CM Punk’s run with AEW took a drastic turn during his feud with Adam Page as Page went off script during their promo segment on Dynamite ahead of their AEW World Championship match at Double or Nothing in 2022. Punk went on to defeat Adam Page to win the AEW World Championship at the pay-per-view, but it seems that the issues between Punk and Page extended well beyond their title match.
During a recent appearance on the MMA Hour, CM Punk explained how the promo segment was planned out before they went on live TV, and how things went wrong between himself and Adam Page.
“What he [Hangman Adam Page] said, it didn’t matter to me but, when you sit — peeling the curtain back ladies and gentlemen and again, if you believe all the bad things about me, please do, just leave me alone. If I’m working with you and we sit and we talk — I think one of the biggest criticisms about WWE was, ‘It’s overly scripted. There’s writers. Pro wrestlers don’t need writers.’ Some people don’t, some people do, some people prefer it. But I sat down with him. I was very gracious, hammered out this promo. ‘Well if you say this, what if you say this. Okay, I’ll say this. Oh, if you say that, I’ll say this. Okay, great. Great. Awesome, great’ and then he proceeds to go on live TV and not say any of the s**t we talked about.
I can’t hear him because the crowd’s so loud and 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 gonna match what he’s saying to me and he’s saying some s**t, I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’m just like, man, 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 and you’re just s******g on me and you’re s******g on the business. Why would you do this? And I knew the promo ended with him punching me and I had to fight — just double leg him. Just double leg him.
Why is he doing this? I don’t know what’s going on but I was professional and afterwards, I spoke to him and I was like, ‘Why’d you do that?’ And you know, he thinks I got one of his friends who hasn’t been fired, fired. But I went to Tony [Khan] and the lawyer and I said, ‘You need to fix that, because if I do, you’re not gonna like the way I fix it’ and I thought I was being professional by not just murdering him on television. I know some people are gonna be upset about that and some people are gonna be like, oh, he’s talking about this guy again. But with me, respect is the default. I respect everybody, until you do something that makes me lose my respect for you and I had never done anything to any of those guys. If they’re basing how their attitude towards me [is] based on the b******t their friend told them, well I can’t help you.”
H/T POST Wrestling
