This Book Is All Elite Author Explains Why Incidents With CM Punk Aren’t Mentioned in Book

Speaking to Features of Wrestling, Keith Elliot Greenberg, the author of This Book Is All Elite: The Inside Story of All Elite Wrestling, addressed criticisms of the book and why it doesn’t mention any of the backstage incidents involving CM Punk that took place in 2022 and 2023. Below are some highlights:

On Interviewing Tony Khan for the Book

“Tony Khan is like anyone in his position. I think he’d be comfortable with me saying this, a rather centric person. You sit with him, he’s distracted. He has other things going on. And then somehow we get into a chat about the Rock and Roll Express against the Midnight Express in the Mid-Atlantic territory. Suddenly, I see Tony Khan’s eyes, and they go from looking here and looking there to being focused on me. From that point forward, he was locked in. I think we spoke for about two hours. If I wanted to keep going, I think he would have spoken to me till somebody till the cafe we were in closed for the night.”

On Why the Book Doesn’t Mention the Incidents Involving CM Punk

“Some people have brought this up. Whenever I write a book, I’m always going to be criticised, and I take that for granted. Whenever I do an interview, I’m criticized sometimes by the same exact people on Twitter. I know their handles. By this point, they’ve criticized me so much, I know their names. So one of the criticisms I telegraphed in advance, and I even discussed this with AEW, was the people were going to be unhappy that I don’t talk about whatever chicanery occurred backstage that led to the departure of CM Punk. This is a tribute book. If I wrote a book about the New York Mets, which is my favorite baseball team, I even have a Mr. Met tattoo. I would talk about the two World Series runs. I would talk about their marquee players, but I wouldn’t talk about the fact that the owners at the time were supposedly investors with Bernie Madoff, this very corrupt financier who ended up, apparently, [stealing] millions of dollars from the US Holocaust Foundation. The guy was just robbing everybody.

“As a fan, it’s a lot of suspicion that may have compromised the team, because who knows? Was Mets money being used? They said not. But as a baseball fan, as a fan of the team, you suspect things. But if the New York Mets asked me to do a tribute book about the New York Mets, I could do a really great tribute book, and not mention Bernie Madoff. So I was asked to do a book that is a tribute to AEW during the first five years, and that doesn’t belong in a tribute book, because really, we’re just talking about one or two incidents, but there’s a lot of backstage stuff in it, and a lot of positive backstage stuff in the book. There’s a lot about how Stadium Stampede came together and how The Acclaimed got their name, and why Tony Khan wanted to put Max Caster and Anthony Bowens on the same team. Let’s go to Mariah May, who’s now in NXT, and Toni Storm, the movie that inspired Tony Khan’s mind, that story. So it’s not like it’s all surface stuff, there’s deep stuff that you wouldn’t know about, and I don’t think the book suffers at all from not mentioning an unfortunate incident backstage.”

Greenberg on How Tony Khan Knew He Could Sell Out Wembley Stadium

“I did a book on WrestleMania III. Vince McMahon knew that was going to be a sold-out stadium. Tony Khan knew what was going to happen. And as you know, Tony Khan has a deep connection with Fulham football. So he understands that UK market. I was there, and when you when you get off the tube, and you walk through that plaza where there are the sports bars and shops heading to Wembley Stadium, I was listening to the conversations, and I was hearing people speaking Flemish, and people speaking Swiss, German, Polish. I mean, people came from all over Europe. This wasn’t just the UK market. This almost felt like a gift to the UK, to Europe, in the European wrestling fan, and people got on planes and traveled. One guy told me he had tears in his eyes when he said he was going there; he kind of felt like this represented his love of wrestling. And again, this is Tony Khan feeling what the fans feel, because he grew up like we did as fans, but just a little more passionate than us, and that’s why he could deliver that, and we can’t. That and being a billionaire son.”

CM Punk was previously involved in a backstage incident involving The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega at AEW All Out 2022 in September of that year. After Punk returned to AEW in 2023, he was involved in another physical incident with Jack Perry that took place backstage at AEW All In London 2023 in August.

Following the incident at All In London, AEW terminated Punk’s talent and employee contracts with the promotion. Punk later returned to WWE several months later, closing out WWE Survivor Series: WarGames in Chicago in November 2023.

This Book Is All Elite: The Inside Story of All Elite Wrestling highlights the first five years of AEW. The book is now available in a hardcover edition from Penguin Random House.