CM Punk made his highly anticipated pro wrestling return after seven long years on last Friday’s episode of AEW Rampage in Chicago. Punk is signed to a full-time deal with AEW although the exact terms of the deal remain unknown.
AEW President Tony Khan was a guest on the Dan Le Batard & Friends podcast this morning where he talked about Punk. Le Batard asked Khan if the deal paid for itself on the first night.
“I believe this was one of the best deals I’ve ever done in my life and I don’t think it was really all about money,” Khan said.
Khan talked about how Punk interacted with wrestlers backstage, buying all the fans ice cream bars and his discussions with Punk leading up to the signing.
When asked the question again, Khan stated, “yeah, I do think so. I think in terms of what this has done for our business, I really believe as soon as we saw the results from this before we even got started I knew this was the best deal we could have possibly done.”
Khan also brought up the success and buzz it got including a boost to social media traffic, Pro Wrestling Tees t-shirt records, and more. He noted that Punk increasing all of the business metrics couldn’t have come at a better time.
Punk will appear on tonight’s Dynamite and then wrestle Darby Allin at the All Out PPV event on September 5th. You can listen to the entire interview by clicking on the player below (quotes can be found at the 5:30 mark):
