10 Most Fascinating Unanswered Questions In Wrestling
8. What Exactly Happened With Colt Cabana?
CM Punk is adamant that he had "f*ck all" to do with Colt Cabana's disappearance from AEW. Those were the sentiments expressed in his incendiary All Out presser.
Tony Khan backed up his then-AEW World Champion in an interview with Blake Oestriecher of Forbes earlier this year by claiming that "[Punk] had nothing to do with any of the contracts I picked up". If you wanted to read more into this than might actually exist, you might note that Khan never actually said that Punk didn't want Cabana gone from AEW; just that he didn't demand he not go to ROH.
That's the cynical argument, one that isn't necessarily held as an opinion, but this entire drama just feeds suspicion. It's all so murky.
The Elite must be convinced that there's more to the story, hence why this backstage unrest mutated to the drastic extent that it did. Do you poke the bear on a hunch?
That said: CM Punk, on October 27 and November 24, 2021 worked matches on the same Dynamite card as Cabana - and it's not as if they fell out after those dates. They despised one another well before Punk even signed for AEW, and then worked the same taping without incident.
So what happened?
How did various members of the locker room become convinced that Cabana was mysteriously and purposely disappeared?
Also: why didn't Tony Khan diffuse the situation by simply booking Cabana to eat a couple of pins on Elevation? That way, everybody - fans and talents alike - would be convinced that there couldn't be anything to the rumours. It's not as if Cabana was set to be a major star in ROH: to date, he's only worked pre-show matches. Also, it's not as if cross-pollination doesn't happen all of the time. ROH "guys" work AEW frequently, and they might as well start calling it ROH Rampage at this point. It's not as if Colt can't work an AEW show for any reason at all.
...so why doesn't he?