Despite making numerous appearances on AEW television, Eric Bischoff has been a vocal critic of the promotion and President Tony Khan.
However, the WWE Hall of Famer recently went out of his way to praise sections of the premiere episode of AEW Collision which featured the return of CM Punk. The show in Chicago saw Punk back in action for the first time since September 2022, and the now-infamous brawl that followed All Out.
Back in the ring with a microphone in his hand, Punk addressed his comeback and fired a couple of shots at The Young Bucks and The Elite for good measure.
Speaking on a special episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff revealed that he loved Punk’s promo, commenting that it did everything that it needed to do.
“I absolutely loved it,” Bischoff admitted. “It had the right balance. Again, you cannot ignore the elephant in the room. We can’t pretend the last six months didn’t happen. If you aggregated every tweet, post, Reddit comment, YouTube clip, whatever, of the scrum and the evisceration of Tony Khan by CM Punk right in front of an audience, you can’t pretend that stuff didn’t happen, but they’ve elected to move on from it.
So, you can’t ignore it, but you don’t want to lean into it too much, either. There’s a balance there, and I think this promo achieved, nothing’s perfect in life, but the perfect balance of acknowledging, not pretending it didn’t happen, hoping everybody forgets because they won’t, and because they know you’re trying to make them forget by not acknowledging it, what are they going to do?
They’re going to talk about it even more, but when you address it in a way, particularly in this case, that was done so well, executed so properly, production-wise, on Punk’s part and everything else, the audience will move on, too, and they’ll reinvest their curiosity or their opinion of what happened six months ago into what’s going on now.”
Eric Bischoff Not Normally A Fan Of CM Punk
Eric Bischoff’s praise of CM Punk and his return might come as a surprise to many as Bischoff has been one of Punk’s loudest critics since he joined AEW. Even in the lead-up to Collision, the former WCW boss said that Punk was the biggest financial flop in wrestling history.
After cutting a promo addressing his absence, Punk teamed with FTR to overcome Jay White, Juice Robinson, and Samoa Joe in the main event.
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