"CM Punk's First Appearance In Daily's Place" brought about memories of his summer turbo-pop tour, but All Elite Wrestling were smart to lean on the year's hottest signing making his debut appearance on company home turf.
As Punk alluded to in his beautiful asides on Jim Ross and the late great Brodie Lee, there's an importance to the venue not just for how it housed the company in the hardest times but just how emotional some of those hard times were. Threading together his feelings of wanting to be there and eventually making it, Punk captured that comeback kid magic one last time before moving business back to his rivalry with MJF.
A match wasn't made formal, but hostilities were kept heated. Punk popped the room with a Tim Tebow reference, and - building off MJF's earlier verbiage - pledged to halt any plans the 'Salt Of The Earth' had to strike gold. "CM Punk cuts excellent promo" is the easiest "Up" to give, but credit to AEW for keeping it simple and getting very much what they paid for.
Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett
