Following his reported backstage brawl with Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks following AEW’s All Out pay-per-view, CM Punk’s future in wrestling remains uncertain. He was stripped of the World Title and suspended, though it has been reported that he is in contract negotiations with AEW.
On his Jim Cornette Experience podcast, Cornette stated that there is no money to be made from a match between Punk and The Elite if Punk is persuaded to return.
“If they had that lined up, laid out, then all this would be perfectly acceptable. And wishful thinking would indicate, you know that everybody would want to see that, right? Oh, yeah, everybody gets back together. We have this big program, it draws all kinds of money.
But what you are overlooking is the fact that these f*cking douchebags don’t want to draw money. They don’t want anybody to jeopardize their position, their company, their revolution, their movement.
If anybody gets over or is more important than them, or shows people that their wrestling is sh*t, and that people still in larger numbers react to sh*t they can understand, that’s bad.
And you would have to assume that the Buckaroos and Twinkle-toes were willing to work with a guy like Punk who they’ve had heat with, or that Tony would be willing to deal with a guy that’s told him to go f*ck himself or whatever.”
Cornette discussed the differences between how he perceived Vince and Tony Khan to operate.
“Now I know, people are saying, Well, hey, Vince McMahon has put the WWF title on a dozen guys that said f*ck you to him or whatever, before that. Yes, because Vince was all about business.
This is not business. This is fantasy booking by a billionaire boy child. And the incredible windfall that these self-trained, self-important, self-indulgent nitwits have fallen into by getting said billionaire boy child to f*cking fund their goddamn vision of what wrestling is.
And it ain’t working, because they’re in the same place they were three years ago. But they’ve had tons more bad publicity. Ticket sales are going down, ratings are going down, everybody’s getting in a fight backstage.
And the only people in the locker room that have the pull with Tony to get him to do anything, are the ones that are protecting their spots at the expense of everything else.”
Cornette believes a Punk vs. Omega match would be profitable.
“So yes, in a perfect world, this would all be a work, but it’s not. And it’s not going to be and they don’t have it in them to call Punk and say, alright, let’s put this f*cking behind us, let’s make some money. And let’s be honest. Besides the same group of people, you could probably get Punk and Olivier If people thought there were real legitimate bad feelings – which there are – you could probably get a pay-per-view out of them.
To have Punk in the same ring with the buckaroos would just be bringing him down to their level. There’s no money to be made there anyway, because the only people that would care would be the same people already watching the show.”
You can check out a clip from the podcast below:
(h/t to Inside The Ropes for the transcription)
