A new book chronicling the first five years of All Elite Wrestling has been released, but one major topic is noticeably absent: the departure of CM Punk.
This Book Is All Elite: The Inside Story of All Elite Wrestling by Keith Elliot Greenberg was published recently, offering an inside look at the promotion’s rise. However, in an interview with Futures of Wrestling, Greenberg explained why he chose not to include the circumstances surrounding Punk’s exit.
“Some people have brought this up. Whenever I write a book, I’m always going to be criticised, and I take that for granted. Whenever I do an interview, I’m criticised sometimes by the same exact people on Twitter. I know their handles. By this point, they’ve criticised me so much, I know their names. So one of the criticisms I telegraphed in advance, and I even discussed this with AEW, was the people were going to be unhappy that I don’t talk about whatever chicanery occurred backstage that led to the departure of CM Punk,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg compared the situation to writing a tribute book about the New York Mets without mentioning the Bernie Madoff scandal involving the team’s former owners.
“This is a tribute book. If I wrote a book about the New York Mets, which is my favorite baseball team, I even have a Mr. Met tattoo. I would talk about the two World Series runs. I would talk about their marquee players, but I wouldn’t talk about the fact that the owners at the time were supposedly investors with Bernie Madoff… But if the New York Mets asked me to do a tribute book about the New York Mets, I could do a really great tribute book, and not mention Bernie Madoff. So I was asked to do a book that is a tribute to AEW during the first five years, and that doesn’t belong in a tribute book, because really, we’re just talking about one or two incidents.”
While Punk’s controversial exit is omitted, Greenberg emphasized that the book still contains plenty of backstage insights. It should be noted that Greenberg mentioned Mariah May being in NXT. May officially signed with WWE in June 2025 and debuted on the NXT brand under the ring name “Blake Monroe”.
“There’s a lot of backstage stuff in it, and a lot of positive backstage stuff in the book. There’s a lot about how Stadium Stampede came together and how The Acclaimed got their name, and why Tony Khan wanted to put Max Caster and Anthony Bowens on the same team. Let’s go to Mariah May, who’s now in NXT, and Toni Storm, the movie that inspired in Tony Khan’s mind, that story. So it’s not like it’s all surface stuff, there’s deep stuff that you wouldn’t know about, and I don’t think the book suffers at all from not mentioning an unfortunate incident backstage.”
You can buy the book on Amazon here.
