CM Punk wants to make fans happy, and while he knows some of them have been critical of his booking in AEW so far, “The Second City Saint” is confident that his feud with MJF is helping viewers trust the process.
During a panel at the C2E2 convention, Punk acknowledged the complaints about his AEW run up to this point, but he noted that there’s plenty of time to explore various stories and matches with other members of the company’s loaded roster. He also pointed out his rivalry with MJF is allowing some fans to see the “bigger picture” more than they had previously.
“A lot of people think I am off to a slow start in AEW, you know, doing certain things a certain way,” said Punk. “But to me, just like Adam Cole just said, there’s five years worth of stuff with all these interchangeable characters and players. MJF is definitely somebody I wanted to share a ring with. And I think now that we’re getting to it, I think people kind of can maybe see the bigger picture, you know, and they can trust AEW as a whole for like the direction of where stuff goes.”
Punk then echoed some of his previous comments about AEW’s focus on giving fans what they want, rather than swerving them for the sake of it. He stressed his desire to deliver “the happiest outcome” and called his wish to please the fans “the juice” for being a wrestler in the first place.
“To me one of the best things about AEW is, we enjoy payoffs, and we like making the fans happy instead of just, for some reason, making them miserable and doing stuff just to piss them off,” said Punk. “Sometimes the happiest outcome yes is the most obvious one, and we don’t really feel the need to beat anybody over the head with switching it just because they figured it out first. You know, like I enjoy making the fans happy.
“I think that’s one of the biggest, that’s like the juice for being a pro wrestler, is getting reactions out of the crowd. And when it comes to me and [MJF], without me trying to say anything too positive about him, like you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Speaking of the bigger picture, when asked about his intent to challenge for the AEW World Championship, Punk made it clear that winning the gold is on his list, and he’ll be eagerly watching the AEW World Championship Match a AEW Winter is Coming.
“Yeah there’s a saying that goes you know, if you’re in the locker room and you don’t wanna be champion, you probably shouldn’t be in the locker room,” said Punk. “And you know I’ve done some pretty neat things in my career, and I think being AEW Champion could be one of the greater things that I’ve done, so I’ve definitely got my eye on it. I’m looking very forward to Hangman, [looks at Hangman] watching you defend the title, may the best man win. I’ll be watching on Wednesday. We’ll see what happens after that.”
For now, Punk remains focused on his heated feud with MJF, but many fans are excited to see what his future holds.
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