CM Punk recently shared his perspective on the modern wrestling audience and the cycle of online criticism. Speaking to My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox, the current World Heavyweight Champion addressed the trend of fans becoming irate when their personal expectations for a show are not met. Punk suggested that the level of anger stemming from unfulfilled “fantasy booking” has reached an extreme point.
“People just seem to want to be angry about everything because it didn’t happen the way they fantasy booked it in their head,” Punk said. “To me, that’s a slight mental illness. Like, ‘Hey, I bought tickets to go to this wrestling show, and then I look on Twitter and wrestling journalist 345678910 reports that there’s going to be a big surprise guest. I go to this show and there’s no big surprise guest, and I spend an unhealthy amount of time complaining about that online.’ And it’s just like, well, you weren’t promised a big surprise guest. Somebody that probably knows less about what they’re talking about than you do and is just a fan, just like you, made some sh*t up on the internet and passed it off as a journalism. And you’re getting mad at that.”
Punk’s comments come immediately after an instance of fan disappointment involving Chris Jericho. During the January 5, 2026, episode of Raw in Brooklyn, New York, the Barclays Center crowd frequently chanted “Y2J” following a tease from Raw General Manager Adam Pearce. In his official show preview, Pearce asked which competitors would “break the walls down,” a clear reference to Jericho, whose AEW contract reportedly expired at the end of 2025. Despite the chants and the tease, Jericho did not appear as he was reportedly in Los Angeles at the time.
The absence of Jericho has left his current employment status murky. While Jericho remains listed on the AEW roster page, he has not appeared for the promotion since April 2025. Some reports indicate that the Adam Pearce tease was a promotional tactic to drive ticket sales, which resulted in a distributed attendance of over 13,000 fans at the Barclays Center. While Jericho was not part of the creative plans for the Brooklyn show, he is heavily rumored for a potential appearance at the upcoming Royal Rumble Premium Live Event.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit My Mom’s Basement with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. You can watch the full interview with CM Punk and Robbie Fox on the My Mom’s Basement YouTube channel or official podcast networks.
