AEW: CM Punk on Dog Collar Match, Tony Khan on Plans for ROH, Revolution 2022 News

Mar 8, 2022

CM Punk Comments on Dog Collar Match Being His “Love Letter” to Pro Wrestling

This past Sunday’s AEW Revolution 2022 event featured a Dog Collar match between CM Punk and MJF, which was won by CM Punk. Following the event, AEW held a post-show media scrum with CM Punk as one of the speakers.

One of the topics discussed included CM Punk’s thoughts on his Dog Collar match being his “love letter” to professional wrestling.

“I think a lot of it came via happy accident. I still feel weird about… obviously, I love Roddy Piper. I don’t think it’s a secret that MJF loves Roddy Piper. It’s important, too, while telling stories, you can always go back to the bedrock of professional wrestling, especially now that we live in a weird time where there are professional wrestling fans and then there’s weird WWE fans and that’s all they’ve ever seen, so they don’t know other stuff exists and there are other ways of telling stories and doing things. Everything is just a love letter to professional wrestling, Sometimes, maybe I can be a little too cute for my own good, but I’m having fun with my life. Roddy Piper is one of the greatest of all time. Bret Hart is the greatest of all time. Randy Savage is one of the greatest of all time. There is a company out there that likes to spin their own yarns and have revisionist history about who truly is great and who never existed. We don’t do that here. We don’t pretend to live in a bubble. We live in the real world. Roddy Piper is my hero. I wish he was here. I’d really like to see how disappointed he is right now [laughs].
I’m super proud (of the story). I do not say this lightly. I could be done again if I wasn’t having so much god damn fun. I feel this was taken away from me, I got a second chance, I came back. Being the best is a subjective thing. I think Bryan is the best and Bret is the best. Some people think I’m pretty good. To be able to come back after seven years and knock the dust off, I think I did pretty fucking good for a 43-year-old guy who didn’t take bumps for seven years. I’ll pat myself on the back for that one. I’m still not as old as Sam Elliott. He was 45 in Roadhouse. I have time.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Tony Khan Comments on His Current Plans for ROH

As noted before, AEW CEO Tony Khan recently purchased Ring of Honor from ROH’s parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Following this past Sunday’s AEW Revolution 2022 event, Khan held a post-show media scrum. One of the topics discussed included Khan’s thoughts about his current plans for ROH and if he will be handling the booking duties for ROH shows going forward.

“I do have a lot of plans. I was very excited about reaching an agreement. I still plan to make more announcements. I’m still in a preliminary phase and obviously, it’s been a very busy time with AEW and Revolution and all the things going on. I’ll have a lot more to say about it. What am I going to do? There is still a lot of things we need to figure out. The distribution is a great question and what we’re going to do moving forward. It assumes we’re going to do something going forward. I do want to continue the operations for it and do have a lot of plans for it. I do expect to continue the wrestling operations and it’s also a very valuable library we acquired. Distribution, I can’t say anything yet about what it will be and how it’s going to live and exist. I’m very excited, not just about the library and past content, but the opportunities to create more content. Obviously, there are many other revenues streams, merchandising, that will be able to generate, but it creates a lot of opportunities for us. It’s great. For AEW, strategically, I think it’s very good that I also now own Ring of Honor. …
I’m still developing plans for what we’re going to do, but Baltimore has been a great home for ROH and they’ve run a number of events at UMBC and we’ve done a number of shows in Baltimore, including the original Full Gear. It’s an awesome area. There is an amazing connection to Ring of Honor, I’m very cognizant of it and I do want to not only acknowledge the history of Ring of Honor, but I want to take it to another place, both respecting the library and doing things that make sense with it and make sense for me and for AEW and hopefully our media partners, but also going forward because there should be a Ring of Honor and I have the resources to present a better version than anyone else can. …
I’m not going to say what I’m going to do with it in terms of the roster going forward, but there is a lot of opportunities, a lot of great wrestlers out there, young wrestlers, and a lot of great wrestlers under contract here and not under contract here. Ring of Honor has an amazing history and I do plan to respect it and I do want to keep it alive. That’s one of the reasons they were excited to work with me, not to put words in their mouth. Joe Koff and all the people at Sinclair, they talked about how respecting the legacy was important and that’s why they were happy to see it end this way.
I am going to be the booker. I will be bringing in young wrestlers and they have a lot of young wrestlers. We’re very successful here and doing very well here. I plan to continue to do very well with it and bringing in wrestlers can that work in Ring of Honor or AEW potentially. For continuity sake, when you bring people in, other wrestling companies that have had multiple promotions under one corporate structure or one person, I don’t think it’s conducive to have people coming into an environment — say somebody would come here from there and the whole thing that’s been going on with them, I might not be behind it.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

AEW Revolution 2022 News & Notes

The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported in Monday’s Daily Update that AEW’s Revolution 2022 event this past Sunday generated around 200,000 searches and a #4 ranking on Google for that day.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that former long-time WWE referee Mike Chioda was seen in attendance at AEW Revolution 2022 event in Orlando, Florida. Johnson reported that Chioda was visiting some friends for the reason of his appearance.