Michelle Beadle details AJ Lee confrontation over CM Punk at WWE Tribute to the Troops

Late last year, WWE held its annual Tribute to the Troops show and invited a number of celebrity special guests, Michelle Beadle chief among them. The ESPN Sportsnation host is a well known pro wrestling fan with a huge following who is friends with many folks at WWE, including, at that time, CM Punk.

The two bumped into each other backstage at that show, Beadle made a comment, and then a confrontation took place between Beadle and Punk's girlfriend (and soon to be wife), AJ Lee. There were conflicting reports at the time, but Beadle eventually released a statement on Twitter acknowledging the situation and giving her side of the story.

About a month later, in his final interview before leaving WWE (watch it here), Punk gave his side:

"A bunch of horseshit. I don't know what a lie was. I thought me and Beadle were pals. She had this group of women and they walked past me and she said some disrespectful shit and I was just like 'whoa'. My girlfriend pulled her aside in front of this same group of people and was like, and she introduced herself, and she was like 'Don't be disrespectful to my boyfriend' and Beadle just went 'okay', and walked away and that was it. ... She walked by and said 'what's up fuck-face' and high-fived one of the girls."

Now, all these months later, Beadle was a guest on the Ross Report podcast with Jim Ross and she went into great detail on exactly what happened that night, the fallout, and how she feels about it:

"Usually when things like this happen I try to ignore them. I just think, 'okay, crap happens, the world will never know, blah, blah, blah'. But then, you know, I went to Tribute to the Troops and was honored to be asked to be a part of it by WWE and got to do a thing in the ring with John Cena and a couple things there. The back story... the thing about it is is social media is so whacked. All that stuff came out and it was 'oh, you were flirting'. Look: First of all, when I'm flirting people will know I'm flirting. I've also known Phil for a few years at this point and I had, at that time, considered him a friend. We texted on a regular basis, we've had dinner numerous times; it's just one of those things where he's not my friend, whatever. It was what it was. I thought it was a friendship, I guess I was wrong.

"But I show up at Tribute to the Troops, I see him in the hallway, I say 'what up, f-face', which is my very loving way of referring to my friends. Like, I don't call my friends... I just... I'm an idiot. I call them all kinds of names, that's how you know I like you. He was alone in a hallway, he didn't really say anything. I was with P.R. from WWE and my assistant and we walked by. The next thing I know, she's in my face yelling at me and I honestly, I swear to you, thought it was a joke. I thought I was being set up for like a 'ha ha ha'. And I looked up at him and he wouldn't look at me and he kept his back to us and she kept going and I just was blown away. So that was kind of it. I thought, 'all right, no big deal'. WWE was apologetic to me on site and I just said 'it's not your problem, people are who they are' and that was it. I thought it had died but when I got home like that following week it hit all the blogs and all the wrestling peeps had all this information and that's when I finally... I issued like a three part tweet just to say my side of the story because it was getting really old (hearing) that I was trying to take someone's man or whatever high school crap people want to say.

"So, that's all. And, you know, Phil and I stopped being friends that day and I wish him the best of luck and that's it. It's a bummer because I always respected him. I thought he was one of those cool guys that kind of didn't fall into a certain role and kind of did what he wanted but to watch all that happen and to have somebody tattle on me and have their girlfriend get in my face is a little pathetic. But it's okay, I've moved on."

And there you have it.

Any new thoughts on the matter, Cagesiders?