How FOX Executives Kept CM Punk News From Leaking

CM Punk auditioned for a role on WWE Backstage, but Fox was said to have moved on. Obviously, that wasn’t the case when Punk showed up on WWE Backstage on November 12th.

Sports Business Journal recently spoke to Fox Sports’ Vice President Brad Zager about CM Punk’s big WWE Backstage surprise. This was something that nobody really knew about, even their own production crew.

“Part of what we’re doing with this show is shock. You heard that natural reaction from our control room not believing that this was really happening. We wanted to make this a surprise. We wanted to make this a moment.”

CM Punk agreed to do WWE Backstage a week before his big surprise debut. In fact, on the night before he showed up on FS1, Zager and Fox Sports’ senior vice president of production and talent development Jacob Ullman had dinner with the Second City Savior.

“We had to buck the trend and not let it leak. It was the tightest circle of people to ever know about something that we’ve done.”

We’ll have to see how often CM Punk appears on WWE Backstage. He wasn’t on this last week, but there could be plenty more occasions for Punk to drop a pipebomb on FS1.