If there’s a person who would have their hand on the pulse of the AEW locker room, it’s Tony Schiavone. The longtime commentator hasn’t just been in AEW since day one, he also recently got promoted to Senior Producer and Special Advisor to Talent, giving him both more responsibility and more insight into the moods of the wrestlers than ever before.
Recent reports have suggested those moods aren’t great. A Fightful Select article cited sources close to CM Punk who suggested he was unhappy enough that he might skip Dynamite (which he did not, by the way), while Konnan weighed in on the most recent episode of his K100 podcast and stated that the last time he was present at an AEW show, a number of wrestlers talked to him who were “pissed about the booking.”
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Schiavone is aware of the noise, as you’d expect him to be in his position. And he addressed it this week on the What Happened When podcast, saying that things aren’t nearly as dire as they’re being made out to be (h/t to Fightful for the transcription).
There are some challenges, as you know, and of course the internet is going crazy about this or that. I’m not going to get into it because…I’m going to say this right now, things are not as bad as bullshit people on the internet would say. Not even close to it. We’ve got some things in place now that I think are going to make us better than ever.
It’s quite possible some of those “things in place now” were installed by Schiavone himself, and he certainly has a vested interest in making it appear everything is fine. That said, it has to be reassuring for AEW fans to hear straight from the source that the sky isn’t falling.
The next week and a half will be big for AEW, which has booked Punk to face Jon Moxley on the Aug. 24 episode of Dynamite to unify the AEW World Championship. Then the promotion heads to Chicago for a full week of live shows that culminates with All Out on Sunday, Sept. 4.