Well, it happened.
Despite the expectation being that CM Punk was not at AllState Arena and wouldn’t be appearing at WWE Survivor Series 2023 on Saturday night, he showed up.
As noted, “The Best in the World” emerged after the Men’s WarGames main event at the end of the show, coming out to Cult of Personality to an enormous pop, with the broadcast ending as he smirked at the winning team of Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Jey Uso and Sami Zayn in the ring.
Fightful Select is reporting that Punk and Paul “Triple H” Levesque had at least one hour-long conversation earlier this week ahead of his surprise return in his hometown on Saturday night.
WWE staff, representatives and the creative team reportedly had no idea that CM Punk would be appearing at the end of the show.
Punk was reportedly kept from the building all night long and only turned up in plain sight in the back just minutes before he walked through Gorilla Position and made his way out of the entrance area for the big surprise return.
The company apparently cleared out a special area for Punk to keep his return a surprise at all costs up until the last possible minute.
According to the report, Triple H took over calling the show for the last couple of minutes and even called for the WWE copyright logo to appear to give the impression that the show was over. Many involved in production of the show weren’t aware of it either.
We will keep you posted as updates regarding CM Punk’s WWE return continue to surface.
