The Self-Destruction Of CM Punk In AEW | Wrestling Timelines
November 17, 2021 - Country Roads
At the end of the Dynamite and Rampage taping, CM Punk and Hangman Page send the crowd home happy with a duet of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. Punk is getting along with seemingly everybody. He has effectively harnessed his prickly brilliance on a purely fictional basis.
January 24, 2022 - A Budding Bromance
CM Punk tweets the following: “@theAdamPage got any chaps I can borrow?”
If you’re the sort of chronically online fan that becomes invested in this sort of thing, you’d think CM Punk and Hangman Page were now good friends. It should be noted here that Punk is or should be fully aware that Page is close with Cabana - and it does not stop him from these friendly displays of online banter.
March 6, 2022 - “I’m A Snake, Old Man”
CM Punk has spent the preceding months assisting in the scripting of and performing in one of the very best pro wrestling rivalries of the 21st century.
His feud with MJF begins when the young heel extends an offer of a handshake. Punk turns it down with a smug shake of the head, deeming it a novice mind game.
He does not know how much this devastates MJF, who in his teen years idolised, with pictorial evidence, CM Punk. MJF is so cowardly in the story that it necessitates a Dog Collar stipulation - “Will you be my Valentine?” Punk asks, in one of the most poetic promos ever - but MJF reveals, on the eve of the match, that he suffers from ADHD. MJF needed fellow Roddy Piper acolyte Punk as an escapist sanctuary from the bullying and antisemitic abuse he survived in his youth. He sees Punk as his like-minded friend and hero, not competition. To manipulate this to his advantage would be beyond the pale, even for MJF.
MJF manipulates this to his advantage.
He reveals that he is a snake, old man, in an incredible ROH callback, luring Punk into a Pinnacle butchering. The Revolution match is gruesome pro wrestling violence on a box office scale, quintessentially AEW, and the story that tells itself in secret is so captivating that Revolution draws a staggering 175,000 buys - second only to All Out ‘21 at the time.
CM Punk Vs. MJF is widely credited with the buy amount. The show is headlined by World Champion Hangman Page successfully defending against Adam Cole, but that story, barely remembered now, fails to capture the imagination of the public to anywhere near the same level.
The old CM Punk returns again in one of the greatest stories in pro wrestling history. The feud is incredible, seminal even, and it does not reflect well on Hangman Page; if there is even a choice for Tony Khan to make, ahead of the next PPV main event, it becomes decidedly less difficult.