It’s been 16 months since former WWE Champion CM Punk announced that he’d signed with the UFC, and while no fight date against eventual opponent Mickey Gall has been set, we do have an update on his recovery from surgery.
Punk talked to Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour, and gave an update on his injury, and specified what it was.
“As far as back surgery goes, I don’t think it was the most serious thing, but it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. I basically had a herniated disc…and it was pushing on a nerve,” Punk said.
Punk said that he’s had the injury for a long time and has done cryotherapy, massage, inversion, chiropractors and wasn’t able to alleviate the pressure from the long-term injury. He also said that his wife, former WWE Diva AJ Lee, was shown a picture of his herniation and almost vomited. Punk stated that he felt terrible facing off with Mickey Gall knowing he was hurt.
“I felt like s–t about it. I wanted to tell everybody, but it was also a case of let’s just see where this goes and see what happens. I got the MRI Friday night and I was literally diagnosed Saturday, right before I walked out to watch Mickey and Michael Jackson fight,” Punk said.
Punk said that he isn’t cleared yet, and he’s not putting a date in stone for his return. He doesn’t want to push himself because a back injury is a big one for a fighter.
“I’ve learned from my past mistakes and I’m not going to say a date that everyone’s going to get married to, and then I’m going to have to hear about how I’m never going to fight. I’m going to fight. It’s going to be this year. And like I said, I see the doc tomorrow, and I’m going to talk with him about all kinds of other extracurricular things I can do to probably speed this along. See if I can start doing acupuncture again, things like that. In my mind, that card at MSG (possibly in November) would be a nice second fight, but I don’t know how realistic that is, because again, I don’t want to say things that people are going to be taking to heart,” said Punk.
