In his now infamous post-All Out press conference, CM Punk put The Elite and Hangman Adam Page on blast. As it turns out, his issues may have run further through the locker room than just those four men.
Punk posted a fairly lengthy explanation of his side of the build up to All Out 2022 to Instagram in a post that has since been deleted. In addition to Jon Moxley, who he accused of “refusing to lose to me,” he also criticized AEW boss Tony Khan, Chris Jericho and Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.
SIGH. I wasn’t cleared to come back to wrestle yet. Then plan was to wrestle at the ppv. I sat and listened to Moxley’s Rocky three idea. I explained how I’d never seen a Rocky movie and thought the idea sucked but if the boss wanted to do it whatever. He said he wouldn’t lose to me. I’d never experienced someone refusing to lose to me. I just laughed. I asked Tony if this was what he wanted. He said yes. He’s the boss so I said okay but I’d need to be cleared first. They kept saying it could just be a squash so I didn’t need to be cleared. I scoffed at that. My health is more important. Dave Meltzer is a liar. Jericho is a liar and a stooge. There were plans but plans always change but I’ll never put a company above my health ever again.
His post appeared to be in response to something Meltzer said on the Wrestling Observer message board:
CM Punk's Instagram post, seemingly in response to what Dave Meltzer said on the Wrestling Observer Board. pic.twitter.com/XGyIVLiil9
— Wrestling News (@WrestlingNewsCo) March 23, 2023
For additional context, it’s important to remember what did happen. Punk originally won the AEW World Championship by defeating Page at Double or Nothing last May. But he injured himself while teaming with FTR on Dynamite a few days later, and an interim champ needed to fill in during the summer — which ended up being Moxley.
Punk returned in August but was defeated in a match to unify the belts in a shockingly short match with Moxley. The title came back to Punk at All Out, shortly before the press scrum heard ’round the world.
Regardless of which side of Punk’s ongoing beef with people in AEW one tends to fall on, one thing that resonates from this post is his emphasis at the end: “I’ll never put a company above my health ever again.” A dispute over working under conditions he found unhealthy was at the core of his messy split with WWE in 2014, and it’s understandable that he wouldn’t want to find himself in a similar situation.
Despite that, Punk is certainly testing the limits of how many times someone can call out people from a company without completely burning bridges. Time will tell if and where he wrestles again, but this latest post makes it feel increasingly unlikely that he’ll return to a place where he obviously still has unresolved issues.