CM Punk On Paying Homage To Tracy Smothers On ‘Heels’

CM Punk has been living it up lately. As he had one of the biggest pops in the history of pro-wrestling, he’s currently All-Elite. However, he’s returned to pro-wrestling in a fictional format as well, which is at the show ‘Heels’ alongside Stephen Amell.

Punk recently was a part of a Q&A. When asked about who was the inspiration behind his character Ricky Rabies, he revealed that it was Tracy Smothers. Both him and Smothers actually worked together at IWA Mid-South.

Ricky Rabies is Tracy Smothers you know and we lost Tracy a couple of years ago and he was the first name I ever wrestled, maybe. I wrestled Tracy Smothers in a barn in Southern Indiana in 1999 or 2000, something like that. He just walked up to me, he’s like ‘hey man I seen your work, you’re good, listen, uh, I can’t remember shit you know, is it okay we just go out there and do it, I can’t memorize this and that, we can talk about it but I’ll just forget it.

He continued to talk about how intuitive a wrestler Smothers was. Punk was anxious about wrestling with Smothers but realized that Smothers had the necessary experience to play it by ear. He also shared a hilarious story with Smothers.

So I just go out there and I was terrified because at that stage of my career I would have to sit down with you and be like you want to do this and then I’ll be this and then we’ll go do this so I went out there and Tracy knew what he was doing and I just remember one time in the match he grabbed somebody’s nachos and he had this nacho cheese in his hand. Now I’m in Southern Indiana, there’s no shower, there’s no nothing. I drive from Chicago all the way down there, five and a half six hours and then we get in the car and we drive back and we’re lucky if we get gas money. He’s about to hit me with this and he goes ‘block and hit me with the cheese brother’ [laughs]. I learned how to work because of Tracy Smothers, I only wish he was here to see this ridiculous shit cause I think he would love it

CM Punk has been hard at work. He’s working it up at both AEW and Heels, and recently shared a three-hour long tattoo cover up process to play Ricky Rabies. He also revealed that he knew he’d end up at AEW while he worked on Heels. However, he also wasn’t interested in the company as a start-up.

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