Kevin Nash On Why A Match With CM Punk Never Happened
Kevin Nash's return to the WWE in 2011 seemingly had him poised for a feud with CM Punk, but the two never ended up facing each other in the ring. In a recent episode of the X-Pac 12360 podcast, Nash finally opened up about why that match never came to fruition.
Nash had appeared at SummerSlam in 2011 and attacked Punk, which led to Alberto Del Rio cashing in his Money In The Bank briefcase and winning the WWE Championship. Punk then cut a scathing promo on Nash the next night on RAW, making fun of his age. Nash said it rubbed him the wrong way.
"I don't know if Punk wanted [the match] to happen. To me, when I came back, I never had been there when I was handed a script where here was my script and I had to follow it," Nash said. "I'm reading the script and in the script he is burying me and I have no rebuttal, and you know, Paul [Triple H] is one of my best friends on earth, and anything that you do, like the old Kevin Nash would say–because in my mind, when I read that, and if you remember the scenario, the scenario was that I came down and stuck Punk and Del Rio came down and took the Money in the Bank and took his belt, so he comes out the next Monday and cuts this promo, laugh out loud that he heard I was dead, click, click, click your knees. Then I thought to myself, let me get this straight, I cost you the title, and you are going to do stand-up comedy and bury me because I'm old?"
Nash eventually wound up in a feud with Triple H, culminating in a ladder match at TLC 2011. Nash said he was irked by Punk's attitude toward the nature of the promo. Punk seemed to be nonchalant about using personal insults because he thought Nash should be used to things like that after being in the business for so long. Nash was so incensed that he reached the point of wanting to physically attack Punk, but he knew he had to toe the line.
"First thing in my mind was, because he told me that this isn't 1997 anymore and I'm the guy that called Eddie Guerrero a Vanilla Midget; and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, number one thank God it's not 1997 because if it was 1997 right now you would be out with the marks in the crowd and not standing here because we didn't allow the marks to wrestle back then," Nash said. "Number two, I am old, so you have two options; either you go in the back—I'll give you three, you go in the back and call it a day, second, you wait for me to get up there and apologize to me, or third, off script let's see what you got. I would have loved to have seen what he would have done if I just went up and bear clawed him right to the face; but Paul was the boss."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit X-Pack 12360 with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: X-Pac 12360
Peter Bahi and Jimmy F. contributed to this article.