Jim Cornette has had his say on the chaos surrounding AEW and says he thinks the blame for CM Punk’s media scrum outburst lies elsewhere.
After All Out in Chicago where CM Punk regained the AEW World Championship from Jon Moxley, Punk attended the post-show media scrum where he got a few things off his chest.
Punk took aim at The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, as well as addressing his past issues with Colt Cabana. The AEW World Champion saved some of his harshest words for Hangman Adam Page, someone he has previously addressed with unscripted comments on Dynamite.
Page upset Punk in the lead-up to their Double Or Nothing title match with some seemingly off-the-cuff comments of his own during a promo between the two men.
Speaking on his Experience podcast, Jim Cornette – a man not short of an opinion or two – explained why he thinks the blame for a lot of this should be shouldered by Adam Page because he did his perceived slight first:
“I see a lot of people on Twitter today and wherever go ‘How dare Punk do something like this?’ Well, I believe the instigating, motivating factor in all of this was when ole [Hangman] Page did the exact same thing only not as good and in more of what the kids call it – a passive-aggressive way. Which is more of a way of what the [Young Bucks] and all of their little buckaroos do things, they like to just run their d*ck lickers behind people’s back and in quiet instead of doing that in front of them or in public.”
“But, if we’re talking about unprofessional behaviour and or telling the truth, imagine that, on television, then Page crossed that rainbow bridge first, what was it a few months ago with this promo and remember at the time we heard it, and we talked about it on the show the next day, we said what in the world? Did he just forget everything he was supposed to say? Because none of this made any sense. Or was he trying to do a shoot interview of some kind? Turn heel? Because he sounded like a whiny little bitch. What was going on there? We didn’t know.”
“And then we find out that he was trying, the problem is that he’s not articulate enough to be able to do this and still make it legible to the general viewing public. He was trying to do a shoot interview as a shoot on Punk, in front of Punk in the middle of the ring on live TV before their big pay-per-view match.”
“So I think that if you’re going to do something like that, then at a media scrum, where everybody’s talking to the media, and Tony [Khan] is so open about everything and that’s where all the opponents come out and hug and kiss on each other and say how much they loved being able to express their art with each other that night, that Punk ought to come out and tell the truth about what happened. How is that unprofessional? They did it to him when he wasn’t ready for it on a television show that was not supposed to be for the media but was supposed to be for public consumption.”
“Well, now we’re talking to the press, so here’s what’s going on. How is that? In any way [unprofessional]? I think he asked one of the journalists in the room ‘What did I do to get this guy to go into business for himself on me, without any warning on live national television?’ So I don’t see how they’re blaming Punk for coming out and telling the truth. It’s what we’ve been saying, it’s what a lot of other people have been saying.”
Jim Cornette continued by discussing the two different camps backstage in AEW that seem to have issues. One, Cornette said, is led by The Young Bucks, and the other he sees CM Punk as the figurehead of:
“There’s two camps, there’s the people that are serious about the wrestling profession as a profession and a business, and there’s these jack-offs that got their head so far up their own asses and love the smell of their own farts so much that they still think that their temporary mass amnesia on a certain segment of the wrestling fan population is actually still going and that they’re still the stars this thing, and that they can act any way they want.”
“They can talk to people any way they want and they can treat them any way they want. And if they’re in their little clique, they’re good. They don’t have to have talent or ever have been heard of or go anywhere or do anything. They just got to be friends from school.”
“Then there’s a group led by if you want to be honest, Punk is the guy who has drawn him their million people ratings on television. Punk is the guy who’s been on top and their million-dollar gates, Punk’s the guy who has been on top in their million multimillion-dollar pay-per-views. And as a matter of fact, I would hesitate to say by every metric, that you can say Punk has been the one to generate the business.”
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