wrestling / News

CM Punk On AEW All Out 2022 Scrum, Not Hearing From AEW For Six Months After

April 1, 2024 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
CM Punk AEW All Out Image Credit: AEW

CM Punk discussed what he could of the infamous AEW All Out 2022 scrum during his interview with Ariel Helwani. The “Brawl Out” scrum, as it’s become known, famously saw Punk take shots at several people in AEW including Hangman Page, the Young Bucks and more over incorrect reports that Punk had gotten Colt Cabana fired from AEW. A backstage fight reportedly happened after the fact between Punk, Ace Steel, and The Elite which saw all parties suspended, Steel fired and more. Punk would return to AEW after several months but would soon be gone after his altercation with Jack Perry at AEW All In in September of 2023.

You can see highlights from Punk’s comments about All Out below, via Fightful:

On if Page diverting from what was talked about beforehand in his promo: “What he said didn’t matter to me. If I’m working with you, and we sit and talk. One of the biggest criticisms of WWE is, ‘it’s overly scripted. There are writers. Pro wrestlers don’t need writers.’ Some people don’t. Some people do. Some people prefer it. I sat down with him and we hammered…I was very gracious. We hammered out this promo. ‘You say this, I’ll say this. You say that, I’ll say this. Great.’ Then, he proceeds to go on live TV and not say any of the shit we talked about. I can’t hear him because the crowd is so loud. I’m looking at him and I have to really pay attention to what he’s saying because my responses matter. I can’t just say what I had planned because it’s not going to match what he said to me. He’s saying some shit, I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

On his reaction to the situation: “I’m like, ‘Why would you do this? Why would you ruin…’ TV is very expensive. Every minute of TV is hundreds of thousands of dollars between production and all that stuff. You’re shitting on me. You’re shitting on the business. Why would you do this? I knew the promo ended with him punching me and I had to double leg him. ‘Why is he doing this?’ I didn’t know what was going on, but I was professional and afterwards, I spoke to him and was like, ‘Why would you do that?’ He thinks I got one of his friends, who hasn’t been fired, fired. I went to Tony and the lawyer and I said, ‘You need to fix that. If I do, you’re not going to like the way I fix it.’ I thought I was being professional by not just murdering him on television.

“With me, respect is the default. I respect everybody until you do something that makes me lose my respect for you. I had never done anything to any of those guys. If they’re basing how their attitude is towards me based on some bullshit a friend told them, I can’t help you. I have plenty of friends who don’t like certain people, I keep relationships business. Everything went off the rails from there. It’s a shame.”

On the All Out scrum: “Getting out there and seeing reporters that report shit about you like it’s fact without ever checking with you to see if stuff happened, who are openly friends with other wrestlers, it’s just fucking high school. It’s high school mean girls drama bullshit. I get there and I see these goofs and I just lose my temper. Top three CM Punk promo though.”

On Tony Khan sitting next to him during the scrum: “It’s nothing he never heard before… Should have handled it [beforehand].”

On what he did after the scrum: “Went home. Got surgery. Got my arm fixed.”

On not being able to talk about what went down backstage after the scrum: “I don’t think I can. I didn’t have to sign an NDA for anything I did wrong. It means I have nothing to hide. There is an NDA in place for that one. I wish I never did the scrum. Scrums are stupid anyway. Those things are really cringe… You would have to ask the person [Tony Khan] that wanted me to sign a NDA [why it’s in place]. Yeah. I didn’t want anybody to sign a NDA to hide some bullshit that I did.”

On the whole incident growing in reputation since then: “I don’t know. Why does anyone want to talk about it? It’s grown into this ridiculous thing. Believe who you want.”

On if he thought he was close to being released after it: “Nobody in the company spoke to me for six months. Paid for surgery, booked my surgery, thankfully Doc Sampson, who I knew from WWE and have a good rapport with, he helped me with that, but I was on my own with all that stuff. If you think I deserve to be fired or treated like that. That’s your opinion. The recovery for this surgery and that one is night and day. It’s almost a comparison between the two places where there is structure and protocols and professional people in charge of things and I’m not having to research and find a PT spot. I had no help. Nothing. That’s insane to me. Is that how they treat Jaguars players? I don’t know. I don’t think anybody should be treated like that if you’re a pro athlete. I had no help. Nobody would speak to me.”

On his deal at the time and returning to TV: “Yeah, maybe I’m the stupid mark and should have been like, ‘My arm is not healed.’ I don’t think my deal was almost done. I think I had a year left.”

article topics :

AEW All Out, CM Punk, Jeremy Thomas