10 Fascinating Backstage Facts From CM Punk's AEW Run

1. World Title Reigns

CM Punk stats
AEW

Fact: Despite being one of only two men to hold the AEW World Championship more than once, he has by far the shortest cumulative reign of any champion and is the only men’s world champion to be stripped of the title.

Jon Moxley is a three-time former AEW World Champion, the man the company constantly turns to when they need someone to bail them out. Besides him, the only other man who’s held the title more than once is CM Punk.

But Punk’s two championship reigns combined clock in at just 90 days (the second lasting three days before he was stripped of the title), which is less than half of the next closest former champ, Chris Jericho with 182 days.

And really, Punk spent most of his 87 days from his first reign on the shelf, injuring his foot just days after winning the world title at Double or Nothing 2022. Moxley would become interim champion at Forbidden Door four weeks later, so you could argue that Punk only had been functionally the champ for 28 days.

Short reigns, interim champ, stripped of title… those are rather ignominious footnotes to Punk’s career.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.