Cm Punk and the 1 Celtic vs Rangers regret driving his bucket list
cm punk has turned a football rivalry into a personal regret. The WWE star says missing a Celtic vs Rangers clash remains one of the few things still on his bucket list, after speaking about the fixture’s intensity and the atmosphere around Glasgow. His comments are notable not because they are polished media soundbites, but because they show how a wrestling figure used to stadium-scale noise recognises something similarly combustible in Scottish football. For Punk, the appeal is not just Celtic, but the scale, history and emotion wrapped into the Old Firm.
Why cm punk’s Old Firm view matters now
The timing matters because cm punk was speaking after repeatedly making clear that Celtic holds a genuine pull for him, not a passing novelty. He has attended press conferences in the past wearing the club’s training gear, and he said Glasgow has become easier to navigate each time he visits. That familiarity gives his comments more weight than a celebrity nod from afar. It suggests he is not simply admiring the noise around the rivalry, but responding to the identity attached to it. In his words, the fixture is rooted in “deep-seated” feeling and a bond so intense that it can feel inherited rather than chosen.
That is why the derby sits at the centre of this story. Punk said he wishes he had taken in a Celtic vs Rangers match while in Scotland, describing it as “brother vs brother” and saying he still wants to experience it firsthand. The key point is not whether he is right about the scale of the rivalry; the point is that he understands it as a cultural event with stakes beyond the pitch. For Celtic, that is an unusual form of international visibility: not a campaign or a slogan, but a high-profile admirer framing the club through history, atmosphere and emotion.
The history, the noise and the appeal of Celtic
Punk’s comments also underline why Celtic continues to attract attention beyond football. He said Celtic Park is “beautiful, ” with “everything’s green, ” and that there is “so much history” there. He added that if 60, 000 people are coming every game, he wants to know what draws them in. That line matters because it shifts the focus from celebrity fandom to structural appeal: the club’s scale, its matchday pull and its ability to produce a setting that feels larger than routine sport. For a wrestler who spends his career reading crowd energy, that atmosphere clearly resonates.
His remarks about the Old Firm rivalry also reveal a careful comparison with other huge fixtures. He placed Celtic vs Rangers alongside Boca Juniors vs River Plate and Galatasaray vs Fenerbahçe, calling them atmosphere-heavy confrontations. Yet he still singled out the Scottish derby as something especially intense. That makes his interest more than casual fandom; it becomes an assessment of one sporting rivalry against several global benchmarks. In editorial terms, the takeaway is simple: cm punk is not treating Celtic as an accessory. He is treating the club and its derby as something worth studying.
Expert voices and what they add to the picture
The strongest framing comes from Punk himself. Speaking on The Nightcap with former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson and host Raheem Taylor-Parkes, he said: “You’re talking about 200-year-old, deep-seated, religious hatred. It gets pretty gnarly. ” He added: “No, I wish I had. We’re talking about brother vs brother, it gets wild. Who roots for who, and why? It gets intense. And then I’ve got my wife going ‘why do you dumb men care so much about this?’ I don’t know, man, it’s in our blood. ”
Johnson, who has been to a Glasgow derby, reinforced the point by comparing the atmosphere to the world’s biggest sports occasions. He said there are three games where the atmosphere can be compared to what WrestleMania feels like: Boca Juniors and River Plate, Celtic and Rangers, and Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe. That comparison matters because it comes from someone familiar with elite-event pressure and crowd intensity. It helps explain why Punk’s curiosity is not about football allegiance alone, but about the spectacle around it.
Regional and global impact beyond the headline
For Scottish football, the global effect is subtle but real. When a recognised WWE figure describes Celtic Park with such enthusiasm, it adds a layer of cultural reach that extends far beyond domestic competition. It places the club in the same conversation as major football institutions that are known worldwide for heat, rivalry and atmosphere. It also reinforces how the Old Firm continues to function as a reference point for outsiders trying to understand the emotional scale of the game in Glasgow.
For wrestling audiences, the crossover is just as telling. Punk’s comments show how elite entertainers map sporting tribalism onto their own world of performance, audience response and ritual. That matters because it turns Celtic into part of a larger conversation about spectacle. The club is not only a football team in this telling; it is also a symbol of mass identity, noise and tradition. And for Celtic supporters, that kind of recognition from a figure like cm punk is likely to land as a tribute rather than a gimmick.
What makes the story linger is its unfinished edge. Punk has seen the club, worn the gear and praised the history, but he still has not been inside an Old Firm clash. If that remains the one gap in his bucket list, the question is how long he will have to wait before the rivalry he has been describing becomes his own firsthand memory.
