When CM Punk went down with a broken foot that robbed him of another “Summer of Punk,” it felt like a massive blow to the immediate plans and overall landscape of AEW.
After three years of largely sticking to the plan, with Tony Khan booking long and healthy title runs for each of his handpicked, AEW-incubated champions who had been with the promotion since their first episode of Dynamite, AEW took a decidedly left-field turn to give the belt to relative newcomer CM Punk, ending “Hangman” Adam Page‘s title run at just 197 days, and turning the promotion into the wild wild west.
Sure, AEW had title changes before and even had runs that weren't particularly long but after being so careful with how the promotion's belts were handled up to that point – save the booking of Sammy Guevara/Cody Rhodes/Scorpio Sky for the TNT Title – the decision to ride momentum instead of sticking to the plan was a risk that ultimately backfired the second Punk landed funny on his foot in his first proper match as the World Champion.
And yet, against all odds, Khan made it work. He booked a Casino Battle Royal to decide on who should challenge then-number one contender Jon Moxley for an interim title match at Forbidden Door – which was kind of convoluted but ultimately worked – got New Japan involved in the process and ultimately landed a main event match at the co-promoted Pay-Per-View live from The United Center in Chicago that could have rivaled any other put on in the calendar year of 2022. While only time will tell how the promotion plans to book Punk's return at some point down the line, with a unification match of some sort surely having to take place, for now, fans are being afforded fun, exciting matches like Moxley vs. Brody King which wouldn't have been in the cards before and have largely seemed to approve of the way the booking was handled.
One of the fans – if you can call him that – who decidedly falls into the other camp is Jim Cornette, who, despite having never been unwilling to share his opinion on something he doesn't like, has taken particular joy in trashing the way Moxley has held Punk's strap warm for him and with his overall presentation in general.
Jon Moxley's interim run is good news for AEW, bad news for Jim Cornette.
When AEW started on the first day of 2019, no one was more excited about it than Jim Cornette. A long-time WWE hater who notoriously hasn't been a fan of their in-ring product for years, the prospect of a new national challenger taking on Vince McMahon's company was right up his alley.
…That honeymoon period went away real quick.
Though Cornette will give AEW praise from time to time, naming Tony Khan the Booker of the Year in 2021, his well-established hatred for The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, and more “outlaw mud show wrestlers” like Joey Janella quickly took the shine off Tony Khan's promotion. And yet, fast forward to June of 2022, and Cornette was in a pretty good place with the promotion. He's long been a fan of FTR, who are having a big-time moment in the promotion, and he has sung the praise of CM Punk, even if he also occasionally sings his version of his theme song, “Cult of Beef with Extra Cheese.” But then, much like with AEW as a whole, Punk's injury ended that celebratory moment. Cornette critiqued the way the interim title was handled, and when Jon Moxley, one of his least favorite wrestlers, ultimately won the belt, it threw the former Midnight Express manager back into full-on hater mode. Here's what he had to say about Moxley's recent match against Brody King, as dictated by Ringside News:
“I will give this a chance just to see if Moxley does something different this time. So I paid attention. Under one minute and 15 seconds, they went to the floor. I just said, f*ck it, Moxley’s the worst wrestler in the world and I tried to fast-forward to the finish but [AEW] can’t manage the time. So they almost run over.”
Oof, when someone complains about the time, their hatred runs deeper than any one move, match, or promo.
Look, Jim Cornette is a contrarian and makes very good money by being one. His fans love to tune into his weekly podcasts to hear him talk trash on both AEW and WWE, and even if he secretly likes the product on the television, there's more money in dunking on what he doesn't like than championing what he does. Unfortunately, with CM Punk out for the foreseeable future, his shows should have plenty of fodder.
Follow Us
Subscribe