During a recent media call to promote the 2021 All Out PPV, AEW President Tony Khan commented on CM Punk and why there is no “creative control” in the company:
“I don’t really understand some of the things he was asked to do before he left wrestling. I don’t think some of that stuff made sense. I’ve told him, if I ever ask you to do something that doesn’t make sense, it’s not coming from a malicious place, if something doesn’t make sense, tell me and we’ll talk about it. That’s generally how I am with everyone. If someone doesn’t like something, I’m not trying to put stuff in that doesn’t make sense. Not one person, including Mr. Punk and everyone on the roster, has creative control. It’s not like WCW and that is one of the issues with WCW. When you have a person who has creative control in their contract, it can hold up the show. I don’t know how you get through TV doing that. I can’t imagine if I had to deal with that. What I do have is a lot of people I want to sit down and talk to and hear what they want to say. Just because nobody has a contractual right to tell me ‘you can’t make me do that, you can’t put me in that match,’ doesn’t mean I want to put people in bad situations or do things that don’t make sense to them or for their career or for the fans.”
