AEW in Turmoil: Management Suspended, CM Punk Seriously Injured, Titles Vacated

CM Punk AEW Controversy
Photo Credit: AEW

If you tuned in to Wednesday’s episode of AEW Dynamite without keeping up with the Internet since the company’s All Out PPV last weekend, there’s a good chance you were very confused about what was going on.

The show opened with Tony Khan making a statement that both the AEW Trios Championship (a title that crowned its first champions three days earlier) and the AEW World Championship were being vacated without any further explanation. Of course, all of this is fallout from the wildly controversial CM Punk rant at the post-All Out Media Scrum.

While we reported on Punk absolutely going off on AEW’s EVPs, that was only the beginning of what went down. There are numerous reports about what took place after with many sides of the story, but what is definite is that there was a physical altercation involving Punk, The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, and Ace Steel who is Punk’s longtime friend and trainer.

Without it being clear as to who is at fault, who instigated it etc., the company has handed out suspensions for nearly everyone involved. This includes the suspension of EVPs Kenny Omega, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson, as well as Brandon Cutler and Michael Nakazawa who are allies of “The Elite.” The suspensions don’t stop there as agents Christopher Daniels and Pat Buck are also suspended even though their exact involvement is unknown.

On the other side of things, Punk and Steel’s punishments have not officially been announced, but possibly the much bigger news is that Punk was seriously injured in his All Out match against Jon Moxley and will require surgery. This marks Punk’s second back-to-back world title win that was immediately followed by an injury.

With AEW in shambles right now, they moved forward with Dynamite, crowned new trios champions, and announced a tournament for the vacant world title. The problem was, there was no mention of Punk or The Elite, so the company opted to not make any use of the most talked about situation in pro wrestling right now.

If AEW is not going to address the situation on TV and just try to take a “we all want to be nice guys” approach, it really is a shame they can’t come together and make something out of this. Brushing everything under the rug and hoping it goes away won’t help, and it’s unclear if Tony Khan will side with The Elite who helped start the company, or Punk who has drawn more interest than anyone else in company history.

No amounts of time have been announced with the suspensions, nor has the time away that CM Punk is looking at with his injury, which is rumored to be a torn pec or triceps. While the company is undoubtedly at its lowest point, it’s going to be an uphill battle as far as keeping fans interested and on board with all this turmoil and top talent unable to work together.

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