During a recent edition of the What Happened When podcast, AEW announcer Tony Schiavone talked about CM Punk’s debut promo on Rampage and how it was originally planned for him to introduce Punk:
“So, got to the building, my name was on the format, ‘Tony Schiavone introduces Special Guest’. CM Punk arrived, I was told he was in his room – the room, by the way, was marked ‘Special Guest’. So he arrives and he has a couple of people with him. One’s an old ECW guy, let me think for a second. Lou Dangerously (also known as Sign Guy Dudley). And there was someone else and I know he has wrestled before, he’s a friend of his so, he’s got a couple of guys with him. Sat there and talked to him for a little bit, and Tony Khan came in and we all three sat and talked, and it was decided – and I really think rightfully so even though I really wanted to be a part of this – it was rightfully so that he would come out on his own. He (Punk) said, ‘Listen, I want you to interview me, we’ll do it on Dynamite. I want you to hold the microphone, I don’t want to jerk it out of your hands like people have done’. And I said, ‘Okay’, so that apparently is going to, as this thing drops, going to air tonight. Me talking to him in Milwaukee.”
Schiavone also commented on the comment on Punk’s promo:
“I talked to him about his promo and he said, ‘I really don’t know, I’ve been thinking about so many things to say, and I really don’t know what I’m going to say’. We just did know that the one thing he was gonna touch on was Darby to set up the pay-per-view match. From then on we had no idea what he was going to say or how he was going to say it. And, to be honest with you, he didn’t let us on. It really looked like to me he was really, really, really thinking about this hard and it had weighed on him for some time.”
