10 Wrestling Photos Taken Moments Before Disaster

9. CM Punk Fumes At AEW All Out 2022

Shane McMahon WWE WrestleMania 39
AEW

People are natural storytellers and are invested, often more than they should be, in gossip and drama and secrets. 

It is thus very easy to attach a certain significance to this picture of CM Punk, taken in the moments before his All Out main event against Jon Moxley. It isn't, in any way, a happy or even fired-up expression. He looks, at a minimum, very pensive - but then, the storyline dictated such an expression. He had doubted his ability to come back better from injury on the go-home Dynamite, and was only forcibly shaken from this state of self-doubt by friend and AEW producer Ace Steel. Perhaps he was simply selling the idea that he wasn't so sure of himself after all. 

Then again, he was in a foul mood for weeks prior to this. The resulting Brawl Out debacle made sense of his behaviour in retrospect. 

Calling out Hangman Page; going incredibly far in the role of tweener in venomous exchanges with Jon Moxley; fat-shaming a Chicagoan heckler: Punk wasn't happy, and, in what very much scanned as a premeditated grandstanding rant, he let the world know in the press conference that changed the wrestling world.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!