Appearing on Up Close with Renee Paquette, AEW star Jack Perry said that he has grown a lot from the CM Punk backstage incident back in August 2023.

Perry never directly mentioned Punk but Paquette alluded to it when she asked how he has grown since 2023, when the incident occurred.

“I feel like I’ve grown a lot from it, but I feel like the growth came from a lot of it sounds dramatic to say pain, but it wasn’t the nicest of times, for most of that time,” Perry told Paquette. “I think it really freed me in a lot of ways. It’s kind of like before all that feels like another lifetime at this point, and I think back to how I felt before that, and I think a big thing I had was like, I just really, it sounds silly, I just wanted everyone to like me.”

Perry and Punk made the headlines when Perry, in his Zero Hour match prior to the PPV, had a spot on a car, smashing the windshield, breaking the real glass.

“It’s real glass! Go cry me a river!” he said to the camera, referring to Punk who during Collision refused to let Perry use real glass for a segment.

Punk met Perry backstage and an altercation ensued just before Punk was scheduled to open the show with Samoa Joe. That led to Punk getting fired and just two months later he returned to WWE.

“I was new to being on TV. This was my dream job since I was a little kid, and I wanted to do it perfectly, and I wanted everyone to like me, and it’s not something I worry about so much in my real life, but this was different,” he continued. “I kind of wanted to micromanage it and make it perfect.”

He added that when he would come up short of that expectation, it was very disappointing and when there are “a million people” telling you that “you’re a piece of shit,” it was hard.