Tony Khan Clarifies AEW Rumors About CM Punk And Colt Cabana

Following the disastrous AEW All Out post-show media scrum where CM Punk went on a scorched earth tour, ripping many in the company including his former friend Colt Cabana, AEW hosted another scrum following tonight's Full Gear pay-per-view.

Their return to the scrum saw the company's owner Tony Khan address the situation between Punk and Cabana when Wrestling Inc. Senior News Editor Nick Hausman asked Khan whether or not the rumor of Punk requesting Cabana be moved to Ring of Honor or removed from the AEW locker room was true or not. In response, Khan stated during the scrum that the former AEW World Champion "never asked for that," detailing that the rumors were not true.

After the smoke had cleared following the "All Out" brawl, Cabana appeared a few weeks later on AEW Dynamite, wrestling Chris Jericho in a match that felt to many like a message sent to Punk on the same night The Elite first teased their return back to AEW. When asked by Hausman whether the booking of Cabana had anything to do with Punk, Khan stated that Cabana's ROH win-loss record was a major factor in his booking.

"As far as 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 talked about Chris Jericho wrestling so many of the great names in ROH. When we've been booking the shows, I've been using Colt Cabana as both a coach and a wrestler in ROH. I looked at the ROH roster and Colt Cabana is a very logical challenger because not only has he held the ROH World Tag Team Championship but he's also somebody who's been wrestling in the new ROH, the 2022 ROH, and he's undefeated. 

"He's won both his matches and I thought he'd be a very logical challenger for Chris. He's a compelling baby face, someone the crowd gets behind, and a really good wrestler, and I thought it would be a really good match, and I thought it was a really good match."