AEW's Tony Khan Addresses the Criticism of CM Punk's Booking So Far
CM Punk has been a member of the All Elite Wrestling roster for more than two months now. He's wrestled five times for the company so far, including a match with Darby Allin at the All In pay-per-view, and is scheduled to face Eddie Kingston at Full Gear this coming Saturday. But while many fans have been pleased with Punk's run so far, there are already some critics calling the company out for not having Punk square off with the company's biggest stars right off the bat. In a new interview with PW Torch ahead of last week's AEW Rampage, Tony Khan explained why.
"I see the trend; our numbers are so much better than they were going into the last few months and there has been an unquestionable lift since CM Punk came in. For some reason, I see people trying to discredit Punk all the time, that he hasn't been a huge lift to our business, and he has been," Khan said (h/t Wrestling Inc.). "He is only scratching the surface. I have intentionally in working with him tried to hold back a lot of his biggest marquee matches and stories. Tonight, we are going to get into some of that, Eddie Kingston is here in St. Louis, Eddie is healthy and he is ready to be here.
"I want to see Punk and Eddie Kingston tonight face to face in that ring. I am very excited going forward, maybe at Full Gear to see them lock up. I believe that is a match fans want to see. We've been getting Punk reintegrated building him a winning streak and I think it's worked great," he continued. "When you look at the rating we did for our first Wednesday back, that was a really strong number last week He was such a huge part of it kicking the show off, wrestling through the entire first segment in a great match. He's just lifted our business so much, I see people constantly doing really petty stuff trying to discredit him and it's just ridiculous because he's done so much for us."
After going in-depth after AEW's recent ratings, Khan talked about the impact Punk has had on AEW as a business and how WarnerMedia wants him to be one of the centerpieces of the company.
Do you remember Double Or Nothing was about as good of a PPV at that time that we could do. It was the first PPV in over a year that had a full outdoor stadium and thousands of fans going nuts and it was pretty surreal to watch Double Or Nothing this year and it was a great show. It did great numbers, that and Revolution, our first two shows of the year were way up from the year before but they weren't the kind of numbers that we did for All Out," Khan said. "All Out was the first time we have ever done over 200,000 and there was clearly a ton of interest in Punk's return to the ring.
"I think between the huge number we did for all out and the massive number we did for the First Dance Rampage and the insane merchandise sales we have done since we've come in, the big lift in our subscription video services. We have seen a huge rise in subscribers to our international streaming since he came in and I just see tons of business opportunities. I was on with TNT yesterday and they are so excited about the direction we are going and the future of the business and there's so many possibilities they see for the AEW franchise he is one of the big stars they want to build around," he added.
