551 days. That's how many days John Cena is older than CM Punk, and as the former embarks on his retirement tour, the latter has to be thinking about how much tread he has left on his tires before Father Time comes knocking.

Now granted, Punk did take a decade off of his career in the middle of his prime as part of one of the grandest sidequests in WWE history, but even if he didn't wrestle, his body still got older and hasn't responded nearly as well as 20 years ago, when he was slinging back Pepsis after death matches with Raven in Ring of Honor. He's suffered multiple long-term injuries since returning to wrestling in AEW a few years back and was put on the shelf for much of 2024 at the very event, the Royal Rumble, that he's set to wrestle this weekend.

Discussing how he views his in-ring future in relation to Cena's with WWE's Jackie Redmond, Punk noted that he doesn't have a plan for his own retirement tour. With that being said, he knows that any match could be his last, and is wrestling with a sense of urgency as a result.

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“I feel great right now. I definitely don't feel like there is a looming doomsday clock over my head or anything like that. Saying that, I also do realize, based on what happened in the last Royal Rumble, that this could all end in a heartbeat. I never know when my last match is going to be, and you see guys like John Cena doing a full blown retirement tour. I look at myself like I'm on the same road as John, maybe just not egotistical enough to announce to everybody, ‘Hey, this is it.' I'm not setting a limit on anything, I'm just doing my best to bulletproof myself on a daily basis, work as hard on recovery as I do in the gym and in the ring, and not make this twilight of my career extended beyond what people expect of me. I don't want to twist in the wind and be some old guy,” Punk noted via Fightful.

“I think I get criticized an unfair amount, but it's because I don't dye my beard, I don't dye my hair, I 100% embrace it. To me, these grays, I've earned them. They just tell stories. It's the roads I've traveled, it's the bumps and bruises I've taken and the injuries I've survived. My face is a road map. I would not remove a scar. I would not dye my hair or beard. This is me. I was me when I first wrestled a 15-year-old, and I'm me at 46, and I will always 100% be truly, unapologetically, one of one, CM Punk.”

With 512 fewer matches than Cena on his resume, it's clear Punk could still go for a few more years without suffering a major drop-off in athletic abilities. Still, the day will eventually come when he can no longer go in the ring, and the fact that the “Best in the Word” is thinking about that now shows that the day in question could be coming sooner than some fans may like.