Update on CM Punk
AEW World Champion CM Punk reportedly has no other option but surgery for his injured foot.
There’s no word yet on when Punk will go under the knife for the injury, but word is that surgery was the only option due to the nature of the injury. PWInsider adds that the injury likely would not heal correctly without surgery.
There is no timetable for Punk’s return to the ring, and there likely won’t be until after the surgery.
Punk won the AEW World Title from “Hangman” Adam Page at AEW Double Or Nothing last Sunday. He then teamed with AAA & ROH World Tag Team Champions FTR to defeat Max Caster and The Gunn Club on Dynamite, and had a brief showdown with NJPW star Hiroshi Tanahashi to set up a potential match at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door on June 26.
However, any plans for Punk were put on hold when he announced during Friday’s AEW Rampage that he is injured. AEW then announced that this week’s Dynamite will open with a Battle Royal, and the winner of that match will face Jon Moxley in the main event. The winner of that Dynamite main event will then advance to Forbidden Door to face the winner of Tanahashi vs. Hirooki Goto at NJPW Dominion on June 12. The winner of the match at Forbidden Door will be crowned the new Interim AEW World Champion, and that person would face Punk when he’s medically cleared.
On a related note, Punk’s new AEW World Champion t-shirt reportedly did well in its first week of being up for grabs. You can see that t-shirt below, which is on the ShopAEW website for $24.99.
Punk has not made any public comments since his announcement on Rampage.
#CMPunk is The Best In The World & now your new #AEW World Champion! Check out @CMPunk’s #ANDNEW shirt at https://t.co/9hHlXpcSbp!#shopaew #aewdon pic.twitter.com/Qm683SAnin
— ShopAEW.com (@ShopAEW) June 1, 2022
Maybe I’m alone in this thought, but AEW has sorely been missing out on making their world title mean anything because they just put it on a guy and let that person do “whatever” with the world’s title being an afterthought. At least with this tournament happening for an interim champ, the title actually matters to the story line and is the focus of the matches. Punk winning the belt was great for Punk. But what was he really gonna do for the championship in the long run? Ignore it and team with FTR to crown newly created triple tag title belts? What would that at all do for the heavyweight division as a whole, and the title belt that everyone should be gunning for in that bracket?