Ace Steel had been working as a producer for AEW before the Brawl Out incident took place at All Out when he was part of the fight along with CM Punk, Kenny Omega, and The Young Bucks. Steel allegedly threw a chair and bit Omega during the fight. Steel thought he wasn’t going to be let go by the promotion before being informed of the decision.
As previously reported, AEW is building AEW Collision around CM Punk, with his return happening on the show’s premiere on June 17, but the sides are at odds over a misunderstanding regarding bringing back Steel. It comes down to Punk thinking Steel could be at events to work backstage, while AEW thought Steel would work remotely.
It was reported by Nick Hausman of Haus of Wrestling that AEW re-hired Steel “several months ago” but has not been actively working while backstage at shows because the belief was he might upset people by his presence backstage so they had him working remotely with AEW President Tony Khan on creative in some capacity.
It was believed that once the new AEW show started, he could return to the road as an agent for the brand. However, on Tuesday, the decision not to bring him back to the road was made, something Punk quickly learned about, and he was upset with the decision, leading to him being pulled from the Collision promotional material. Although it was said that Punk is still on “sound footing” with no issues between them, and they’ve kept communication open.
In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer noted that Steel was “apparently one of Punk’s requests or demands to return” as they’ve been friends for years. However, Meltzer’s AEW sources denied that re-hired him.
Meltzer wrote, “Steel had been in talk with Impact until several weeks ago, concurrent with the detailed story (and as noted denied to us by AEW) that he had inked a new deal to return. The story is that Tony Khan told Punk that Steel could have his job and work closely with Punk but that he would work remotely and not be brought to the Collision tapings.”
That’s when things fell apart. Meltzer pointed out this is a similar situation to the MJF situation last year at Double or Nothing, where MJF did the secret Brian Pillman storyline where everyone was kept in the dark about what was planned (MJF beating Punk for the World Title at Full Gear after returning from hiatus at All Out that ended up being nixed due to Punk’s injury).
Meltzer added, “I don’t believe anyone, past Punk and whoever he may have told, knew about Ace Steel (Chris Guy) returning until a few found out about a week ago. It also should be noted that while we had heard talk about a Steel deal to return as a producer for Collision from multiple sources, we had also been told from the top in checking that we were told it was not true.”
Meltzer noted that it regarding Steel being rehired months ago, “we had that denied to us when asking several weeks back, but based on what we were told by others weeks ago when the name first started surfacing, the claim had been he was hired a few weeks before that, so about six or seven weeks ago would fit that time table. But at the time those close to him said that it was a closely kept secret and he would actually return at the first Collision show. Even top people in AEW at the time were unaware of this and most still didn’t know until this week. When key talent found out about two weeks ago, they were shocked.”
The difference here is the Punk announcement was supposed to be a big thing since his return was going along with the launch of a new show, and Warner Bros. Discovery “pushed very hard for him to be brought back.”
