CM Punk and Samoa Joe opened the historic AEW All In card last week at London’s Wembley Stadium, competing for Punk’s “Real” World Championship. But thanks to Punk’s backstage altercation with Jack Perry, which resulted in both men being suspended while AEW investigates exactly what went down, it was almost someone else who came through the curtain first.
Tony Khan and his crew even asked several other performers if they could be ready to go if needed, which is one of the fascinating tidbits on the Punk-Perry incident in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required). According to Dave Meltzer, “the announcers and production people were told to stall because at this point nobody knew if Punk vs. Joe would happen.”
Meltzer said that Khan asked FTR and the Young Bucks if they could go on first instead, but that the teams weren’t quite ready yet since they assumed they’d be on later. Others were asked as well.
Kenny Omega then offered to have his six-man tag go first, since they were scheduled for second anyway and were pretty much ready, and the Bucks vs. FTR would start early as well. They asked others, including Chris Jericho and Will Ospreay, to go out earlier but they also weren’t ready since Jericho’s match also included his singing his entrance. At least some of those involved, if not all, were not told at the time what the reason was when asked although the word traveled very quickly.
Samoa Joe was reportedly the one who was able to calm down Punk enough to go through with their match, preserving the planned order of the show. But it’s interesting to see just how close Khan came to needing to improvise on the spot during the biggest event in AEW’s history.
As of Friday afternoon, there still hadn’t been an update on Punk’s status for All Out, which is set for the United Center in his hometown of Chicago this Sunday. It’s fair to wonder if the near reshuffling of All In will have any bearing on his fate once Khan considers everything that went down.
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