Sports Entertainment

Merrith said:

Punk is all kinds of problems, and the fact he keeps injuring himself makes him near worthless, honestly. At best be a tool to put over some new guys or have some "dream feuds" with certain guys...but away from the title picture.

Selling on just mid car mic skills, though. He's not who he used to be on it, but in the old days, Punk was excellent on the mic.

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I 100% agree.
CM Punk is the kind of guy that holds a grudge forever and ever.
And I think he is assuming a whole lot of things based on very little and that just spiraled into the chaos we see now.

Sad to see. We could've had some stuff.

I think there is still money in this... but I don't think Punk has it in him to put personal stuff aside and do what is "best for business".
Too bad.

That scrum could be the blueprint for a new Heel character in AEW for punk after recovering.
No title needs to be involved and its all about how all these "children" he works with are keeping him from "running a business".
That would be a great place for him to be-

Kyougou said:

I think there is still money in this... but I don't think Punk has it in him to put personal stuff aside and do what is "best for business".
Too bad.

That scrum could be the blueprint for a new Heel character in AEW for punk after recovering.
No title needs to be involved and its all about how all these "children" he works with are keeping him from "running a business".
That would be a great place for him to be-

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He doesn't have it in him.

Punk coming back as an uber-heel and having a PPV match with Omega would print money. Omega would likely be willing to do it, but I doubt Punk would. Matter of fact it's probably the furthest thing from his mind.

And if it comes down to Punk or The Elite, Punk's the one getting the boot.

Course all of this is moot if he sues everybody like he threatened. A lawsuit would have a lot more teeth if Punk were fired over this, as it could be portrayed as an unjust firing and roughly 40 million in lost wages (he has 4 more years on contract and likely makes close to 10m a year between his 5m salary and his chart-leading merch sales).

I don't think TK wants to pay out 40 million dollars when they've finally hit profitability as of 2022.

So firing him is off the table unless the investigation shows him as fully in the wrong. Which it well might from what I've seen.

Even if that ends up being the case, they'll likely keep paying him through his injury recovery time to hopefully avoid a lawsuit.

Sad thing is, TK probably would have kept him and paid him through his injury time even if a lawsuit wasn't even a thing to think about. Taking care of people during injuries is a default for him.

Someone else said that Punk mistook AEW's kindness for weakness, I'd agree.

MusicForFish said:

I think the whole thing is a big work by all of them.

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If this was ever the case... how come none of it is ever mentioned in live TV?
Even when TK announced that the titles were vacant... he offered no explanation.

They could turn it into a work... but there is no way in hell its a work atm.

It's not a work, could be turned into one eventually if Punk weren't brimming with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

Araxen said:

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They had a super-passionate makeout sesh when she appeared as an extra on Dynamite like 6 months ago. (Yes, she's the redhead from the segment where he was the King). I don't think he's ever actually publicly acknowledged her before now.

Dynamite and RAW are about to touch tips again!

All of the "ratings are gonna tank now that people know Punk is gone, the real test is next week" people from last week are going to have to crawl back under their rocks because the viewership went up this week and it'll go up again next week.

j00t said:

could you explain this graph a little? what do the different colors represent?

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Oh yeah, no problem. This is a chart for the infamous "demo rating" that advertisers use to determine what a show is worth nowadays. Goes back one year (so it doesn't have Rampage's high-rated first few episodes anymore, alas).

Blue - Smackdown, which will probably always be at the top due to the advantage of being on a network while the rest are on cable
Red - RAW
Grey - Dynamite

Orange - Rampage
Pink - NXT

Brown? - Impact
Light Blue - NJPW on AXS

The last two are basically ratings non-factors at the moment, Rampage has gone from leading NXT to now being in a tight competition with NXT, and Dynamite is below RAW/SD but close enough to be in contention.

RAW was actually competing more on Smackdown's level for a few weeks until MNF hit, now it's back in Dynamite's tier.

Dynamite has beaten RAW in the demo rating several times which WWE lawyers used to defend WWE in court when MLW sued them over being a "monopoly". WWE legal's defense was essentially "How can we be a monopoly if a competitor is occasionally beating our flagship show" and the defense worked.