Tony Khan Addresses CM Punk's Claims About Having To Pay His Own Surgery Costs in AEW

Recently, CM Punk has made claims that he paid for his own medical expenses when he injured his tricep at AEW All Out 2022 against Jon Moxley. Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics asked AEW President Tony Khan if those claims were accurate, as in the past AEW has gone out of its way to pay for the medical expenses of its talent, including Aussie Open's Mark Davis who Khan bumped into the hallway at an ROH taping and he paid for his knee surgery. 

"Well, nobody in the company spoke to me for I don't know, six months. Paid for my surgery, booked my surgery. Thankfully Doc Sampson, who I knew from WWE and had a good rapport with, helped me with that but I was on my own for all that stuff," Punk said on The MMA Hour. "If you think I deserve to be, you know, fired or treated like that, that's your opinion. It's none of my business what you think of me but ya know, doing this one [gestures to injured tricep] and the recovery for this one based on the how the recovery went for that one im just like man it's night and day. and it's almost the comparison between places where there's structure and there's protocols and there's professional people in charge of things and im not having to research and find a pt spot. I had no help, nothing. that's insane to me."

Khan responded, noting that they typically do pay those expenses and it doesn't sound right to him but he would reimburse him for it if that's the case. "We typically do pay those expenses. I'd have to look into that. I can't say for sure," Khan said on the call. "It doesn't sound right to me. If that is the case, I would reimburse him, honestly. I didn't think that was the case and it doesn't sound right, so I would have to look into that. Typically, we do cover those medical expenses, especially for something that occurred in the ring, as that did, so I would have to look into that. I can't say for sure."

Punk was let go from AEW following AEW All In London where he had a backstage altercation with Jack Perry. At All Out just a week later in Chicago, Khan revealed they had terminated his contract and he was no longer a member of All Elite Wrestling, noting that Punk made him "fear for his life."