According to AEW President Tony Khan, CM Punk never asked for Colt Cabana to be moved to the Ring of Honor roster.
Punk and Cabana used to be friends, but they had a falling out as part of a lawsuit that stretched from 2018 to 2019. When Punk signed with AEW in 2021, Cabana initially stayed on the roster, but he was gradually shifted to ROH after Khan acquired the company in March 2022. Following months of rumors that Punk wanted Cabana removed from AEW, he discussed the situation in the infamous media scrum following AEW All Out, which led to the reported fight between Punk and The Elite. Punk has been absent from AEW ever since.
During the AEW Full Gear post-show media scrum, Nick Hausman of Wrestling Inc. asked whether Punk had asked for Cabana to be moved to the ROH roster. In response, he firmly stated that Punk never asked. He noted tha he didn’t address the matter when Hausman asked about it during a previous scrum because he wanted to focus on the show itself.
“No, no. He never asked for that. He never asked for that,” Khan said. “The first time it came up, I think you asked me that on a scrum call, and I wasn’t looking at you face to face. It was before Death Before Dishonor, I think. He never asked me that. I could have probably addressed it then. I just didn’t comment on it because wanted to keep talking about the wrestling that was on the show because Colt Cabana was wrestling on the show. You weren’t asking me specifically about the show, so I didn’t answer that there. But no.”
When Cabana returned to AEW TV on the November 2 episode of AEW Dynamite and challenged Chris Jericho for the ROH World Championship, some fans viewed it as a statement of sorts regarding Punk’s absence from the company. Instead, during the scrum, Khan made it clear that he booked the bout because Cabana was a logical challenger, given his previous title reigns in ROH and his success in the company’s new era.
“As far the match with Chris in Baltimore, I thought it made a lot of sense because we had the Ring of Honor championship series, and we had talked about Chris Jericho wrestling so many of the great names in Ring of Honor. When you talk about great people who have held championships in Ring of Honor, we brought in Bandido, Dalton Castle, a lot of great people. Tomohiro Ishii’s a great former Ring of Honor World TV Champion.
“When we’ve been booking the shows, I’ve been using Colt Cabana, both as a coach and a wrestler in Ring of Honor. So I looked at the Ring of Honor roster, and Colt Cabana’s a very logical challenger because not only has he held the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Championship, but he’s also somebody who’s been wrestling in the new Ring of Honor, the 2022 Ring of Honor. He’s undefeated, he’s won both of his matches, so I thought he’d be a very logical challenger for Chris, and it’s also a good match.”
Khan previously stated that Punk had nothing to do with Cabana moving to ROH. Check out his comments here.
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