The big rumor surrounding AEW for the past few weeks has been the supposedly incoming arrival of both CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. All signs indicate Punk will be the first to appear, given the various hints that have been dropped on AEW Dynamite over the past few weeks and the upcoming Aug. 20 episode of AEW Rampage taking place at Chicago’s United Center. Tony Khan, Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega have all stopped short of commenting on whether or not Punk is actually coming to the company. Chris Jericho did the same while speaking with Kenny McIntosh of Inside The Ropes this past week, though he did talk a bit about how big of an impact Punk would potentially have on the growing company.
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“Well, I mean, the short answer is, ‘Of course.’ I mean, he’s one of the few guys out there that has this mythology surrounding him because he hasn’t wrestled so long,” Jericho said. “Take Punk out of the equation. Sting is with us now. Edge is back in WWE. Christian is with us. But you take, other than that, guys who haven’t wrestled for a long time, he’s probably at the top of the list, unless you’re going to throw Steve Austin in there and you know Steve’s not going to come back.”
“So, it would create a huge buzz that would add to the already huge buzz that we have, and I think just the fact that 12,000 tickets sold at the United Center without one name even being announced, or one match even being announced, shows just how much anticipation there is for all of these things. So, yeah, we’ll see what happens,” he added.
While AEW officials and Punk himself have stayed quiet about the rumors, nobody has outright shot down the idea of him arriving in the promotion soon. He’s previously said in interviews that the Jacksonville-based promotion interests him much more than going back to WWE for one last run.
“I think the landscape currently is much different than when I left,” Punk said while on Oral Sessions.“You can play the game where you’re like, ‘Oh, AEW was an option, would you have gone right after you left WWE?’ If you are going to play that game, there is no way they (WWE) would have handled it the way they handled it with suspending me for two months and nobody contacting me and the next thing I know, I got my release papers on my wedding day. That wouldn’t have happened if there was an AEW. Because then they probably would have approached me and been like, ‘Hey, your suspension is up. Ready to come back to work? Let’s work this out.’ Or handle it like any other sports organization would have handled [a] star pitcher f—ing going home. They’re not just going to let him leave the team, go to a rival organization.”
“What would it take? Oh gosh. Without wanting to insult anybody on either side of the fence, any WWE talent or AEW talent, it would take, above all, an interesting scenario,” he said. “A story that would be fun to tell and also just the stupidest amount of money. But, they can save themselves a lot of money if they present a fun storyline. Now, what that is, I don’t know. I’m a pretty picky guy, especially at this point. I think there are more interesting people on the AEW side of things for me to wrestle and that’s because I’ve never wrestled them before. Young Bucks, Kenny Omega.”
