19 Things WRESTLING Wants You To Forget About CM Punk
8. The Collapse Of The Hangman Page Story
The 2022 culmination of CM Punk's road back to the top of the wrestling world should have been a glorious celebration of the story he'd quietly told alongside his epic programmes with Darby Allin, Eddie Kingston and MJF.
All those feuds had weight, but Punk was a television regular, wrestling his way back to form in line with AEW's ranking system in order to eventually gain a shot at the Heavyweight Championship. At the time, it was held by Hangman Page, pitting Punk against an Elite member for the very first time. Both were babyfaces, but the forces pulling them together were as magnetic as the crowds were to each man.
It surely couldn't fail, but very very quickly it did. On-screen (or so we thought), Page held Punk in contempt for reasons that were never fully made clear. Punk - riding the wave of momentum that hadn't subsided since his August 2021 return to action - didn't get it, and neither did the audience.
It hadn't clicked, and looked as if it wasn't going to. Then, at the last, a line by Hangman Page clued select (but not all) fans into why he was angry, and nothing was ever the same again...