6 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (10 April - Results & Review)
AEW airs real life CM Punk/Jack Perry fight in full. Elsewhere, wrestling show happens
Never has this introduction felt so superfluous.
For two years for both better and worse, CM Punk was the most-talked-about wrestler in All Elite Wrestling. Just the way he'd want it and theoretically just the way any wrestler should, Punk was the centre of the company's universe both narratively and otherwise.
When it was good, it was seminal; programmes with Darby Allin, Eddie Kingston and MJF weren't just great television but needle-moving pop culture-piercing acts brilliance contributing to a product undergoing a post-pandemic purple patch. When it was bad, it was seismically awful and destructive. Blow-ups at All Out 2022 and All In: London were reality checks on a relationship gone sour, wounds that weren't like to be healed and a promoter/talent relationship doomed to failure with blame on both sides and a business agreement laying dead long before flawed attempts to resuscitate it.
Punk's 2023 release and subsequent return to WWE seemed to mark the end of the sad tale, but perhaps it was naïve to assume that all along - 'Cult Of Personality' fits like a glove because Punk knows how valuable being one is, and relentless re-litigation online was always going to feed back into a promotion that has never hidden away from utilising social media discourse for their angles when appropriate.
But was this appropriate? Let's light the fuse...