By now, almost the entire pro wrestling world has weighed in on CM Punk being fired by AEW last week. Perhaps surprisingly, one person who hadn’t was Chris Jericho, one of a handful of people who can legitimately say they bring the same (or even more) mainstream name recognition to AEW.
That changed on the most recent episode of his podcast, Talk Is Jericho. The Ocho revealed that he spoke to Punk before either of them wrestled at AEW All In London at Wembley Stadium, though the conversation was nothing revelatory and was mostly about different moves Jericho might use against Will Ospreay that night (h/t Wrestling Observer).
I don’t want to dwell on this or talk about it but I should address it. Of course, CM Punk no longer with AEW, and Wembley was his last match, what a way to go out. I did talk to him briefly. I was going to do a Frankensteiner off the top and I know that he does that sometimes so I was just curious if he was doing it. I went and talked to him for a bit and asked him if he was doing it, he wasn’t. Then I told him I was going to do the GTS with a straight face and I think for a second he thought that I was going to and I was joking, of course.
Jericho added that as far as what went down between Punk and Jack Perry, which eventually led to Punk’s contracts being terminated by AEW once an internal investigation concluded, “it’s a regretful moment what happened but Tony Khan made his decision.” He gave credit to Punk for being “a big part of AEW” and said that he “went out on top, for sure,” since his final match with the promotion was at Wembley.
While Jericho has a point about Punk’s farewell coming on AEW’s biggest event (by a wide margin), it’s highly unlikely anyone involved would agree that his firing constituted going out “on top.” The new, Punk-less era of AEW, of which Jericho will continue to be a big part, begins this week.
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