CM Punk and Kevin Owens have a history that goes way beyond their current WWE feud, and one of the biggest stories from their past has been floating around wrestling circles for years. The basic version was that the two nearly came to blows backstage in Ring of Honor. Owens later explained that\u2019s not what happened.<\/p>\n
In a July 2014 interview with Title Match Wrestling<\/a>, Owens \u2014 then known as Kevin Steen \u2014 said the whole thing started over his wrestling gear. He preferred working in a t-shirt because he felt more comfortable and more like himself, but at the time he had been asked to wrestle in just a singlet.<\/p>\n \u201cI just felt like the singlet wasn\u2019t me. Some people might disagree strongly, but that\u2019s fine. I just find the t-shirt looks better.\u201d<\/p>\n After a few months, Owens asked if he could go back to wrestling in the shirt. He said he wasn\u2019t trying to hide anything or make a statement. He simply felt better in it.<\/p>\n \u201cCan I just wrestle with the shirt on? I just feel more comfortable. I feel like I can be myself. When I don\u2019t have the shirt, I just feel like I\u2019m this wrestler dude.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Owens, Punk eventually heard about the situation and made a crack about him wrestling in the shirt before one of his matches. Owens didn\u2019t take it as an attack at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cPunk just made a crack about me wrestling in the shirt, but whatever. I didn\u2019t care. I think Punk and I were on good terms. It was fine. To me, I took it as a joke. I don\u2019t think he was trying to humiliate me.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem came after the match. Owens said he came through the curtain exhausted, saw Punk standing there and decided to joke back by asking if he was happy now.<\/p>\n \u201cI was blown up. I figured I\u2019ll joke with him. I\u2019ll joke back. And I said, \u2018Are you happy now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Punk didn\u2019t hear it as a joke. Owens said Punk got angry, yelled at him and accused him of being disrespectful. Even years later, Owens admitted he could understand how his tone may have come across the wrong way because he was exhausted.<\/p>\n \u201cHe got very upset. He yelled at me and said I was disrespectful and all this stuff. For what it\u2019s worth, if I had been in his position, maybe I would have thought the same.\u201d<\/p>\n That exchange happened in front of other wrestlers, which is a big reason the story spread so quickly. By the next day, Owens said the online version had already turned into something much more dramatic than what actually went down.<\/p>\n \u201cI ended up just saying, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m sorry. You\u2019re right. I\u2019m sorry.\u2019 That was it. It was no big deal. But the next day online it was being reported we almost came to blows, which is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n Owens also made it clear that he didn\u2019t carry the incident around as some massive grudge. By the time of that 2014 interview, he said he knew Punk much better and viewed the situation as ancient history.<\/p>\n \u201cNow I know Punk a lot better, and I think he knows me a lot better too. Now it\u2019s just like a far thing. It\u2019s like it never happened, really.\u201d<\/p>\n