Evaluating Punk’s Last Run
By Scott Keith on September 4, 2023
I'll start off being positive. There wasn't much to his last run, but I think most people would probably agree that he at least seemed to be influential in making Collision distinct from Dynamite with fewer sports entertainment-flavored segments. The thing is, we don't know how much of that can be accredited to him alone.
Besides that, did anyone really feel intrigued by this character he was portraying? He was mostly just a traditional babyface, but he occasionally had to heel it up because he was getting audibly booed. He was a babyface who the fans didn't want as a babyface, but he seemingly refused to embrace a heel turn. It fell flat immediately. Half the time, he'd acknowledge the heat and heel it up in a promo before awkwardly changing back to a more traditional babyface promo. It was….weird. This, I think, made his feud with Starks feel lifeless from the get-go. No one wanted to boo Starks over Punk and see Ricky being the one doing all the typical heel tactics, but Punk seemed satisfied ignoring that certain segments of the fanbase now hated him.
I also won't miss the perfunctory 30-minute multi-man Punk main events on Collision that felt like a house show match.
In other words, even taking the backstage drama aside, Punk just wasn't lighting AEW on fire anyway. If AEW suddenly lost MJF right now, I'd say that would be utterly catastrophic, but Punk? To me, he felt like just another guy at the end.
I agree. The multiple feuds for himself while playing heel and babyface at the same time were just such an indication of Tony trying to placate him with his own show and his own guys and his own feuds and it still didn't make him happy.
Comments are disable in preview.