Triple H says he spoke to CM Punk a ‘year-and-a-half, year-and-three-quarters ago’

When Barstool Sports’ Big Cat asked this question of Triple H on Pardon My Take today (April 5), he knew what he was doing. He even prefaced it as “a quick headline grab.”

When’s the last time Trips spoke to CM Punk?

“Um, last time I talked to him, uh, year-and-a-half, year-and-three-quarters ago. You know, it’s a funny thing that people constantly will say, you know, when his return is or, but, in some way, I don’t know whether he does or not. But that has to be what he wants... when people talk about, ‘Well, make the call!’ What says if we make the call he wants to answer? What says if we make the call, he doesn’t go like, ‘Yeah, I’m not interested in doing that any more.’ Maybe he’s just done with it. I think that those are conversations that only those people can directly answer and I think if he wants to do it, either we would get word and we would have those conversations, or he would make a call, or anything like that. But there has to be desire there to do something like that. This business is too all in to just go like, ‘Eh, alright I’ll do it.’”

While there’s not much here we didn’t already know, that two guys who didn’t really seem to like or respect each other while Punk was with WWE even spoke is news. In fact, the year and six-or-nine months ago timeframe puts is around when Haitch said a Punk/WWE reunion was “probably a long way from coming to” shortly before Punk’s WWE Backstage deal was confirmed.

It doesn’t sound like much has changed for Trips since that conversation. For his part, Punk’s sounded more open to the idea of returning to wrestling - provided the money and creative are right. A comeback in WWE would require a lot of “baggage” to be worked through, and it doesn’t sound like this conversation with Hunter made much progress on that.

So for now, a headline was grabbed. Don’t hold your breath for more than that though.