When Tony Khan announced that the match between CM Punk and Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship was going to take place on AEW Dynamite instead of at All Out in the former's hometown of Chicago, it shook the fibers of the AEW Galaxy, nay, the professional wrestling world to its core.

Granted, it's not like Khan hadn't booked championship matches on television before, as Mox actually ended his first reign with the AEW World Championship on Dynamite during Winter is Coming 2020 – the same show that saw the debut of Sting – but this match could have seriously qualified as the most important match in AEW history, as there'd never been a World Champion versus World Champion match in the promotion's history. While popping a million views on television is important – which they did – selling Pay-Per-View buys is even more so, especially as the company attempts to earn a bigger valuation from Warner Bros Discovery in their new contract negotiations.

So, with the entire fate of the promotion completely in his hands, Khan decided to have his cake and eat it too by booking Moxley to win the title in his hometown as a local man-made good babyface, only to then have it all go to his head, turn hostile on the greater Chicagoland fans, and force Punk to return to the ring. Punk predictably lamented his loss and questioned whether he could ever do it again before having his long-time trainer Ace Steel, whom very few fans knew, take to the ring and persuade the “Chick Magnet” to give it one final go and prove why he's the “Voice fo the Voiceless.”

Now to some, this was the worst kind of call back to the best era of WWE; booking a champion to lose in a squash only to go after their belt once more was a Vince McMahon special, and it very infrequently resulted in either performer looking better in the end, as the champion would look bad because they got squashed and their opponent would look bad because they then lost the belt to the person who they squashed a few days earlier. Need proof? Look no further than how many runs throughout the history of the WWE Championships have single-digit reigns, let alone how many runs have back-and-forth bookings. For a time there, that belt was being changed over monthly.

Can Khan avoid that pitfall? Can he put over Punk in front of his home crowd without totally burying Moxley? Or will Moxley come out on top and make his opponent look foolish yet again; all but killing any chance of him being taken seriously in the main event picture again? But first and foremost, one question has to be asked: why was CM Punk AEW's top men's contender in the first place?

CM Punk is technically the rightful man for AEW's All Out main event.

Alright, so how can CM Punk be the number one contender for the men's championship belts in AEW when he was just defeated – quickly, mind you – for the belt on the previous edition of Dynamite? Did he wrestle on Dark and Dark Elevation to bolster his case? Or did everyone else just have a really bad week, and he rose by default?

Fortunately for AEW, their rankings, though influenced by win-loss records, aren't decided by an easily identified equation. It's not like, say, football, where the team with the best record gets the top seed, followed by the team with the second-best record, etc.; Khan and company have full discretion to move performers up and down the ranks as they see fit and don't even have to give a title shot to the top team, as FTR will tell anyone who wants to hear it. Before Dynamite went on the air, Punk was listed as the number one contender on the AEW website, and thus, he will forever be known as the number one contender for the week of August 31st.

Furthermore, why does it even matter that Punk is the number one contender? The whole of Moxley's opening promo was that he didn't care who he wrestled and went so far as to leave a pre-signed open contract in the center of the ring for anyone to sign. If that was the point, why did AEW need to goose Punk's spot in the rankings when it was completely unnecessary?

Frankly, your guess is as good as mine.

Even as the professional wrestling world rumbles about the backstage issues in AEW, TK has built up a lot of goodwill with his fans. He's consistently booked Pay-Per-Views that were viewed as very good to excellent, and even NXT's decision to run Worlds Collide a few hours before All Out‘s opening bell shouldn't stop the show from doing incredible numbers. If this is the route he wanted to go and he actually sticks the landing, he'll be lauded as a hero. And if not? Well, fans are already complaining about this match's booking; why would that change?