8 Signings That DESTROYED Wrestling Promotions
3. CM Punk
All Elite Wrestling was a promotion built for many reasons, but it was built by a promotor more than happy to build a promotion just for CM Punk.
It took two years, an abbreviated run as a host of a shiny floor WWE show and some pandemic introspection to set the perfect 'First Dance' stage for 'The Second City Saint' to sell out the United Center in Chicago for that most famous of nights in 2021. And all couldn't have looked rosier - to paraphrase the man himself, the grass was greenest where it had been watered, and the tended-to turf was the place for Punk to instantly became the biggest star and draw in AEW. It took only half the time for him to come to hate everything about it.
There were company-wide ramifications spanning from his blow-ups in 2022 and 2023, bringing to an end an age of innocence for the nacent brand that it had done well to foster since launching in 2019. Punk's WWE return came slap-bang in the middle of the market leader's own creative revival, rubbing the company's nose further into a mess that could have been avoided with better management, communication and understanding all the way around.
The entire story has been litigated and re-litigated more times than some of the best matches and moments from Punk's mostly-outstanding AEW run. Indeed, though it took the challenger brand and its "main character" the better part of two years to emerge from under the cloud that remained, the broad erasure of several iconic CM Punk contests and promos is a notable - and some would argue fitting - consequence of the incendiary actions.