Tony Khan has denied that CM Punk asked for Colt Cabana to be removed from the AEW roster and sent to ROH.
Before the incident at AEW All Out, Cabana hadn’t been featured on AEW programming for a while but was used in ROH, which led to speculation that Punk had something to do with it because their friendship fell apart after Punk’s appearance on Cabana’s “Art of Wrestling” podcast in November of 2014 because WWE doctor Chris Amann sued them due to Punk’s comments, they sued each other with both lawsuits later being dismissed.
There was also speculation that part of the heat between Hangman Page and Punk was due to Cabana not appearing on television. Fast forward to the AEW All Out media scrum, Punk ripped Cabana and The Elite and Hangman Page, which led to a backstage brawl. Now, Punk is in talks with AEW about a contract buyout.
Khan was asked about the situation during the AEW Full Gear post-show media scrum.
“No, he never asked for that. The first time it came up, I think you asked me on a scrum call, and I wasn’t looking at your face to face. I was really…it was before Death Before Dishonor, I think. He never asked me that. I could have probably addressed it then, and I didn’t comment on it because I wanted to keep talking about the wrestling that was on the show because Colt Cabana was wrestling on the show, and you weren’t asking me specifically about the show, so I didn’t answer that there. So, no.”
Khan also commented on Cabana’s return to AEW television on November 2nd during Dynamite when he challenged Chris Jericho for the ROH World Championship. Cabana’s return reportedly made things worse between AEW and CM Punk.
“As far as the match with Chris in Baltimore, I thought it made a lot of sense because we had the Ring of Honor Championship Series, and we had talked about Chris Jericho wrestling so many of the great names in Ring of Honor, and when you talk about great people who have won championships in Ring of Honor, we brought in Bandido, Dalton Castle, a lot of great people….”
Khan continued, “When we’ve been booking the shows, I’ve been using Colt Cabana both as a coach and a wrestler in Ring of Honor. I looked at the roster, and he’s a very logical challenger because not only has he held the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Championship, but he’s also somebody who has been wrestling in the new Ring of Honor, the 2022 Ring of Honor, is undefeated. I thought he would be a logical challenger for Chris. It’s also a good match.”
Khan also explained that due to Colt being 2-0 in ROH since he took over the promotion and being a former ROH champion who is on the ROH roster, it made sense to use him in the role.
You can watch the entire media scrum by clicking on the player below:
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with AEW’s YouTube channel an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
