AEW Reformatting Long-Term Creative Due To CM Punk & Daniel Bryan
The potential arrival of two of the hottest names in the industry could create quite the headache.
As rumours continue to rumble on that Daniel Bryan and CM Punk could both soon sign for AEW, these potential arrivals are reportedly causing Tony Khan's promotion to reformat some of their long-term creative plans.
Speaking during an appearance on the jaBROnies podcast (as per eWrestlingNews), Bodyslam.net's Cassidy Haynes - who first reported that Punk was AEW-bound - AEW is looking at possibly changing plans up in order to maximise the huge buzz that arrival of either Bryan and Punk would cause amongst the industry.
Haynes claimed that previous plans were for Daniel Bryan to appear at 22 September's Grand Slam special from Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York. Talks between Bryan and AEW first started two or three weeks ago, with it soon decided that Grand Slam would be the American Dragon's AEW bow.
After those Bryan talks started, that's reportedly when talks began of having CM Punk turn up at All Out on 5 September in Chicago. Now, that has left AEW trying to work out when these two former WWE Champions should debut and who they should be involved with if and when said debuts happen.
Previously, AEW had long-term plans in place leading up to All Out and beyond, but that seems to have been thrown up in the air a little. Given how All Out is in CM Punk's hometown, it would be crazy to pass up the opportunity to debut him there to a truly insane crowd reaction - meaning that Bryan's planned Grand Slam appearance may ultimately end up pushed back in order to maximise the buzz for each arrival, rather than have them happen less than three weeks apart.