During his recent podcast, Jim Cornette talked about CM Punk’s AEW debut on the August 20th 2021 edition of Rampage. Cornette, who has been a vocal critic of AEW, said the following:
“It wasn’t the way I would have done it, it was a lot better. It was perfect. I said it wasn’t the way I would have done it and I said it was better, and here’s why. I think I told you [Brian Last] on the phone last week, obviously everybody was pretty certain he was going to be there, the question was how and to do what. I said, ‘I wonder how this is going to be, [how] this surprise is going to be sprung, is going to be revealed or unveiled, what manner is he going to make his debut?’ What I would have done was, since they know what the surprise is, surprise them in the way they get the surprise. Make it to build to some moment and then… [but] they couldn’t hear the f**king music after that anyway.”
“But I realised two things. Number one, Punk knows his hometown better and realises how long he’s been gone. They didn’t need to do anything else. Secondly, also, to be honest, I would’ve been running a normal television programme up until now. In retrospect and reflection, they’ve had so many surprises and shocks, and some that weren’t shocks and some that weren’t surprises, and some that were flat and some that got over. Whatever the f**k. That wouldn’t have been unusual, that would’ve been business as usual. This is the first time that they’ve just had a big star show up, come out, get an ovation, do his promo, not be attacked, not be f**king mixed with miscellaneous other people, you know what I’m saying. So in this case, the simplest thing they could’ve done was the perfect thing. Play that music and let him come out in front of his hometown.”
