent at best) to carry him.

And on the other hand, Punk’s MMA venture wasn’t so brave after all, because he had been paid a tidy sum of $500,000 to fight, not including the pay-per-view points that were doubtless included in his contract. So was he really going big and shooting for the stars, or was he accepting an easy paycheck?

I say it’s probably a bit of both, but then I’m not determined to make Phil Brooks look like an a——. Either way, every one of these criticisms kind of misses the point. I mean, I get it: Brooks was gifted this shot; he didn’t need to make his debut on the biggest stage in mixed martial arts. He’s a millionaire; he didn’t earn it. Blah, blah, blah.

You know who else didn’t earn their shot at a UFC career? Mickey Gall. Seriously, when is the last time a fighter made his UFC debut on the back of a single win over an opponent with no professional victories? By the standards of UFC matchmaking, Mickey Gall is the bottom of the barrel. Sure, he’s talented, and he has some skills, and he trains out of a good-enough gym. But the last guy to get a UFC contract with only one win under his belt was Brock Lesnar, and he was signed for the same supposedly suspect reasons as CM Punk.

Thanks to CM Punk, we now know about Mickey Gall. The kid has a knack for s—-talking, he’s already working on what sounds like a very fun fight with fellow prospect and Disney star Sage Northcutt, and he’s pretty good, all things considered.

As for Punk himself, what is he supposed to do to “earn” a shot in the UFC, anyway? The guy is 37. He suffered two terrible injuries during his extended training camp (seriously, most people are never the same after a torn shoulder or herniated disc). His wrestling career had already (allegedly) granted him a wealth of other ailments, besides, including a cystic staph infection, a concussion, and several broken ribs.

EYEBALLS

So Punk wasn’t happy with his wrestling career, and wanted to try fighting for real. Punk had no real experience with the noble art of human cockfighting, and I guess if you’re the pearl-clutching type that makes his presence in the Octagon a downright sacrilege. True Irishmen–fighters, sorry–earn their places in the UFC through years of training and fights on the regional circuit. Letting Punk into the cage is a bonafide insult to the legions of more-deserving fighters who would have gladly taken his place!

Well, thanks to CM Punk, 700,000 people watched Stipe Miocic become just the eighth of 19 UFC heavyweight champions to actually defend the belt. Thanks to CM Punk, 700,000 people watched Jimmie Rivera outclass Urijah Faber, becoming the first man to beat The California Kid in a three-round, non-title bout. 700,000 people watched Jessica Andrade put on the best performance of her career and establish herself as a serious strawweight contender. Thanks to CM Punk.

Fighting is not like other sports. There is no MMA season, and fighters perform infrequently. To gain traction, they need to be memorable. They can do that the hard way: putting on exciting fights; or they can do it the other hard way: being an interesting person. If either were simple, everyone would do it. “Oh, this wouldn’t happen in the NFL.” Good. Football sucks.

CM Punk essentially doubled the buyrate that this event would have garnered without him, shedding all this beautiful light on the “real” fighters, the ones we claim to love and admire . . . and all we can do is bicker about whether he had the right to do so. Maybe when we’re done we can talk about how much better our favorite bands were before they started selling all those albums and booking all those shows. Cool. Rad.

RISK/REWARD

Then there’s the matter of Punk’s paycheck. If we can’t complain that he didn’t deserve to be in the UFC, and we can’t tear down his performance (because even he knows it was awful), then we have to attack his motives. Right?

The $500,000 Punk made for this fight (again, that’s not counting the undisclosed pay-per-view money he almost certainly made on the side) was the second highest paycheck on the card, topped only by Alistair Overeem’s 800 grand. Surely, people reason, that is enough money to convince anyone to fight in the UFC, and if that’s true then there’s nothing brave about it. Aha! Got you, CM Punk!

I would point out that “anyone would do the same in his position” is a pretty airtight defense of Punk’s actions, but that ain’t the truth. The truth is, there are plenty of people who would have backed out the moment they wrapped their first week of sparring sessions. Because fighting is hard, even when you don’t do it well. Especially when you don’t do it well.

Sure, most people would agree to the deal in the first place, but hard work has a way of winnowing out the fakers, particularly when a good portion of that hard work involves literally submitting to the fact that others are much, much better than you.

Remember when you got your first hourly job? If you were anything like me, you spent the first few weeks picking up hours like crazy. You wanted all the hours you could get, because hours meant money, and money meant freedom. You couldn’t comprehend why all the other, older employees were giving up their shifts, but you were happy to be there to take them. After a few short months, however, you found yourself desperately calling down that list of coworkers, looking for someone, anyone to take your Saturday shift so you could actually do something with the money you were earning. You got this job for the money, but suddenly the work didn’t seem worth it.

The consequences of that hourly job were small. A few missed hours of relaxation with friends, a few extra hours of boredom. Maybe an early morning here and there when you’d rather just sleep in. For eight bucks an hour, you could really do a lot worse.

Granted, CM Punk’s reward is a lot bigger than your summer job paychecks, but the consequences are much, much worse. The injuries and the pain of training have been mentioned, but how about humiliation? How about learning just how far you have left to go in every single training session, and then having that feeling reinforced tenfold in the actual fight, with thousands of screaming fans hammering the point home?

Ask yourself, honestly: would you go through all of that for money? Some of you will say yes, and doubtless some of you are telling the truth. But I’m willing to bet there are some of you who think you’d be ripped if only you could afford a personal trainer, too. The truth is, CM Punk didn’t have to fight in the UFC. He doesn’t need the money, and there are certainly easier ways he could have sold the image he spent years building in the WWE. But he wanted to fight. He chose the hard rode. And yeah, he took a few taxis along the way, and maybe he even sneered at a few of the real fighters as he passed. But in the end, when staying clean was always an option, he still wound up in the mud.

I get it. As a hardcore fight fan, CM Punk is not what you expect to see when you tune into the UFC. You think he isn’t good enough to compete with the rest of the roster, and you’re right. I mean, they brought in a novice to compete with him–a relatively talented and charismatic one, to be fair, but a novice all the same–and Punk didn’t look remotely competitive. He sucked.

But seriously, a bunch of people just watched your favorite fighters compete purely because the UFC decided to give CM Punk a shot. A young and promising fighter jumpstarted his MMA career, purely because of CM Punk. A guy got to give MMA a halfhearted shot before it was too late, and he got paid to do it.

What’s so bad about that?