This last week, drama has intensified. It centers around one man’s unwillingness to budge, and another man’s fandom for the first. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff, but instead their possible modern equivalents, CM Punk and Tony Khan.
This problem never truly got resolved. So much time was taken away after the problem, due to a major injury suffered by CM Punk, but, in that time, the man simply stewed, and the one who should’ve been proactive, Tony Khan, was busy enough with other fires to put out, that he didn’t deal with the biggest one. AEW had been offered a new show, 2 hours, airing on Saturdays in the same time slot as Wednesday Night Dynamite. The catch? It would be the vehicle for CM Punk’s return, and he, along with others who had gotten heat on themselves, or were ardent supporters of Punk, would primarily appear on the show. Tony made sure to spend the big bucks for it immediately, securing Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”, making clear he was pulling out all the stops for Punk’s new show.
Punk’s new show. Emphasis on Punk.
Why? Because, truly, top to bottom, it is his show. As we’ve now learned, he has more power over it than possibly anyone but Tony Khan has ever had over an AEW television series. He heavily involves himself in the careers of all the talents that he considers to be Collision mainstays. He also actively books the angles for the show, directly with Tony Khan. While this alone isn’t inherently a negative, as it has undoubtedly brought a very different feel to the show, allowing it to stand out compared to the other AEW programming, it didn’t stop there.
Punk could be referred to as the foreman. That is to say, he decides who’s there, who isn’t, and what those who are there are allowed to do, at least to a degree. Even at the very moment I write this, more news is coming out about conflicts he’s had with other talents at Collision since its’ launch. The floodgates were opened the second Punk’s eye caught a sign in the crowd this last Saturday: it simply said “Hangman Country”. Greensboro, NC happens to be home turf, to a degree, of Elite member and former World and World Tag Team Champion, Hangman Adam Page. Punk saw this, and decided that, despite being marketed very heavily as a babyface, he would attempt to work the crowd with a heelish joke about Hangman’s toy sales.
It sounds about as mundane as it is, but it got recorded, and started a lot of discourse. That discourse, however minimal it’s origin was, would lead to the shitstorm that had clearly been brewing for weeks. We would soon after learn of wrestler after wrestler Punk had been contentious with, and, in many cases, had un-booked or removed from Collision day of. We’d also learn of a planned Hangman vignette that would’ve been taped at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, that would have it’s location moved, likely by Tony Khan himself, potentially out of fear that a combustible scenario could come to happen if Page and Punk were to see each other.
Therein lies the problem: Tony Khan fears losing the support and friendship of CM Punk, seemingly, more than anyone or anything else.
Punk is, at his core, a man inclined to push at a system of rules and regulations he finds himself in, to see how far it’ll bend, before it can’t bend any further. Before, he was in a place that wouldn’t bend for him at all, while bending as far as possible for others, and he recognized the problems there, due to his lot in life. Now, he finally has the bend going in his favor, above all others, and, naturally, he just keeps pushing. Is he at fault for his own actions? Of course, but I don’t think anyone should actually act surprised at this point he keeps taking them, when its been made clear to him he can push as far as he wants.
The only one who can stop the bending, the only one who can right the ship, is, in the end, Tony Khan.