Bryan Alvarez discussed the incident involving Jack Perry and CM Punk on today’s Wrestling Observer Live.
Alvarez claims to have spoken with at least a dozen people since the show. He mentioned that there are various versions of what happened.
Regarding the weeks-old dispute between Perry and Punk, in which Punk allegedly stated that he didn’t want Jack Perry to be cut from real glass (during an angle with Hook) in order to avoid missing time from work, Alvarez confirmed that Perry had a planned vacation. Alvarez also confirmed that the glass spot on Collision involving a car was approved, but that CM Punk said “no” to the spot.
Alvarez said, “The issue from the Jungle Boy side was the belief that ‘I got this okayed, it was cleared with the company and then this guy didn’t let me do it.’ He felt ‘he’s not letting me do it because I’m friends with The Young Bucks.’ That was what was in his mind, apparently.” Alvarez said that he didn’t hear this from Jack Perry but people in this company heard about this weeks ago.
Regarding the report about CM Punk’s travel issues, Alvarez said, “I have heard two versions of this story. One version is that CM Punk arrived, nobody was there, he couldn’t get a hold of anybody and so he decided that he was going to take the train. The other version I heard is that when he arrived there was nobody there but he did get a hold of people and he offered or they asked if he wanted to take the train. But that he was fine with taking the train. That’s the other story that I heard…”
Alvarez added, “The question that everybody’s asking, why did this guy not take an Uber or a cab? When we were there, there were two occasions when we were in the UK where it was impossible to get an Uber. We opened up the app and it was ‘no drivers available.’ Maybe that happened to CM Punk, I don’t know…it is possible that he could not get an Uber.”
Refarding Perry and Punk at All In, Alvarez stated, “Jack goes through the curtain…He goes through the glass and they’re working on his cuts. This was shortly before the show was supposed to go on the air. CM Punk walks by and he says ‘do you have a problem with me?’ Jack Perry says something to the effect of ‘well, you heard what I said out there.'”
Alvarez noted that while many people did not see the entire Brawl Out fight last year, there were many witnesses present this time, including Tony Khan. “CM Punk, according to several people said something to the effect of, ‘you know I can beat your ass, right?’ Then there was an incident. It was very quick…Pretty much 100 percent (of the witnesses said) Punk made the comment and either shoved of pie-faced Jungle Boy, grabbed him in the guillotine front headlock and it was immediately broken up. Somoa Joe was right there, everybody was right there. Nobody got their ass kicked, there was nothing like that.”
Alvarez stated that everything happened very close to Tony Khan. “They got close enough to Tony Khan that I believe monitors were knocked down onto Tony Khan. He was right there and he saw everything and a lot of people were right there and they saw everything.”
Punk was furious, according to Alvarez, and “Several people said he threatened to quit and he didn’t want to go out for the match…I believe they went to FTR and The Young Bucks and they were like, ‘can you guys open the show?’ and the response was, ‘we’re not ready to open the show.’ Then they went to the six-man with Kenny and Hangman and all those guys and they were like, ‘can you open the show?’ and they were like, ‘I guess we can’ and so they were getting ready to go out. I was told that Joe was furious. He’s at Wembley, there’s 80,000 people there and he’s about to go out and apparently, he talked Punk into doing the match.”
