On June 17, CM Punk will return to Tony Khan’s All Elite Wrestling and main event the debut episode of their new TV show ‘AEW Collision’ on TNT.
Punk will team up with AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR and take on ROH TV Champion Samoa Joe and Bullet Club Gold (Jay White & Juice Robinson) in a Trios Match.
Eric Bischoff, who used to run World Championship Wrestling back in the day and presented WCW Monday NITRO on TNT every week for several years, spoke about CM Punk’s AEW return on the Strictly Business podcast.
Here’s what the 2021 WWE Hall of Famer said:
“This was a major show, a brand new show, announced on a major network with what everybody thought was this huge star, and I’m telling you, like I’ve told you from day one, this guy is not a star.
Here’s a really funny part of this that I’m thoroughly fricking enjoying is CM Punk has set himself up for just a dramatic failure.
CM Punk came in with all of this mystique, and he did a good job of creating that mystique and maintaining it, and for that, I have respect.
Once he got there, Punk didn’t deliver, and then he turned into a b*tch, and then he turned into something a little darker than just being a b*tch and being whiny, and the audience has started to turn against him.
The rabid CM Punk fan base has diminished substantially. Now because of all the mishegoss and all the drama and the politics backstage and the fights and the biting and the dog, the scratching, the hair pulling and whatever else went on, it sounds like such a b*tch fest to me anyway, but because of all that, now we’re bringing Punk back, and guess what?
Remember when I told you, and I think I told you on this show, if I was Tony Khan, I would not bring Punk to the UK. I would establish the fact that I could sell 70,000 tickets without him.
They sold 65,000 tickets, and then they announced him, and how many additional tickets have they sold? 700? Like a percent, whatever it is, it’s incremental at best and now they’re having a hard time selling out these Collision shows with Punk as a centerpiece. Am I right or am I right?
When I came out and said that, I took so much heat for this. CM Punk is the most overrated, I didn’t even say potential, I said he was gonna be the biggest financial flop in wrestling history and I think I’m being proven right every minute of the day.”
Back in May, Eric already made it clear that he has no respect for CM Punk, when he said the following during an episode of his weekly ’83 Weeks’ podcast about Punk visiting backstage at WWE RAW in Chicago in April:
“What a desperate b*tch. Maybe because I have zero respect for him, like none. To me, it just came off as a desperate move for attention.
It did controversy. When controversy works in your favor, it’s great, but controversy can also have blowback.
I don’t think there’s gonna be any blowback or negative reaction to this other than maybe from me, which doesn’t clearly matter.”
Also Read: AEW Facing Problems Despite CM Punk Returning
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