Chuck Liddell On CM Punk’s Run In UFC, Thinks His Trainers ‘Did Him a Disservice’ and ‘Threw Him to the Wolves’

Former UFC light heavyweight champion recently had an interview with The Wrestling Inc. where he discussed a few things like how the MMA community views pro wrestling, CM Punk’s run in UFC, Punk not being ready to transition at that level, and much more.

Check out the highlights and watch the short video below.

Chuck Liddell on the MMA community’s view on wrestling:

Some like it and some don’t. It’s not real fights but the stuff they do is real. It’s crazy athletic and hard to do, but it’s not fighting. But it’s fun with all of the storylines. If you’re talking about guys who can cross over, if you can fight then we accept you. I think you run into problems when you get guys that come over… CM Punk got a lot of flak. But they put him against guys where they tried to get him a win. They put in another guy who should have never been in the UFC in there with him and he still got beat.”

Chuck Liddell on CM Punk’s run in UFC:

“I think his trainers did him a disservice. They said, ‘Aw man, you could be a fighter,’ and then they threw him to the wolves. If they built him up with some small shows and worked his way up, then maybe he would have been okay. But you can’t be a guy who’s not ready and throw him in. UFC is the cream of the crop. It is the top show out there.”

Chuck Liddell on CM Punk not being ready to transition at the UFC level:

“I’m not saying that, but he wasn’t trained enough. He hadn’t done enough and wasn’t good enough to fight at that level. Obviously, for promotion it was great. Brock Lesnar is one of the few guys who made that transition pretty easy. But he was a great wrestler to start with and he’s a big man.”

Chuck Liddell on the Cage Fighter movie with Jon Moxley:

“They sent me the script and I really liked it. I thought it was pretty good for the movies I get. But when I looked at it, I said, ‘Aw, I’m gonna have to call them back’ because they’re shooting a week after I have surgery on my knee. I thought I wasn’t gonna be able to do any of the fight scenes. But I wanted to talk to whoever wrote it because I wanted to help them with a few spots so things would run a little smoother. They were technical things that would bother a fighter as some of the technicalities were wrong, so I wanted to fix that. Then I found out they planned on having me be the coach, so I didn’t have to fight. So, we started talking about me doing the movie.”

“Jon Moxley was great. He’s very professional and great at what he did. He was an awesome guy to work with.”