Warner Bros. Discovery announced AEW Collision yesterday during their upfront presentation at Madison Square Garden in New York City, NY. WBD announced that several active and inactive superstars will feature on the show. However, CM Punk was excluded from the press release.
In the past several weeks, a rumor circulated that CM Punk will be the main star of AEW Collision. Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated noted that Punk’s name was removed from the WBD e-mail that was sent to the media.
WBD then issued a statement to a news outlet and stated that CM Punk isn’t affiliated with AEW Collision. Many fans thought that was work. However, it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Last September, CM Punk, Ace Steel, and the Elite were involved in a backstage fight during the All Out media scrum. As a result, Steel was fired from the company.
PWInsider reported that CM Punk along with Ace Steel had expected to return for AEW Collision. However, AEW management has decided Steel shouldn’t be working backstage on AEW Collision. Punk hadn’t agreed to that. Therefore, the discussion between Punk and AEW has failed once again.
“The belief among those we’ve spoken with is that Steel was expected to return in conjunction with Punk next month, working behind the scenes. However, the story making the way around AEW backstage today at Dynamite is that a decision was made that Steel would not be working backstage at the actual Collision tapings. As you might imagine, that left Punk and AEW on opposite sides of the discussion, which in turn led to Punk being removed from all promotional material released for the AEW Collision series today.”
H/T Ringside News
Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer noted that WBD believed CM Punk and AEW will come to an agreement. As of now, United Center in Chicago has been booked for the premiere show of AEW Collision.
“There were people who thought this was the ultimate blow-up, and Punk screwed Tony on Tony’s big announcement on Tony’s big day to WBD. From the WBD side, because nobody from the AEW side has talked about this at all nor confirmed any of this, from the WBD side, they have said their belief is there will be an attempt to work it out. They’re hopeful that they work it out and it’s not a dead deal. This is the situation. The United Center is booked, but if there’s no Punk, do you go to a different arena? Do you go to the United Center without Punk? Because if you go to the United Center, everyone is going to assume, even if you announce him or not, that he’s going to be there.”
H/T WrestlingNews.co
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