You know after last week's episode of NXT and us discussing why Punk seems to be ALWAYS making a random appearance on the brand and even randomly refereeing Ethan/Trick's match and it had me thinking.... NXT is the place where Punk is FINALLY living out his lowkey dream of being the cool wise sage veteran wrestler to give out fatherly advise to the up and coming young generation so when he gets old they will shout him out like we do the likes of Bret the HitGOAT, Bryan DanielGOAT, John CeGOAT, and etc. He can't do it on the main roster that doesn't care for him so he has to do it in NXT.
I feel like that was a main factor of Punk willing to come to AEW when he did and I think early on I thought Darby was going to be the one that would be under his wing before he ultimately choose Sting to be his "father". Problem was that most of the roster were guys that were on the indy roster for so long that they did their own thing without needing any advice... the other part of the roster were guys like Eddie Kingston that just didn't like him. Then the issue of Hangman Page saying in an interview that he never took any advice from veterans which pissed Punk off leading him to call Hangman "a stupid lunkead" causing all types of friction. After the incident with Jungleman Jack Perry became known Punk's bid of becoming the cool veteran was deaded and he abaddoned ship.
Punk in AEW:
Punk in NXT: