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Folks, it's happening; it's finally happening: AEW is going to unify their two World Heavyweight Championship belts at All Out.
All of the anticipation has been worth it, all of the hype has been justified, and the dynamic duo of CM Punk and Jon Moxley, a pair of post-modern anti-heroes who are among the most influential performers of the last decade, will duke it out for in Chicago for the biggest prize in the promotion. The match could go either way, the crowd will be divided, and the ultimate winner will likely go on to define the next era of AEW moving forward.
… only that isn't what's going to happen. No, after a pair of very contentious interactions on the “House of the Dragon” edition of Dynamite, Tony Khan opted to book the unification match on the penultimate edition of Dynamite before the September 4th Pay-Per-View, in a move that isn't quite unprecedented in AEW history, let alone the history of wrestling as a whole, but is a head-scratcher, to say the least. Since those promos, that show, and TK's announcement in the middle of it, rumors of all sorts have swelled about what is happening in the promotion right now, what led things to get to this point, and how it could affect the future both on the next edition of Dynamite, at All Out, and in the future moving forward.
Did CM Punk just challenge former #AEW World Champion Hangman Page to a rematch here in West Virginia?! #AEWDynamite is LIVE on TBS! pic.twitter.com/O3vXnRbqg8
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) August 18, 2022
Trying to make sense of the rumors surrounding AEW and CM Punk.
Whenever something important happens in the professional wrestling world, fans immediately look to Dave Meltzer to see what the longest-running “wrestling observer” in the industry has to say on the subject. Fans rush to his Twitter, check F4w.com for a written story, and turn to the network's various podcasts to see what the experts have to say.
Fortunately, Meltzer and his Wrestling Observer Radio co-host Bryan Alvarez had a lot to say on the matter, as you can read below via a transcription from ITR Wrestling.
Article Continues BelowDave Meltzer: “If you’re wondering about the CM Punk thing at the start of the show with Adam Page, that was weird. For everyone. As in, nobody knew he was going to do that. If you remember months ago when they were feuding and they said that there’s a lot of reality to it, well, there’s a lot of reality to it. I don’t know what the deal was, and nobody else does either. Punk was supposed to go out there and talk about Moxley and build the match. And he did, after he talked about Adam Page…”
Bryan Alvarez: “Well I should mention also since a lot of people have read the wrong thing into that. Whatever they’re gonna do next week with the title match, I saw a lot of people saying ‘Oh you know it’s probably gonna be Punk and Hangman at All Out because of Punk’s promo at the beginning of the show.’”
Dave Meltzer: “Punk’s promo at the beginning of the show had absolutely zero, zilch, to do with whatever they’re gonna do at the pay-per-view. So don’t read into that, ‘Oh maybe they’re gonna do this or that,’ that was not supposed to happen. Punk went into business for himself and then moved on. Which was bullsh*t actually because he called the guy out, and it was off script, so of course Hangman’s not gonna come out. Then Punk calls him a coward, like what?”
Alright, so in Meltzer's opinion, the opening segment where Punk called out Page was 100 percent a shoot that wasn't previously discussed with Khan, Q. T. Marshall or anyone else in the back. But why? Why did Punk break the unspoken wrestler's code and attack a performer who couldn't punch back? Well, Meltzer had a response to that, too, this time via a transcription from Wrestle Purists.
“Right now there is a ton of backstage drama involving many of the top guys that has gotten much worse in recent weeks. There’s a part of me where I just think Tony Khan needs to sit everyone down and air everything out before it gets worse. The big thing that started all this is that Colt Cabana is not in the Dark Order with no angle and stopped being brought to television. He was going to be cut but Khan signed him for ROH. This is really the catalyst of everything although different people have different stories as to why it happened, including Page and Punk. But even if that didn’t happen, it was probably going to happen for something else just given the nature of the different personalities involved. It feels like a number of people are close to their breaking point if things don’t get settled.”
Now, if you've been keeping up with AEW over the past few months and with Punk's professional wrestling career as a whole, none of this should come as too big of a surprise. More than a few wrestlers, from Miro to Andrade, have complained about their booking despite being mainstays of weekly television, and as AEW picks up more wrestlers by the month, this issue will only get worse.
Furthermore, the decision to keep Cabana has been equally confusing for fans in the know, as the proprietor of “Boom Boom” went from Punk's former Second City Saints tag team partner to someone who sued him for $200,000 in damages plus an additional $1 million in punitive damages after the man born Phillip Brooks didn't pay his court fees when the duo were sued for defamation by former WWE doctor Christopher Amann. Had Khan simply fired Cabana, that would have been one thing, but the decision to remove him from the Dark Order, remove him from weekly TV but keep him under contract at the behest of more than a few higher-ups within the company – the Young Bucks according to The Wrestling Observer – to effectively wrestle on Ring of Honor every few months rubbed basically everyone the wrong way. “Hangman” pointed out Punk's poor treatment of Cabana in one of his promos pre-Double or Nothing, and the “Chick Magnet” held that grudge over his entire post-surgery period in rehab, so clearly, this isn't some on-the-fly fling.
Goodness, things have reportedly gotten so bad that folks within the company told Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful that they feared Punk might walk out before the “House of the Dragon” edition of Dynamite because of how heated the situation has become.
Could this all be a massive work? Could AEW have cooked this story up to pop a massive rating on the penultimate edition of AEW Dynamite before All Out or build to something even bigger? Oh yeah, most definitely, but even if this particular storyline is a fictionalized dramatization of perceived real-life drama, where there's heat, there's often fire, and in August of 2022, no story has more heat than this one in AEW.
