– Former WWE Champion-turned-UFC welterweight CM Punk took to Twitter and defended the WrestleMania 34 crowd for chanting his name during the show, and playing with beach balls as well. Former 2011 Tough Enough competitor AJ Kirsch ripped fans for their antics during the show.
Punk responded with the following in defense of the crowd:
I wonder how much those fans spent to throw beach balls and chant @CMPunk's name.
I mean…tickets to the show, flights, hotels, food, and probably drinks and maybe merch.
That's a lot of money to spend just to show everyone you're an asshole.
— A.J. Kirsch (@AJKirsch) April 10, 2018
Or you could just let everyone know you're an asshole for free by telling them what to do with their own money. https://t.co/vEOWqJo6hC
— player/coach (@CMPunk) April 10, 2018
I didn’t say they *CAN’T.* Their money, their choice.
I’m saying to shit on the main event of the show that brought them there (and 78k others) in the first place by throwing beach balls and chanting the name of someone who they know isn’t even there is shitty.@CMPunk https://t.co/sAVnLQlfMn
— A.J. Kirsch (@AJKirsch) April 10, 2018
– HBO posted the following clip on their YouTube channel of an interview with “Andre The Giant” documentary director Jason Hehir. Hehir described what it was like seeing Andre in the ring for the first time:
“When I was seven or eight years old, WWF – at the time – was on at eleven A.M. every morning in Boston. My brothers were huge fans, my older brothers, I wasn’t quite old enough to be that into it. But I vividly remember them coming and finding me and saying, “After the commercial break, this guy Andre The Giant is gonna be on, you have to see him!”
“I said, “Is he an actual giant? What’s the deal?” And I’ll never forget, watching him walk through the crowd and up into the ring in this moment of – you know I’m seven years old and I’m just coming off of reading fairy tales and these fictional, larger than life stories.
“And this guy is the physical embodiment of some of the characters who are in those fairytales, so I was immediately hooked seeing him as to who the guy was – I wanna know more about him: where he’s from, how big is his bed, what does he eat. Is this a real person? How is a giant walking around amidst these other larger-than-life wrestling characters.”