5 Reasons CM Punk Won’t Succeed in UFC
By Tim Sherry
WWE.com
5. Age, Wear, and Tear
Sorry to break to this everyone, but MMA, like many other sports, is a young man’s game. There’s obviously some exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between. Punk is 37, and with about 15 years of professional wrestling under his belt, an old 37. There’s no mystery about the toll that pro wrestling puts on a person’s body. There aren’t many retired wrestlers who are walking around completely healthy and Punk is, and will be no different. Going from one ring that tears your body apart to another that does the same is not exactly a recipe for success.
Take Ken Shamrock for example. Shamrock started off his MMA career with massive success that spanned three years. He won MMA tournaments of all over the globe in the UFC, Pride, and Pancrase while establishing himself as one of the best fighters in the world. But before Shamrock was ever a professional fighter, he was a professional wrestler, dabbling in some independent promotions from 1989 until 1993. In those four years, Ken wrestled in only 52 matches (cagematch.net).
Then in 1997 Shamrock was signed to the then WWF and over the course of the next 2 and a half years wrestled in over 400 pro wrestling matches. Late in 1999, Shamrock decided to leave pro wrestling and resume his mixed martial arts career. Then at 36, and with close to 500 matches on his body, Shamrock was completely ineffective back inside the cage. Simply put, the game had passed him by and although extremely physically fit, he could not hang with the new crop of fighters that had emerged. Look at the stats. Shamrock’s pre-WWF record was 23-5-2. His post-WWF record, 5-12.
Punk has wrestled in three times the amount of matches that Shamrock ever did. Had he began this journey about 10 years and a thousand matches or so ago, his chances would be much better.
Next: No. 4