What does AEW Collision look like without CM Punk? Will ratings hold strong or even improve slightly as fans clamor to see what Tony Khan has planned to replace the “Best in the World?” Or will his fans top to spend their Saturday nights watching something else, maybe college football, as it inches closer to the divisional segment of the schedule?

In the sometimes humble opinion of two-time WWE Hall of Famer Booker T, the answer is rather obvious: CM Punk fans just aren't going to tune into AEW anymore.

“We all know CM Punk has his fans. I said the smallest little bit of things from a constructive aspect about CM Punk, and CM Punk fans came after me like with razor's edge, daggers, just wanting to kill me. CM Punk's got an abundance of fans out there. I'm sure CM Punk being fired from AEW is going to affect them in some way just because they had always been trying to crash that [one] million ceiling [in viewership], and they did it a couple of times. I think they did it with CM Punk. I think CM Punk said they even drew their biggest house on his back,” Booker T said via Wrestling Inc.

“I think it's going to be a significant drop-off without CM Punk. How big? We're gonna find out. Tony Khan backed himself into this situation, though. I don't think Tony Khan has anybody to blame but himself. Hiring CM Punk, pretty much giving him the keys to the castle and saying, ‘Man, whatever you want because we're looking for ratings. We need the ratings.' He got what he paid for. It's just that simple.”

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Is Booker T correct? Will Punk's fans simply turn on the promotion they've watched weekly since 2021 because they either aren't fans of the promotion anymore or because they would rather not contribute their viewership to a company that fired their favorite wrestler, effectively pulling off a soft, unofficial boycott? Though it'll take more than a week to find out, the number from the fallout edition of Collision post-All Out could give fans an inkling of the promotion's future in a Punkless world. Why? Because in the world of television, if you don't get the ratings, you get canceled.

There's at least one WWE Superstar who would love to see CM Punk return.

When Zelina Vega blasted off a tweet with nothing but a bright red X in the body, fans immediately thought of one thing and one thing alone: CM Punk.

Asked about the tweet read around the world by Newsday, Vega admitted that she's a fan of Punk, but the tweet in question was actually in relation to a jacket worn by Rey Mysterio with a red X over his son Dominik Mysterio's face.

“I wish him the best. Would it be great to see him again? Absolutely,” Zelina Vega said via Fightful, “Rey had this jacket on during our entrance, and he put a big, red ‘X' on Dominik's face, because his face was on the jacket. And that became the thing — putting a big, red, ‘X' on Dominik's face. So that was something we were going to run with.”

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Probing just a bit further under the surface, Vega noted that, while she isn't particularly privy to how things went down in AEW, she is a massive fan of the “Best in the World,” and would love to work with him again in the future.

“I don't know much about his situation with AEW, but I have always had a fantastic relationship with CM Punk. You hear all these things about him. I am so big on not listening to other people's experiences, the dirt sheets, all that crap. He's always been a fantastic person. There's layers to people. And when people are just so hung up on the outer layers of what a person can be, you get stuck there. And if you want to stay there, that's great. But when you get to know the core of a person, that's where I like to hang out. To me, Punk's been nothing but great. So will the ‘X' be meaning putting an ‘X' on Dominik's face, and CM Punk? It absolutely can be, because, I'm a big supporter of him. And he's always been that way for me.”

Will Vega and Punk be co-workers once more in WWE? Only time will tell, but if Punker does enter into The Fed's locker room once more, at least one of the “boys” will have his back.