AEW: Tony Khan Explains Why He Booked the CM Punk vs. Jon Moxley Program Differently

CM Punk and Jon Moxley will battle for the AEW World Championship this Sunday in the main event of All Out, but the road to that match is one that many fans didn’t expect. Punk returned from his surgery-requiring foot injury at the Quake By The Lake event on Aug. 10 and it was immediately apparent that AEW was looking to have Punk and Mox unify the AEW World and Interim AEW World Championships. But after the pair got in two pull-apart brawls a week later, Tony Khan opted to have that unification match on the Aug. 24 episode of Dynamite. 

That match would up only lasting three minutes as Punk reaggravated his foot injury and enabled Moxley to hit a pair of Death Riders for the dominant win. The loss gave Punk the shortest AEW title reign in company history (87 days) and makes him the only AEW Champ to not have a successful title defense. Moxley offered an open contract for a match at All Out, which Punk only accepted after a motivational pep talk from his old coach Ace Steel. 

The build for the match is wildly different compared to how AEW usually books its champions. Khan explained in a media call on Thursday that his plan was deliberate in that it still managed to build intrigue and hype for Sunday’s show while still drawing a massive rating for their first match on TV.

“I do think it’s been a big benefit. It’s different than what we’ve typically done. It’s from one extreme to another because I’ve done go home shows where all the hay is in the barn and sometimes it can be a challenge and you’re taking practice swings with the ball on a tee,” Khan said. “I knew it was going to be a fast and furious buildup, but the anticipation has been even stronger. I wouldn’t say we should do it like this every time, but this is the 15th pay-per-view for AEW, we’ve never done anything like this, and I think it made the build very exciting. it’s raised a lot of questions going into the match, there is a lot of speculation about what the future holds for both men, what the future holds for the championship, and what’s going to happen in part two based on what happened in that match on TV. It was also undeniably a great ratings draw for us.”

“We had tremendous ratings last week,” he later added. “The biggest thing of all, which I thought was cool, is we built more interest in the pay-per-view while doing the biggest total audience the show has done since February. I was really pleased with it. What it created was a week of people loudly wondering ‘what the heck is going on here, this is crazy.’ In this case, that was good. The promos that Jon and Punk did, I think reeled a lot of people back in.”

h/t 411Mania