One very simple reason. Tony khan lacks balls. He let the elite keep fukking with punk and never told them to cut the shyt or get out. They kept fukking with punk so he went off and when he was healthy enough to wrestle again, khan tried to appease both sides instead of making sure the executives aren’t behaving like high schoolers splitting the locker room. At that point punk was clearly not going to play nice with anyone and the lesson khan learned was “the elite are bigger than the company itself” which is the wrong lesson. Maybe things will be fine in the short term, but in the long term this will backfire because now it’s clear that even if you’re their top draw you’re still less valuable than guys who don’t draw money. Similar issues as late 90’s wcw.How did we get from that beautiful moment when he first debuted in AEW to this, and as quick as we got here too.
One very simple reason. Tony khan lacks balls. He let the elite keep fukking with punk and never told them to cut the shyt or get out. They kept fukking with punk so he went off and when he was healthy enough to wrestle again, khan tried to appease both sides instead of making sure the executives aren’t behaving like high schoolers splitting the locker room. At that point punk was clearly not going to play nice with anyone and the lesson khan learned was “the elite are bigger than the company itself” which is the wrong lesson. Maybe things will be fine in the short term, but in the long term this will backfire because now it’s clear that even if you’re their top draw you’re still less valuable than guys who don’t draw money. Similar issues as late 90’s wcw.
I don't know man, there's a good number of people on that locker room that were pro Punk and this type of shyt might shift their attitude from "he's not THAT bad, can't we all just shut up and do business?" to "nah, they fukked him over, fukk The Elite".Fired after giving him his own show, and news coming out that he’s the #1 merch seller
Morale wise this could be good, business wise this could be bad