Amazing Red Recalls Wrestling CM Punk In WWE Dark Match, Interacting With John Laurinaitis Afterwards

Amazing Red recalls wrestling CM Punk in a dark match for WWE.

The bout took place before a taping of WWE Velocity on May 10, 2005. Punk defeated Red in about six minutes in a match that wasn’t available until it was uploaded to the WWE Vault channel in December 2024.

Speaking with Chris Van Vliet for a new interview, Red said that he was originally supposed to take on Matt Morgan.

“I don’t remember. One of the things about me doing stuff like this is that my memory has been jacked, and yes, I can jot it down to pro wrestling and getting concussed and knocked, but I don’t remember how it started. But I know it was through friends looking out for me. I’ve never wrestled CM Punk at this point. It was supposed to be a squash match. It was supposed to be me versus Matt Morgan, maybe. I was supposed to lose in like two seconds.”

Plans changed, resulting in Red facing off with CM Punk. Ricky Steamboat, who was an agent at the time, was trying to get Punk signed. This put more pressure on Red to make Punk look good.

“I was like, that sounds cool. I was still ready for it, and I think it was Sgt Slaughter. Somebody called me by my government name and said, ‘Come here.’ I came over there, and one of the referees said, ‘Hey, Red’s got something else coming up. So Red’s gonna be pre-show, and you’re gonna have a dark match, and you guys do this.’ So they gave Matt somebody else, a different kind of wrestler. So then my cousins were there, and Jimmy Wang was there, and they were like, yo, when they give you dark matches, that means they’re looking at you to get signed. So I was like, all right, cool, cool. I’m nervous. I see CM Punk. I’ve known him from ROH, but we never chatted as much. He was very cool with me. We came up with cool ideas. Ricky Steamboat was the agent. Can I be transparent? This is how things went in my eyes, right? Ricky Steamboat wanted CM Punk to get signed. He needed CM Punk to get signed, obviously, right? So, right before this match, what I was hearing is that CM Punk, this was his last-ditch effort to be signed. I’ve heard he just wrestled with Val Venis and it was not good, and he was blown up. Or CM Punk told people he was sick, and they were like, Red, this is his last effort. So that’s added more pressure to me. So then we go to the agent, and Steamboat was just giving him everything, ‘CM Punk will do this, this, and this.’ Then he asked me to do a heel thing. He said, ‘You ever wrestled heel before?’ I was like, yeah. Because at this point, I’m thinking he’s telling me to be a heel so CM Punk could be a face. I’m like yes, I wrestled heel before, but look at me and look at him. It’s not gonna work. CM Punk respectfully tells me, ‘Listen, we’ll do whatever you gotta do.’ Being very transparent here, the moves that I wanted to do, Code Red, my flatliner, my standing shooting star. I wanted to get that out in the world that I made this up at that point, because you’re on WWE. Once this happens in WWE, it is officially yours. Every time I mentioned something to him, I don’t know if it was him, but every time I mentioned something to him, it came back and got vetoed. ‘You can’t do a shooting star. Kidman does it, and Paul London said Kidman’s gonna get hot.’ ‘You can’t do Code Red because Rey does it, and he’s gonna get hot. You got this move, you can’t do that move.’”

Jimmy Wang Yang was not happy that the company was “kiboshing” all of Red’s stuff. Then, Red took a moment to recall his interaction with John Laurinaitis after the match.

“So Jimmy Wang is my boy. He’s like my brother, and he’s not gonna lie to me. So he’s coming up and he’s like, ‘They’re kiboshing all your stuff, bro, purposely.’ It felt like no one wanted me with a job here. I’m like, okay, that sucks. I wrestled with CM Punk at the time the match didn’t feel good at all. We just kept messing up and botching and going to different things. We go to the back. CM Punk gets taken by Johnny Ace. I’m there like waiting for CM Punk just to say thank you. I know the match wasn’t that good, and Steamboat’s just following him, saying, ‘Give him one more chance. Give him one more chance.’ Damn, I’ll get some receipt for this. Johnny Ace comes out of the room with CM Punk. He was in the room. He comes out of the room. He goes, ‘Hey, have you ever wrestled in a big ring before?’ I said, Yeah. He said, ‘Where?’ I said, All Japan. When I said All Japan, that blew his mind because that’s where he came from. It was all Japan. He was touring there. He was like, ‘You were in All Japan?’ I was like yeah, I was in All Japan. ‘How long?’ I said like three months. He was like, ‘Well, you look blown up, so we’ll give you a call.’ I did the unprofessional thing of saying, ‘I look blown up?’ Because I was just wondering. I know what he means because when we did mess up, we didn’t go to the different positions right away. We kind of had this like deer-in-the-headlights moment, so I guess he took that as you look blown up. He told me that, I said, ‘Anything else I have to work on?’ He said, ‘Yeah, get bigger.’ He walks away. I see CM Punk come out the door. Walks away. What’s going on? Jimmy Wang comes up to me, and he goes, ‘Bro, you could tell wholeheartedly that was all him. You did all of your stuff. You sold well, blah blah. Everyone loved you in the back, and it sucks.’ That’s how it has to be.”

A couple of years later, Amazing Red had another opportunity with the company at No Way Out. He reunited with Punk at the event.

“Fast forward to when I got my second chance at the WWE. I was supposed to get squashed by Ryback. He was supposed to beat up three jobbers. I don’t remember the year. I know that it was a lot of controversy that I showed up at No Way Out. It was like he was having a dark match, and I was just there because they asked me to pull up. I was one of the jobbers supposed to get beat up by Ryback, get thrown through a table. Ryback said, ‘How much you weigh?’ I was like, why? He said, ‘Because I’m gonna throw you through the table.’ That’s the first time I ever met him. I’m like, okay, I’m getting thrown through the table. Somebody shouts out, ‘Red’s not doing that. Red has something,’ and I got taken away from that. I didn’t do that either. From that moment, I was thinking I wanted to tell CM Punk something, like talk to him, and CM Punk shows up. I’m at the doctor, and I felt someone hugging me from behind, ‘Red! What’s up, man? What’s up?’ And I turn around; it’s him, and I don’t know what belt he had on, but he had on a belt. It was probably the world title or like one of the biggest belts. And I’m like, you know what? I’m not gonna tell him anything, because it’s just so much at this point, water under the bridge. But I was very bitter about that day, just because I feel like it was my opportunity also to be signed, and I didn’t get that. But I was bitter about it, where I felt like he ruined it for me. But I’m grown now to understand he had a job too. This was his thing, no hard feelings. That’s why a lot of my guys who find out the story, they’re like, ‘Oh, CM Punk, you probably hate him.’ I said, ‘No, no, I don’t hate him. I love that dude, honestly.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, Amazing Red talked about John Cena using the Code Red in 2025. Check out his full comments on the matter by clicking here.

Special thanks to Chris Van Vliet and his team for providing the quote(s) in this interview.