Fans waited 7 long years for CM Punk to return to wrestling and he finally made his AEW debut during the second episode of Rampage from the United Center back in August. Since then CM Punk has been facing off against up and coming talent in AEW, and he also faced Matt Sydal during the October 16 episode of Rampage which went head to head with SmackDown for the first 30 minutes of the show.
It seems that everyone has an opinion on CM Punk’s return so far, and during a recent episode of his 83 Weeks podcast Eric Bischoff talked about Punk’s AEW run and he said that Punk has “s**t the bed” in terms of ratings.
“Punk hasn’t delivered. Punk was the guy that came out and his first comments were ‘The addition of this talent was more significant than Scott Hall and Kevin Nash,’ constantly making references to WCW because they want to be the company that WCW was back in the mid-90s. There’s these constant references to WCW. When Scott Hall and Kevin Nash came in, we took off. Punk, you came in and you sh*t the bed, in terms of ratings. It ain’t there and there’s nothing in reality to suggest otherwise. You just need to be careful about what you say until you’re delivering. That comment that Punk made about these guys being more significant than Hall and Nash in 96 and then two weeks after Punk made his big arrival the ratings dropped by 40-50%.
“This is what lit my fuse, I wasn’t going to comment on any of this until Punk came out and said ‘It’s going to take five years for the effect of this talent to really show up significantly in the ratings,’ are you f***ing kidding me? Does anybody other than an uninformed wrestling fan who loves CM Punk, is anybody going to believe that nonsense? It’s going to take five years? Dude, you’re going to be getting AARP mail, because it happens soon as you start getting close to 50 they start pounding you with this s–t. I let that one go but then to come out a couple weeks later, after in my opinion he should be embarrassed, and for the ratings to take the dive the way they did after his debut, suggests to me that he ain’t as hot as he’s trying to make people think he is. If he was, the numbers would be much bigger.”
Have you been enjoying CM Punk’s AEW run so far? Sound off in the comments below.
H/T Wrestling Inc.
