When CM Punk was officially fired from AEW, created one of the biggest ‘What ifs' in professional wrestling history.

Sure, Punk's run in the promotion had largely run its course, as he was fighting EVPs – and Jungle Boys – calling out former champions on live microphones, and causing his boss to “fear for his life” at the promotion's biggest show of the year, but the “Second City Saint” was also the promotion's biggest star and helped to get plenty of additional eyes on the promotion, even if the viewership numbers haven't really changed much over the past year.

Discussing Punk's decision to leave AEW for WWE at Survivor Series in an interview with Sportskeeda, QT Marshall revealed that he wasn't particularly surprised to see the “Best in the World” make the jump, going so far as to suggest that his exit was as professional as Cody Rhodes' before him.

“Yes and no. I don't think he got to finish his story, even at AEW. That's become the term now, the phrase, ‘Finish the story.' I think being in AEW, it kind of gave him his confidence, to know that the people were still there for him and he could still do it. Why not? If you're gonna do it, and you can't do it at AEW anymore for whatever the reasons were, go back to WWE, if willing to give him a chance. I always liked him backstage. But I didn't think it was gonna be out of the realm that he would go back. The WWE has so people that have done negative stuff and then come back. I don't think he really did anything negative. He just walked away, that was it. Yeah, he did his interview that they had a lawsuit about. But other than that, it's like Cody. When Cody left WWE, he was a true professional. He's been a true professional about leaving AEW, and I try to follow in their footsteps. It's why I've never done any public interviews. You have to be a [gentleman] because the wrestling part is just a little bit of what we do,” QT Marshall told Sportskeeda via Fightful.

“I don't want to get punched for no reason, so I'd rather just talk to someone face-to-face, let them know, and then we take it from there. But it wasn't a surprise to me that he was gonna come back, especially with Survivor Series in Chicago. It's a layup. Why wouldn't you take it? You know what I mean? Then you give him a chance and see what happens.”

Was Punk debuting at Survivor Series a layup for WWE? 100 percent; the reaction to the “Second City Saint” returning in front of a sold-out crowd in Illinois is about as surefire a booking decision as it comes, and the way Paul “Triple H” Levesque pulled it off will go down as one of the greatest reveals of all time. Still, it wouldn't have happened if Punk wasn't released from AEW in the first place, which QT Marshall had plenty more to talk about in his Sportskeeda interview.

QT Marshall believes CM Punk's AEW issues were overblown.

Discussing what happened at the end of CM Punk's run in AEW, specifically his All In altercation with Jack Perry, QT Marshall explained his perspective on the altercation, noting that it probably wasn't as bad as some fans may have come to believe.

“Yeah, I mean, ideally, him and Jack, whatever, they got into a little argument. I don't think it was anything… I don't know the other part, which is what Tony had mentioned on TV. I wasn't there for that. But ideally, there's a lot of people that people don't like at work [laughs]. I've worked at numerous places. We always joke about the fact that I worked at Planet Hollywood. I worked there for seven, eight years. I disliked about 90% of those people. The difference is, they never knew because I tried to be as professional as possible. That's just the job, right. But things are gonna happen, and people get all worked up and so on and so forth. But it is a different time. I've always been the type that, hey, if there's gonna be an issue, we can talk about it like men, and we can bring another person. When I spoke to Punk, I said, ‘Hey, I'm gonna bring someone with me, and we're gonna go to his locker room, and we're gonna speak because I wanted to know from him. Hey, this is what I heard, and I don't want to believe this,” QT Marshall noted.

“I'd rather believe what comes out of your mouth. That's it. Any time there's ever been an issue in AEW, the one thing that came out with I quit and I resigned, whatever, he was the realest person in the locker room. It's the truth. I was honest. What I was told, and I was taught this breaking in, was there's only one place that we don't have to be 100% honest, and that's out there in front of the people. Ideally. The rest of it, we should just be normal, level-headed, and be honest with each other no matter what it is. Just be honest, and if there's an issue, then you bring in someone else, so that way there's always a witness to what's going on. You just talk it out, and that's it. I know it's not the most popular thing, but at the end of the day, I've been punched in the face before for running my mouth when I was younger. I'm not talking about in wrestling, I'm just saying in general.”

Should AEW have found a way to make things work with CM Punk, getting the two sides on the same side moving forward in the pursuit of a shared goal? On paper, yes, but clearly the pairing had run its course by All In, with their split giving both sides new life heading into 2024. In the end, sometimes a free agent signing simply doesn't work and Punk in AEW intially worked… at least until it really, really, really, really didn't.