Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[NintendoLogic]

If Omega, the Bucks, Jericho, and Moxley are all on the anti-Punk side, that kind of makes bringing him back a hard sell.

[Jmare007]

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

I don't think there was much risk in belting up Mox without a contract.He's made it clear he never wants to go back to WWE so the worst that could happen is he shows up on some indy shows or a New Japan show, which wouldn't be the worst thing. 

My thing isn't about the "risk" of Mox being a free agent but him having the position and mindset of "I'm making Tony a favor here". Which is pretty evident if you listening to that first part of the Renee podcast. TK gives him the belt and it feels like he can't say no to the guy because well, he's the one keeping the company afloat while every other top guy is injured and he's doing it when he doesn't even have to (because he's not contractually obligated to do anything). All this during a time were there was already a lot of tension in the locker room around Punk because the Cabana stuff was already a gossip that was making some wrestlers resent dude. And now you are trying to rush him back so you can go for a really weird angle Mox wants to run. It's just a mess no matter how you look at it.

And even though circumstances were very different. Tony had already done the "give the belt to a star that's not under contract" with Cody months prior. That one didn't work out and made a weird mess out of the TNT division at the time too.

[Big Pete]

While it worked out for AEW in the end, why would you even risk putting the title on a free agent when you have Hangman & Jericho right there? As far as I remember, Moxley winning the interim title felt out of the blue as well. Wasn't he embroiled with the JAS when they decided he was the #1 contender and would face off against a Battle Royal winner? Then that led to the Forbidden Door match with Tanahashi where he won the title.

It just seems like TK had his mind-set on Moxley/Punk for All Out and was unwilling to change his mind despite there being obvious issues.

As far as the podcast goes, nothing Moxley said contradicted the points Punk made. All it did was confirm a story from around that time and provide some context behind that squash which in hindsight was a dumb idea that made Punk look less than before he'd go onto beat the 'baddest man in AEW' clean as a sheet.

[rovert]

5 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

If Omega, the Bucks, Jericho, and Moxley are all on the anti-Punk side, that kind of makes bringing him back a hard sell.

They are. Wade Keller's reporting is completely right. The top third bar one or two names.

[MoS]

11 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Rushing an injured wrestler to have a match with someone not under contract would make Vince Russo blush. 

Like, Daniel Bryan was right fucking there. 

He wasn't, at least not initially. He was out with a concussion when the interim championship was decided. TK could have chosen to run with Mox v. Danielson for All Out, but he had him jobbing to Jericho instead. 

[MoS]

2 hours ago, rovert said:

They are. Wade Keller's reporting is completely right. The top third bar one or two names.

Wonder how Danielson feels about Punk and about all of this. 

[Jmare007]

6 hours ago, MoS said:

Wonder how Danielson feels about Punk and about all of this. 

I highly doubt he'd refuse to work with anyone in AEW but his hatred towards social media has probably gotten stronger in the last year, lol.

It's kinda curious how backstage problems seem to get out in the open when Bryan is not on the road with the company (early 2022 post Hangman feud, out two months after the concussions at DoN and then now).

[MoS]

9 hours ago, Big Pete said:

While it worked out for AEW in the end, why would you even risk putting the title on a free agent when you have Hangman & Jericho right there? As far as I remember, Moxley winning the interim title felt out of the blue as well. Wasn't he embroiled with the JAS when they decided he was the #1 contender and would face off against a Battle Royal winner? Then that led to the Forbidden Door match with Tanahashi where he won the title.

It just seems like TK had his mind-set on Moxley/Punk for All Out and was unwilling to change his mind despite there being obvious issues.

As far as the podcast goes, nothing Moxley said contradicted the points Punk made. All it did was confirm a story from around that time and provide some context behind that squash which in hindsight was a dumb idea that made Punk look less than before he'd go onto beat the 'baddest man in AEW' clean as a sheet.

I said this in the Meltzer thread, but Dave made a massive massive mistake by leaving out the crucial part of the story where Punk was injured at that time and not cleared to wrestle and was asked to wrestle anyway. That makes TK look really bad and Meltzer absolutely fucked up by not reporting that part of the story. 

Punk is a grouchy asshole who keeps grudges and does not forgive anyone for any perceived slight, whether justified or not, but he was absolutely right to get mad at Dave here. Especially given the context of why he left WWE in 2014 in the first place.

[Coffey]

At this point, is there anyone that thinks Jericho being in AEW is a positive anymore? Like, even if we ignore him as a person outside of the ring, just by what he brings to AEW, is he worth it? I don't think his name value is big enough to have to deal with Jericho. 

Give me Punk over Jericho any day of the week. 

[Lukeless]

Well it's not only Jericho who Punk has issues with.  Punk has problems with all the top guys in the company.  The dude is just a straight-up locker room cancer.

[Migs]

4 hours ago, MoS said:

I said this in the Meltzer thread, but Dave made a massive massive mistake by leaving out the crucial part of the story where Punk was injured at that time and not cleared to wrestle and was asked to wrestle anyway. That makes TK look really bad and Meltzer absolutely fucked up by not reporting that part of the story. 

Punk is a grouchy asshole who keeps grudges and does not forgive anyone for any perceived slight, whether justified or not, but he was absolutely right to get mad at Dave here. Especially given the context of why he left WWE in 2014 in the first place.

It can't be understated that Dave, a news reporter with a publication people pay for, didn't even report this in his publication. He made a stray comment on his fucking message board. I have a much more positive view of Dave than many (I think much of the criticism he takes is in bad faith), but this whole scenario was so monumentally stupid for a guy who wants to be taken seriously as a reporter.

[KawadaSmile]

3 hours ago, Coffey said:

At this point, is there anyone that thinks Jericho being in AEW is a positive anymore? Like, even if we ignore him as a person outside of the ring, just by what he brings to AEW, is he worth it? I don't think his name value is big enough to have to deal with Jericho. 

Give me Punk over Jericho any day of the week. 

Jericho is essentially the guys he criticized in WCW, but lamer.

2 hours ago, Lukeless said:

Well it's not only Jericho who Punk has issues with.  Punk has problems with all the top guys in the company.  The dude is just a straight-up locker room cancer.

He seemed to enjoy working with younger talent like MJF, Darby, Hobbs and Wardlow. It feels like he was inclined more to legitimize talent than  mess around with already established workers (and it does feel like he doesn't really mind Omega or Mox)

[Embrodak]

2 hours ago, Lukeless said:

Well it's not only Jericho who Punk has issues with.  Punk has problems with all the top guys in the company.  The dude is just a straight-up locker room cancer.

Depends on if you think those people deserve to have problems taken with them or not!

[Embrodak]

Also have we talked about how it’s extremely weird that TK would ask the person who is probably the highest paid guy in the company to wrestle when he wasn’t cleared? Like setting aside Meltzer’s deceptive reporting, why the fuck would you jeopardize a high ticket asset like that if you’re TK? Was he listening to the Jericho-Moxley brain trust telling him that it was fine since it wasn’t a “real” match?

[NintendoLogic]

Brian Last on Twitter posted the part of the AEW Talent Playbook that asks talent not to comment on their health condition without clearing it with the company beforehand. It could be that Dave was told about Punk not being medically cleared off the record and he didn't want to share a story that would make Punk look much worse without mitigating information he wasn't at liberty to share. He did seem to allude to it in his message board post when he wrote "There are a lot of nice things I can say about him, and you can absolutely argue his position on Moxley was correct."

[Embrodak]

Why would Dave not be at liberty to share something that was told to him anonymously? I get why Punk would have to take his post down if he was violating the talent handbook, but unless Dave really *is* on the AEW payroll like the Corny stand are always joking, why would he have to play footsy with that rule?

[The Thread Killer]

3 hours ago, Lukeless said:

Well it's not only Jericho who Punk has issues with.  Punk has problems with all the top guys in the company.  The dude is just a straight-up locker room cancer.

I think calling Punk a “cancer” is taking a simplistic and somewhat one sided view of this situation, and Punk in general. There can’t be much doubt that he’s clearly difficult to work with, and that’s putting it kindly.

Okay, let’s be honest…he’s an asshole.

But there is definitely another side to the story and you can’t just write the whole thing off as Punk being a locker room cancer.  You can tell quite a lot by taking a close look at who really dislikes Punk, and what kind of people they are, and what we know about how they behave behind the scenes. And then look at who does like Punk, and what they like about him.

Punk should not have done what he did, but this is not all on him. I still say he brings a ton of value to AEW, and they were better with him than without him. One of the things that almost gets overlooked in this whole mess is how great a lot of did he did in AEW was. I think Punk is one of those performers who is not unlike a lot of different talented musicians, or actors or other types of artists. They might be a pain in the ass to deal with, but generally it’s worth it because they get great results. And I don’t think he’s acting like a jerk just for the sake of being a jerk, I think he is trying to accomplish something and gets pissed off when other people don’t share his philosophy.

Dude definitely needs to relax, but I don’t think he’s a cancer.

[The Thread Killer]

14 minutes ago, Embrodak said:

Why would Dave not be at liberty to share something that was told to him anonymously? I get why Punk would have to take his post down if he was violating the talent handbook, but unless Dave really *is* on the AEW payroll like the Corny stand are always joking, why would he have to play footsy with that rule?

I don’t think Dave is on the AEW payroll at all. Hell, lately, he has even been sniping a little bit back-and-forth with TK. I just think he is ridiculously biased, and on top of that he treats what his precious sources tell him as gospel without bothering to look into both sides. And that’s a real problem because he is still looked upon as pretty much the final word in Pro Wrestling journalism.

[DMJ]

2 hours ago, Embrodak said:

Also have we talked about how it’s extremely weird that TK would ask the person who is probably the highest paid guy in the company to wrestle when he wasn’t cleared? Like setting aside Meltzer’s deceptive reporting, why the fuck would you jeopardize a high ticket asset like that if you’re TK? Was he listening to the Jericho-Moxley brain trust telling him that it was fine since it wasn’t a “real” match?

I wrote what I think is the explanation when the story first break:

Tony Khan, Moxley, and CM Punk viewed the "match" differently.

I'm guessing that Moxley believed CM Punk getting squashed in under 2 minutes was more "angle" than match and not a huge risk to his rehab. Maybe one or two bumps total. I could see Moxley getting in a cheap shot to Punk's foot within the a minute and then hitting the Death Rider. Moxley might've also believed he could execute everything very safely and that Punk should trust him as an experienced colleague/peer. 

To CM Punk, the guy who is rehabbing a totally destroyed foot who also was clearly not 100% convinced that this first match/angle even needed to happen, the risk was much greater. 

Moxley believed that Punk was healthy enough to shoot what he saw as more an angle than a match and, maybe Punk was thinking, "I have to look like I'm in fighting shape and about to wrestle a title match (which means training, which might have not been appropriate yet), the bell is going to ring, even if we're going to do just 60 seconds of "work," this is going to be a match and I'm not physicall ready for that."

Then you add in the people who have TK's ear. Mox might deny that he was pushing for this, but it seems like he was according to Punk's post. Maybe TK even checked in with the EVPs, specifically legendary tough guy Chris Jericho. TK might've heard - or may have just personally believed because, at the end of the day, he's not an athlete himself and has no idea what a real athlete goes through to get on the field/in the ring - that Punk wasn't being asked to do anything he couldn't do. This certainly wouldn't be the first time that a wrestling promoter asked one of their wrestlers to put their health at risk to do "what's best for business."

Where TK's naivete comes in, though, is that of all guys to ask do that, CM Punk has been 1000% clear that he is not that guy anymore and will never be that guy again. But there's plenty of guys that would've done it. Hell, isn't Paige even being on the roster at all based on her outright denial of the WWE's medical team's expert opinions?

[MoS]

10 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

I think calling Punk a “cancer” is taking a simplistic and somewhat one sided view of this situation, and Punk in general. There can’t be much doubt that he’s clearly difficult to work with, and that’s putting it kindly.

Okay, let’s be honest…he’s an asshole.

But there is definitely another side to the story and you can’t just write the whole thing off as Punk being a locker room cancer.  You can tell quite a lot by taking a close look at who really dislikes Punk, and what kind of people they are, and what we know about how they behave behind the scenes. And then look at who does like Punk, and what they like about him.

Punk should not have done what he did, but this is not all on him. I still say he brings a ton of value to AEW, and they were better with him than without him. One of the things that almost gets overlooked in this whole mess is how great a lot of did he did in AEW was. I think Punk is one of those performers who is not unlike a lot of different talented musicians, or actors or other types of artists. They might be a pain in the ass to deal with, but generally it’s worth it because they get great results. And I don’t think he’s acting like a jerk just for the sake of being a jerk, I think he is trying to accomplish something and gets pissed off when other people don’t share his philosophy.

Dude definitely needs to relax, but I don’t think he’s a cancer.

I've always thought of it this way: if I knew CM Punk personally, I would definitely not want to be friends with him. I wouldn't want to hang out with him. But he is not my friend, and as long as he doesn't hurt anyone, I don't care how he is in his personal life. What I do care about is his wrestling ability, and in my mind, it is undeniable that he is an incredible pro wrestler. Like, he gets it. His one-year AEW run was full of all-time great moments. His "Maxwell Jacob Friedman, will you be my valentine" dog collar promo still gives me goosebumps. I definitely want him on my wrestling TV. 

That said, the cheap shot he took at Hangman was beyond unprofessional and over the line. He knew Hangman couldn't respond. To quote his own self, it was coward shit. 

[sek69]

It's kind of amazing how Jericho went from the most vital part of AEW at the start (having a guy WB execs knew from being on WWE TV was a big part of what convinced them AEW was legit enough to have on their networks) to being an absolute albatross in ring and (apparently) behind the scenes. 

[Dale Wolfe]

I've worked with & managed plenty of dickheads over the years in a few different professions, and a lot of the time as long as they manage to get the work done you can just compartmentalise the parts of their personality that grates 

I know it's difficult when youre in close proximity with them but Punk is still a top tier talent for the show/company, so you just tolerate it & work around it don't you

Getting someone to try and work when they're not cleared is the biggest issue here, not the gossip really

[Jmare007]

Mox made a snide comment about Punk hopping around in one leg backstage (and Meltzer made it sound like it was the hurt leg). Which aligns with DMJ's theory that at least to Mox, Punk wasn't hurt enough to not do the squash/angle he wanted to run with him.

[sek69]

Mox seems kinda young to be doing the whole "if you aren't dead then you're healthy enough to work" deal that old timers would do. 

[Johnny Sorrow]

I just saw that AEW is running Dynamite in Colorado Springs in June. Colorado is hot for wrestling,  but I don't know about the Springs. The Denver and surrounding areas are going to be good to great as far as attendance goes but the Springs is a fucking drive. I won't be going. We'll see how it goes, but I'm surprised they aren't just running Broomfield where we saw Dynamite a few months ago. Broomfield is basically a suberb of Denver and is a great smaller arena.