Farewell again CM Punk
“If, at all through my journey, any of my personal choices or decisions related to my life made you feel disappointed or let down, let me just say… I understand."
I found out CM Punk had been fired from AEW while sitting on a bench outside a Dunkin' Donuts in Liverpool.
Just under a week ago, I was sitting in Wembley Stadium with mixed emotions. Before All In started, nearly four years of my life had flashed before my eyes.
From watching the first AEW rally at home in London after convincing my editor to let me cover it, to being in Florida watching NXT live when the first AEW Dynamite aired. To the pandemic hitting and cancelling all my career plans while Dynamite on TV became my lifeline.
I remembered getting my first AEW interview and reviewing Dynamite with so much joy on YouTube every week. Then the time came when I finally saw AEW live in November 2021.
I thought about bad decisions along the way and even worse consequences. I remembered a year of attending AEW PPV shows and more in the year that followed.
I thought of how I wanted to feel for AEW’s first UK show, how I should feel, and how I did feel.
Then Cult of Personality hit and I thought, no matter what, I am watching CM Punk wrestle in Wembley Stadium and that is enough.
Little did I know, CM Punk was wrestling his last match for AEW.
I didn’t know CM Punk was wrestling his last match for WWE when I watched the 2014 Royal Rumble.
The events of his exit were the beginning of me becoming a terminally online wrestling fan and writer. I wanted to know what happened and if he’d be back. But as the months rolled on it became clear that CM Punk was gone and he might not ever come back to wrestling.
Punk’s seven years of wrestling wilderness never stopped the diehard fans from believing he could make a return. WWE suffered from Punk chants for years and, somewhat coincidentally, Punk’s departure from wrestling came as the tide was beginning to turn.
We had the Daniel Bryan WrestleMania just months after Punk left, then NXT soon became the product to watch, NJPW started growing in popularity among English-speaking fans and, eventually, in 2018 an event called All In happened.
CM Punk had in many ways started a movement, an anti-WWE movement, that carried his spirit but was without him as the leader.
Cody Rhodes was the guy who left WWE with a dream match list and went out and proved himself on the Indies. Chris Jericho was the guy who went to NJPW and exposed a wider audience to Kenny Omega and Okada.
And when All In took place in Chicago, CM Punk was nowhere to be seen. CM Punk was also nowhere to be seen when AEW launched. It was Cody up there leading the revolution against WWE and Jericho as the ex-WWE star taking a chance on the young, upstart company.
The Elite, Jericho, and young wrestlers such as MJF and Darby Allin, made AEW feel exciting. It was enough to make you put Punk to the back of your mind even if you weren’t ready to forget him.
The revolution was happening and Punk had declined to be a part of it.
Then in August 2021, it happened - CM Punk arrived in AEW. Watching Tony Khan in that first scrum with Punk you knew what he was thinking, he’d just captured the white whale.
Like me, Tony knew the house was built on The Elite and Jericho but Punk, he was the spiritual leader and now he’d finally decided to come and take his rightful place.
Once he got to AEW I always wondered if Punk regretted not signing up on day one. AEW had The Elite’s name, Jericho had a clear investment in the company and Punk walked in with the house already built for him. But without helping to build it, I wondered if Punk felt more like a guest of honour than a part of the foundation.
His initial run in the company was everything I could have hoped for. He started strong with Darby Allin, moved on to Eddie Kingston and then had a feud with MJF which is still my favourite in AEW history.
Then the Adam Page feud happened and things just didn’t feel right. For me, Page was the guy whose story was integral to AEW. He’d lost to Jericho in the match to be the first champion, we’d seen his story with Omega play out brilliantly but then, once he won the title, he felt like an afterthought.
Page then dropping the title to an ex-WWE guy less than a year into his run felt weird. It felt like the end of Tony always having a long-term booking plan.
At the time none of us realised that Page’s ‘worker’s rights’ line would be the beginning of the end for Punk in AEW. He’d get injured after his title run, take a few months off to heal and then return in a somewhat bizarre fashion.
Just weeks before All Out 2022 he made a surprise return then, on the next Dynamite, he delivered a promo calling out Page at first but then turning his attention to Jon Moxley, leading to an all-time weird PPV build.
Then Brawl Out happened and it all truly fell apart. We would go on to endure nine months of speculation regarding Punk but hear very little from the man himself (apart from one hilarious Insta share and delete).
There’s no point in going over the mistakes Tony Khan made when it came to handling everything surrounding Brawl Out. He either knows and will learn from them or he’s oblivious and we’ll be back here soon dissecting the fallout from another AEW incident.
But giving Punk his own show was a quick fix to a huge problem. Separating wrestlers who don’t like each other onto different shows was never going to work and being unable to compel EVPs to talk to your top star is a colossal failing.
The pipe bomb was bound to explode at some point, it’s just that none of us had money on Jungle Boy lighting the fuse.
Reading the reports of what happened backstage at Wembley is depressing. Punk clearly did something inexcusable that was captured on camera and firing him was Tony’s only option.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Punk is a man everyone has an opinion on. If you hate him, cool, probably time for you to stop reading.
But if you’ve been there from the beginning and he captured your imagination and made you believe it’s always going to be hard not to love him.
He is, without a doubt, an absolute prick a lot of the time and it’s frustrating. He’s done shitty things for sure but, as I’ve admitted many times, they’re things I’ve either done or fantasised about doing (Brawl Out scrum - I’ve done this on a way smaller scale, lunging at my boss - I have not done that).
At the First Dance Punk told us: “If, at all through my journey, any of my personal choices or decisions related to my life made you feel disappointed or let down, let me just say… Let me just say… I understand, if you all try to understand that I was never gonna get healthy physically, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally, staying in the same place that got me sick in the first place.”
When Punk left WWE I understood but now I don’t understand. I understand there are guys in AEW he didn’t get along with and guys who didn’t want him there to begin with. I understand Tony’s management skills are lacking but I don’t understand how this time, with everything he was given, he couldn’t make it work.
But none of this still makes Punk a villain to me. To you, he might be the ultimate villain but to me, he’s a still hero, sometimes an anti-hero, but a hero nonetheless.
The past few days I’ve found it hard to separate myself from the situation no matter how much people have told me to. I hear people cursing Punk’s name and I think, ‘Okay but what about…’ and I have to be reminded that anyone or anything else isn’t relevant to this situation and I need to compartmentalise. I’m working on that.
But whatever he did wrong I’d still like to thank Punk for what he did right. The amazing feud with MJF that gave us Miseria Cantare back for one night, for seeing I was struggling to get a word in at the Full Gear scrum and helping me out, for getting in there with Eddie Kingston, and for a Pepsi Plunge at Wembley.
When Punk holds up a sign supporting LGBTQ+ youth or trans rights I believe him, I know I won’t end up finding out he’s a Trump donor or he’s going to retweet whatever old rocker is a trans youth expert this week.
He’s complicated and he’s messy but Punk has beliefs he stands up for when too many don’t have the backbone to stand for anything.
I found out CM Punk had been fired from AEW while sitting on a bench outside a Dunkin Donuts in Liverpool. A week before that, I had cancelled my flight to go to All Out because something just didn’t feel right.
I found out CM Punk had been fired from AEW while sitting on a bench outside a Dunkin Donuts in Liverpool. It was literally seconds after I had just said, ‘So do you think Punk will be at All Out?’
I found out CM Punk had been fired from AEW while sitting on a bench outside a Dunkin Donuts in Liverpool. I have never been so glad to not be in Chicago.
Awesome article Stephanie.