Hello, everybody. Welcome to our WWE payback review. I'm John Pollock alongside waiting. We are going to be diving into everything, including payback, but we will be getting to that subject later on in the program. But thanks to everybody for joining us right off the bat.

We are going to be discussing CM Punk, who was officially terminated today by AEW. We're going to start off with the statement that was put out late Saturday afternoon from all elite wrestling and Tony con announcing publicly that AEW has terminated the wrestler and employment agreements between Philip Brooks, CM Punk and AEW with cause effective immediately.

The termination was confirmed today by Tony con CEO general manager and head of creative of AEW. The termination follows a week long internal investigation of an incident occurring backstage at AEW all in London on Sunday, August 27th. Following the investigation, the AEW Discipline Committee met and later convened with outside legal counsel before making a unanimous recommendation to con that CM Punk be terminated with cause.

Con offered the following statement, quote, fill played an important role within AEW and I thank him for his contributions. The termination of his AEW contracts with cause is ultimately my decision and mine alone. Of course, I wish I didn't have to share this news, which may come as a disappointment to many of our fans. Nevertheless, I am making the decision in the best interest of the many amazing people who make AEW possible every week.

Our talent staff venue operators and many others whose efforts are unsung but essential to bringing our fans great shows on television and at arenas and stadiums throughout the world end quote and thus ends the CM Punk chapter with AEW does this end the saga of AEW and Phil Brooks.

In that, I mean, do you expect some kind of a recourse from the law as a result from this as in this is not probably going to be the last time that this company and this individual are going to be attached to one another. This certainly reads as something that could have a legal element to it coming out of this when you're talking about firing someone with cause and and we will go into it as well.

This was something that not only was the statement provided, but Tony Khan.

Open the show, there was a cold open where he essentially reiterated this, although I would say in a more direct language that he used.

First, we should go in order, he addressed the live crowd at the United Center, he came out sat on the stage, which I think whatever you want to state about this, this was a guy that certainly did not have to go to that measure knowing how he would be viewed going out into Chicago.

In Chicago of all places and was largely boot, although he certainly by the end of that speech had had rallied some of the crowd behind him, but the key points of the two speeches, both to the live audience and to the viewership at home was that he had never experienced something at a wrestling show where he felt his his safety and security and even life had been in danger.

And the fact that he had again received a unanimous decision from legal outside counsel in addition to this discipline committee that is.

He did not say who comprises that this discipline committee, I would be curious like who is on that he said those they were mainly lawyers lawyers, but not any specifics about who is on this and others that would be on it.

But anyway, he went out and he listen, he he took it all from from this audience and I can certainly see that there are going to be a lot of people that there is going to be a bad guy in all of this and for many people that bad guy is going to be Tony Khan and we have said time after time, there is no easy solution here, whatever choice you make, you are going to anger people and for Tony Khan, it was either going to be continuing with what he perceives as.

It just this was untenable at a certain point and the argument would be that like in any industry and professional wrestling being no different is that the star is going to be afforded every opportunity and they felt that this was ultimately just something they they could not continue at this rate and it's astonishing when you look at the state that they are in and needing this Saturday night program to get up and off the ground.

That they made this conclusion at the end of the day it's going to have short term ramifications for the company and it remains to be seen long term we might look back at this a year later and this was proven to be a something that needed to be done and in the long run this company was healthier or not that remains to be seen but short term they will feel the sting from this.

Certainly yeah I think it's shocking maybe for that reason yeah the fact that that collision is the thing that they are trying to build it and they are trying to get renegotiations to have it be a successful product I think what makes this more surprising is the fact that it didn't happen a year ago.

I mean there were repercussions to all out last year but I felt like more action would have been taken at that time and for me I almost felt like if you know punk cannot just come back from all out but to receive a lot more power in the company as a result of it I pretty much felt he was bulletproof and certainly didn't expect this level of action coming off of you know this Jack Perry incident.

I think the result of this entire thing the termination as well as hearing Tony cons speeches today lends me to believe that what they had evidence of maybe what he saw with his own eyes was like pretty damning for punk and to the point where you know it wasn't really deniable.

I am sure that like this the big difference between this and last year is that the altercation last year we did not have footage of it and there is footage of this and fewer witnesses fewer witnesses last year many witnesses to this one and a new wrinkle to this is that this was not just a case of punk and Jack Perry getting into some like scuffle like the way it was reiterated is that there were other people that were endangered by this backstage personnel.

And if you have footage of that and you avoided something here and you end up bypassing this and in the future this comes up and somebody is injured in the line of work here because of something else and you have a pre existing incident that you turned a blind eye to or ignored and this is caught on video.

What ramifications are you placing yourself in if there's a backstage worker that gets in the middle of something and a camera falls on them like whatever equipment like you don't know we don't know what the footage is that they're looking at and believe me if there was a lawsuit coming out of this very well be that would be grounds for discovery like that video would be the key evidence in all of this so.

I mean I look at this and you can see punk feeling maybe he is the aggrieved party here you could also look at it the other way that there are others that would be more than willing to testify to their own safety like we don't know how many other indirect people were affected by this beyond just the two principles that we know of.

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