On August 1, 2006 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, CM Punk made his WWE television debut on that week’s episode of ECW on SciFi, where he defeated ECW Original Justin Credible. Almost instantly, and thanks to a series of excellent pre-taped promos where he discussed his true-to-life straight edge lifestyle, emphasizing the movement’s disciplinary aspects of living drug-and-alcohol-free.

It should also be noted that Punk made his official WWE/ECW debut a little over a month prior on June 24, 2006 at a house show at the former ECW Arena (check out the Doc’D episode about the building and its history), defeating another ECW Original Stevie Richards. While Punk had retained his real life straight edge gimmick he cultivated on the independent scene, he now had a Muay Thai training background.  Punk established himself in the WWE’s brand of ECW by going undefeated, defeating several opponents like yet-ANOTHER ECW Original C.W. Anderson, the aforementioned Stevie Richards and the former Mattitude Follower (or “MF’er”) and newly re-branded “Reject” Shannon Moore.