For most of the past four years, pro wrestling’s newest war has gone primarily in one direction.
But the momentum has most definitely shifted following WWE’s latest strike against upstart challenger AEW – the signing of CM Punk.
The former WWE and AEW world champion made his return to the former on Sunday at Survivor Series, nearly 10 years after his contentious exit.
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Lawsuits, sniping comments and his long-awaited return to the ring coming via the competitor made a WWE return seem almost impossible, until Punk fought his way out of AEW – quite literally, by twice getting into backstage altercations, the second forcing owner Tony Khan to fire him.
But, in perhaps the best example of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ possible, Punk negotiated a new deal with WWE head of creative Triple H and president Nick Khan – the former making it apparent Vince McMahon had little or nothing to do with it – over the past two weeks and emerged following Sunday’s main event War Games match.
The reaction of Seth Rollins, seen screaming and flipping the bird at Punk while being held back by officials, to Punk emerging from the back was a clear storyline and suggests Rollins will be his first feud.
This points to how Punk may be used, since it’ll allow WWE to play off of reality, with his AEW stint marred by broken relationships with some of the company’s biggest names.
Rollins infamously said of Punk last year: “Stay away, you cancer, get away from me forever. I don’t like Phil (Punk’s real name).” He walked back those comments later on, but the smart money is on WWE capitalising on Punk’s recent reputation for an intriguing return storyline.
That reputation is why Punk was available in the first place – and speaks to the positive and negative of the 45-year-old.
The absolute last thing AEW wanted to do was fire Punk. He was the company’s biggest genuine numbers-mover, selling pay per views and merchandise while popping TV ratings – and also signifying exactly what the company was about.
AEW has been an inarguable success – don’t let ex-wrestling personalities who keep claiming the opposite tell you otherwise, they’re the biggest US success story since the fall of WCW – and were able to find a spot in the market because of how WWE acted for so long.
Hardcore fans, often more passionate about match quality, were driven away from WWE in the mid-to-late 2010s by years of confusing storylines, halted pushes for intriguing young wrestlers and general disappointment in the company’s behaviour. Their American TV ratings declined at a much faster rate than cable did overall, and by the end of the decade, strange moves like bringing failed WCW executive Eric Bischoff back to briefly run Smackdown showed just how desperate they were getting.
Those fans were the core of AEW’s new fanbase, wanting a less sports entertainment-centric product which you could trust to follow through with long-term storylines. Much of their success over the first two to three years of the company was driven by following these key traits, along with incredible pay per view match quality.
Two men typified AEW’s rebellious spirit more than most – Cody Rhodes, who had left WWE to make a bigger name for himself on the independents and by the time he returned at 2022’s WrestleMania was immediately a massive star; and Punk, who shared the core fanbase’s distaste for WWE because of how he felt he’d been treated.
And now both are back in the WWE fold.
“Punk is not the spiritual centre of AEW like Cody Rhodes was, but Punk was the biggest star AEW ever had. That’s just the reality of it – he moved numbers more than anyone else,” respected wrestling journalist and historian Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio.
“When you switch sides, you get really, really big … people know he was fired, it was not a guy who chose to leave, but it’s still a big star going there.
“And I look at what happened with Cody – it hurt AEW. It hurt their momentum, it hurt certain aspects of their perception, it helped WWE a great amount.”
Rhodes joined WWE at the perfect time, when the long-term Bloodline storyline was finally starting to pay dividends, with the existing fans and many lapsed WWE supporters greatly enjoying the heavier emphasis on the entertainment half of sports entertainment – perhaps most notably, the increased focus on mid-match dialogue, which began during the pandemic when fans weren’t in attendance and wrestlers needed to make some of their own noise to compensate.
Roman Reigns and the Bloodline angle got hot in late-2022 in particular with the introduction of Sami Zayn and later Rhodes, peaking at this past WrestleMania, though the result of that main event – interference once again allowing Reigns to retain – didn’t exactly help.
While some have gone off the Bloodline element of the show, the company has remained hot, with greater attendance figures and TV ratings until a recent flatlining.
That’s where Punk’s signing is ideally timed; just as the momentum has slowed, and heading into the always-hotter WrestleMania build-up period.
“It was a no (to re-signing Punk), except if they felt the public demand was there … they’re not gonna be an organisation that fights the fans,” Meltzer said.
“I always expected that some day he would be back, and probably sooner than later.
“There is a wrestling war going on, and if you tally up the free agents, or people whose contracts were up and looking at going both places, AEW’s done a hell of a job signing them. Will Ospreay being the real big one, Kenny Omega the other.
“There’s a lot of movement in WWE right now as far as, they don’t want anyone leaving. There’s a lot of people who are being offered very big money, besides just Punk, much more than they’re making, to stay. A lot of people thought with (new owners) Endeavor no-one would be getting big contracts but it’s actually been different.”
It has helped that Endeavor, who also own UFC as part of the new $32.5bn ‘TKO’ company which includes WWE, is used to paying its fighters much more than WWE pays its wrestlers.
UFC hands out around 17% of its revenues to fighters – even though the lower and mid-card types are underpaid – while WWE gives much less. Meltzer estimated the average WWE mid-card wrestler would be on over $2 million a year if the company gave out the same portion of revenue UFC does as salaries.
AEW can still compete with the increased salaries that are flooding into pro wrestling. But they still have to pick the right people to pay, and in their bid to turn the tide, they haven’t found the right mix just yet.
The problem for AEW is two-fold; signing ex-WWE talent has often been a boon for the company, but doing too much of it risks them becoming like previous secondary American promotions, who just became WWE-light and a way for those who’d left the company to cash in on their name value.
The second element is how even those ex-WWE talents who are worth signing – the squandered stars, those who the hardcore AEW fanbase feel were robbed of the push they deserved in the bigger company – sometimes don’t respect their new home, knowing it’s the secondary brand.
Punk feeling this way, when he was legitimately AEW’s biggest star, makes sense (though he went too far with it on numerous occasions). But guys like Malakai Black (aka Aleister Black), Andrade and Miro (aka Rusev) have shown clear moments of discontent – the latter has reportedly refused to take losses in certain matches, which has been why he hasn’t been on TV as much as expected – and certainly aren’t living up to the billing from when they came into the company.
Then you have bigger names like Saraya (aka Paige), whose AEW run started poorly and has featured minimal high-quality wrestling, and Adam Copeland (aka Edge), who continues to draw massive reactions in arenas but doesn’t really drive numbers like TV ratings at all – both theoretically massive signings, costing millions of dollars a year, but not hitting the way you’d want. (Copeland’s run has been critically successful, at least, so there’s still time to change his story.)
Certainly none of their signings have hit like Punk did in late 2021, because he was the ideal personification of AEW’s anti-WWE vibe – and the biggest name available, too.
Without guys like Punk, AEW has been left trying to figure out what its new vibe is – and led by world champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF), who has a heavy say in his own storylines, they’re trying what we could call the “ice cream” model.
After receiving criticism for a major change in his character, where a cocky heel became something closer to an amalgamation of The Rock (quipping nicknames for his opponents), Stone Cold Steve Austin (coming back mid-show in an ambulance) and Hulk Hogan (getting big reactions from doing little things like a bodyslam), MJF explained: “What I am trying to do is bring back a flavour of ice cream that I love and dare I say is just as much professional wrestling.
“All I am simply saying is, nothing I do is a gimmick. I believe that professional wrestling, in all shapes and sizes, is important, and it’s all different flavours of ice cream.
“But I also believe, to me, for my two cents, if you can do what I do and get that reaction, I think it’s much harder actually than doing a triple indie whatever the f—k. Obviously, they’re gonna clap. It’s insane.
“Can you make them absolutely freak out and have a damn near panic attack when you do a little thing? To me, that is professional wrestling.”
MJF’s new character, which is a stark departure from the heel which made him an emerging superstar – including during a spectacular, heated feud with Punk – has been joined by Toni Storm (who helped AEW’s women’s division reach new heights with incredible matches against Jamie Hayter) turning into a heavily-gimmicked old Hollywood actress called ‘Timeless’ Toni, complete with black and white filter and comedy segments.
Some AEW fans have enjoyed this turn towards sports entertainment. But others, who just months ago were the ones cheering when Chris Jericho’s faction the Jericho Appreciation Society directly mocked WWE and the term sports entertainment, have been turned off the product.
At the very least this turn towards a WWE style, which has come at the same time a large number of ex-WWE producers have gained a large influence on Khan and the AEW product more broadly, isn’t driving a new hot period for the moment.
It may work, but it may also just ensure AEW becomes the secondary choice for WWE fans, who’ll always prefer the original flavour of sports entertainment because they grew up watching it. The ratings for AEW’s new Saturday night show, Collision, are down most heavily when they’re directly up against WWE shows rather than major sports events, suggesting there’s a larger crossover in the audiences than before.
And historically, trying to be WWE has never allowed a company to beat WWE. It didn’t work for WCW in the early-1990s or late 1990s – they peaked when they did things differently, bringing about the Attitude Era with angles like the NWO. Nor did it work for ECW, when you compare their 1990s peak to the 2000s WWE revival, nor did it work for TNA/Impact, who found limited success with a six-sided ring and a greater focus on match quality before hiring Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, ex-writer Vince Russo and others to become a WWE tribute act (which soon flopped).
With Rhodes and Punk gone, Kenny Omega seemingly nearing the end of his full-time career as his body breaks down, the Young Bucks rarely being featured and reportedly planning a hiatus with whispers they’ve lost motivation, and ‘Hangman’ Adam Page spectacular when he appears on TV yet often disappearing for months at a time, AEW feels lost.
It cannot simply recapture the maverick spirit which drove it to new heights between Punk’s late-2021 debut and the 2022 WrestleMania, when the momentum began to shift. History suggests this new feeling, driven by MJF and the producers who reportedly told one veteran wrestler “this is just how wrestling is now” when asked why they were doing something in the style of WWE, won’t be the driver of a new golden era.
There’s no easy answer. They’ve spent some time trying to build up younger stars like Ricky Starks and Swerve Strickland (who is an ex-WWE guy but doesn’t really feel like it), but the building process is never good for ratings.
Yet it’s probably what they need to focus on. The hottest periods in pro wrestling are driven by stars, not the companies themselves – Reigns and Rhodes typify that for WWE right now, just like Punk did for AEW.
Theoretically, MJF should be that guy for AEW, but as mentioned he has turned plenty of fans off with his move towards the WWE-style entertainment he grew up loving – a strange and convoluted injury angle at the company’s latest pay per view, Full Gear, arguably being the low point of his run.
And so Punk joins WWE at the time when they’re perfectly primed to run up the score on AEW. They’re already winning – now it’s about winning big.
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