6 Times Wrestling History Was Almost COMPLETELY Different

It'd be too utopian to assume that if CM Punk hadn't injured himself (and in a particularly ridiculous fashion, no less) on the June 1st 2022 edition of AEW Dynamite, the events of Brawl Out might never have happened.

Even knowing what we know now as opposed to what might still be lurking under the hood of various NDAs or other such legal agreements, the apparent beef between The Elite and 'The Straight Edge Superstar' was only going to get worse before it got better. The moment it was even alluded to by Hangman Page in a go-home promo for their World Title match, Punk felt he couldn't trust him or his mates, and had absolutely no intention of not winning the belt. Post-All Out 2022 wasn't even the first time he'd fired a shot at a press scrum. At the Double Or Nothing post-show, with his newly-won belt front-and-centre, he answered a question related to the infamous exchange with Page about how he was blending in, and said; "If there's people backstage that don't like me, it's a minority, and if anybody says nobody wants me or nobody likes me, I'd like to say nobodies don't want me and nobodies don't like me". 

The time bomb was ticking, and it exploded right around the time Punk's own foot did, seconds after he looked at the fans in the aisle and said "you f*ckers better catch me". He undershot anyway and hit the rail on the way down. The delay didn't heal the wounds - it exacerbated them. Punk's return featured a hugely divisive World Title hot potato situation with Jon Moxley and an aborted programme with MJF before the Mindy's Bakery products came out alongside every single frustration he'd harboured over a summer in recovery. On the pay-per-view itself a couple of hours earlier, Kenny Omega told the camera "don't you dare f*cking back up" as he said "try to beat that, b*tch, try to beat that" to ostensibly nobody in particular but, in hindsight, almost definitely one man. The wound was deepening. 

Could a summer of crisis talks have fixed what appeared irrecoverably broken between the company's biggest star and the company's founders and most beloved figures? Possibly not, but the dirty laundry might not have been aired in such a way that it effectively ruined fictional storytelling in All Elite Wrestling for the next three years. Nothing from the brain of Tony Khan nor pencil of one of his inner circle members compared remotely with the intrigue and speculation of what could happen the next time Punk and The Elite even shared a locker room. The fight that erupted might have still happened, but with less of a dramatic build-up or even as detailed reporting, could it have been smoothed over when everybody just got things out of their systems? This - as opposed to Khan's weak Collision/Dynamite split roster plan - was the only solution to at least promote the relationship status from untenable to unideal. Without Punk being around as recovered from the injury, the chances clearly fell from slim to none.