GQ: In pro wrestling in general and especially with you right now, it's hard to tell how much of what's on TV is a storyline and how much of it is actually happening. But you're really done with the company for now?

C.M. Punk: How much is real? That's 100% real. That's not to say that there are still not negotiations. It's not like I'm leaving and they're like, "Good. Go fuck yourself." I think that's why this whole thing works. I'm not doing my job if people are like, "What you do is fake." And literally people on the street are confused, generally, for the first time. That's a great thing. The funny part about it is that you're going to have your staunchest critic who says that it's all scripted. It's not! Dusty Rhodes told me a long time ago that the best promos come from the heart. You watch anybody who's ever cut a meaningful promo, and it means something to them. Everything I've said isn't somebody else's words that they put on paper. They tend to hand me things like, "Here, say this," and I'm not saying any of it. If I went out there and laid an egg, if what I did was boring TV and nobody cared and nobody was talking about it, somebody would probably be pissed off. But I went out there and seemingly turned the place on its ear, and I have yet to hear one negative thing about any of it. I don't really think Vince McMahon cares. The bottom line is making money. I'd like to think that that's what I did. Whether it's real or not is almost irrelevant, but I think people can see through it and realize that yeah, this guy's pissed off, this guy's fed up. They can relate to that.

GQ: Are you at all surprised at the enormity of the reaction?

C.M. Punk: Yeah. I'd like to go out there and do that all the time, but that's just not the case. So to actually strike that nerve is tremendous. Right after that night in Vegas, we hit the ground running. We flew to Australia the next day, and that's a 15-hour flight, so that's 15 hours of everybody talking about what I did. And when I landed in Australia, I wasn't really turning my phone on because of the roaming charges. People started emailing me and texting me. Jim Rome wants me on his show, and all these ESPN people are talking about it. Bill Simmons is writing about it. I wasn't on the nine o'clock news or anything like that, but it seems like I made it socially relevant for the first time in a very long time.

GQ: You've talked a lot about your treatment within the WWE and the way the company generally runs. How could it be done better?

C.M. Punk: A lot of the people who are in charge—and this isn't a negative thing—are old. They have a wealth of experience, yes, but there's no youth that's involved in anything. The youngest people there are all performers. I don't envy their job, trying to get inside somebody's head and figure out who they are and what their character is. It's a nerve-racking thing when you first get there. If you're like me, this was your dream job; you worked 13 years to get to where you are. The normal course of action is mouth shut, eyes and ears open, not stepping on toes. But that's how you get ahead. A squeaky wheel gets the grease. If something sucks, I've always been completely vocal about it, and I've been punished many, many times because of that. But I don't think I'd be in the spot I'm in right now if I wasn't me. I've always just been me. I don't think we should be looking externally for talent; there's plenty of guys and girls in house that are super-talented that we don't do enough with. A guy like Evan Bourne, who's a fantastic high-flyer, does the most fantastic stuff on the roster. I could go on: Kofi Kingston, Dolph Ziggler, Beth Phoenix. There's Nattie Neidhart, Tyson Kidd. Tyson Kidd is a fantastic wrestler, maybe not the greatest promo. So let's help him. Let's teach him to get better instead of signing someone from Europe who failed at Euro football. I could talk about this forever. Part of it is that there's no territories; there's no place for people to learn. And the places that people can learn aren't the best, and they're completely looked down upon. Like independent wrestling. It's easy to shit on people from a great height, but it's another thing to pull them aside and try to impart knowledge. And I've been on the other side of the coin where I try to help somebody out and they blow me off like they know everything.