By Noah Trombley
This past Saturday, the wrestling world saw something we thought we wouldn’t see again: Cult of Personality hit, and CM Punk walked into a WWE arena for the first time in 10 years. After spending half the year in AEW and last wrestling at All In 2023, Punk has returned to the company where he wrestled from 2007 until his controversial exit in 2014. While the world can’t stop talking about what Punk will do in WWE, a big question for many is what AEW does in response to Punk’s return.
The short answer to that question is simple: AEW should do nothing in response. Don’t make Punk’s return make you think that you must do something drastic because of this. AEW started as a valid alternative to WWE, and they have genuinely stuck to that message and that motto to this day. AEW has prided itself on being the wrestling show for wrestling fans, while WWE is the sports entertainment show. AEW has some long-ranging stories from the devil that is haunting world champion MJF, the legendary Sting’s retirement tour, to the brand new continental classic that just started recently and looked to be their version of the famed G1 classic that New Japan Pro Wrestling runs every single year.
AEW has not only so many huge names in the company like Adam Cole, Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, and Claudio Castagnoli but also so many homegrown talents that have gotten organically over with the fans and have put the future of the company in good hands names like The Acclaimed, Darby Allin, MJF, and Swerve Strickland. Tony Khan needs to keep the ship going in the direction they are in, and it will get back to the heights that AEW saw at the beginning of its run when it was selling out arenas for Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision. AEW is going through a bit colder period right now with TV attendance down across the board, but they just went over to London and completely sold out Wembley in the aforementioned All-In and put on one of the PPVs of the year.
If AEW tries to do something too drastic because it believes it needs to bring back fans after the controversial firing of CM Punk back in September, then it could end up losing its way and hurting itself in the long run. Feel free to compete with something other than WWE. Continue to be what you’ve always been and be the pure wrestling show hundreds of thousands of people tune into every week to see and every few months for your PPV events.
With all this being said, there is one thing I would advise AEW to do in the next few months, but the same thing regardless of what happened with CM Punk. Tony Khan should push hard to get his PPVs to air on HBO Max, which Warner Bros also owns. That would get many more eyes on your PPVs that they put on, possibly monthly, and would be the move that could launch AEW into a whole new era.
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