All Elite Wrestling: CM Punk’s Time at AEW

By Jeff Wolfe | September 8, 2023 | @prowrestlingw8r

Another day, yet another report on CM Punk’s time at AEW in the wake of Tony Khan firing him last Saturday for incidents which occurred Aug. 27 backstage at All In.

This one is from Dave Meltzer in the newest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, so it will spark debate for that reason alone. Beyond that, it includes a couple items which will likely be used in discussions and arguments about assigning blame for this whole ordeal to Punk and/or Matt & Nick Jackson of The Young Bucks:

• Regarding a meeting between Punk & The Elite which the former apparently believed was going to happen in Duluth, Georgia at Aug. 23’s joint taping of Dynamite & Collision and that Kenny Omega & The Bucks either never agreed to or never even knew about, Meltzer writes that he’s confirmed The Elite were never approached about the meeting because AEW officials knew they’d turn it down.

How did they know?

One person very close to the situation said that the Bucks had said if six months went by without any issues, they would have been willing to sit down and work with him.

That “six months without an incident” condition was set before several talents were banned from attending Collision, and before the disagreement about Jack Perry’s use of real glass at a Saturday taping which led to Perry’s shot at Punk on the All In pre-show and their subsequent dust-up in gorilla position at Wembley Stadium. It was also before…

• AEW informed The Elite about a legal letter it received from Punk’s lawyers alleging that a skit on The Young Bucks’ long-running YouTube series Being The Elite violated the terms of a non-disparagement agreement Punk & The Elite signed after their own altercation backstage at All Out 2022.

Evidently it was from a BTE skit that was a storyline that had started years earlier about Matt Jackson screwing up an endorsement deal and was brought back where he had secured some sort of another deal that was going to make them all rich, only to have that screw up and even with their new contract, they were left broke and couldn’t retire even if they wanted to and they were all furious that they could never leave wrestling. In the skit, they wanted Matt to apologize for screwing up. Punk’s name was never mentioned.

If Punk felt he had to keep wrestling for financial reasons (which is something I’ve never seen reported), you could see where he might think that storyline was about him. Even so, it seems odd to get upset about that after both sides had previously made more obvious references to Brawl Out and each other.

But perhaps you doubt the veracity of either item since it’s coming from The Observer, which some believe to be serving as The Elite’s mouthpiece (a role another outlet or two has been accused of performing for Punk).

Feel free to discuss all that below. Just please be civil while doing so.

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