Partial Source: PWInsider.com
In case you missed our report over the weekend, there was an altercation between ECW Champion CM Punk and WWE Hall of Famer Tony Atlas last week. Atlas was sent to developmental to so some mentoring and help the talents if he could with advice and other needs. While there, Atlas rubbed many the wrong way as he constantly put himself over and only said that the talents were doing stuff wrong. Atlas made a comment to CM Punk who was working the tapings, that he wore his wrist tape oddly and looked like he had broken arms. Punk basically shrugged off the comments.
After the tapings, they had the normal post meeting. This is the time where Al Snow and other WWE veterans critique what the developmental talents do right and wrong during the show. Atlas started with his critique, and every time he said something negative he would stare down Punk. After a while, Punk asked why he was looking at him and Atlas tore into Punk and stated, “With an attitude like that you’ll never be called up to TV.” It was then that Atlas’s credibility was shot. Punk asked if he watched ECW or even knew Punk’s name, to which Atlas admitted he didn’t. They argued for a reported 20-minutes.
John Laurinaitis found out about this and was not only upset that it happened, but that OVW management allowed it to happen. OVW owner president Danny Davis was not present when this happened but Al Snow and Robert Gibson were there.
After the meeting, Atlas DaBone; an OVW talent went to Atlas to apologize for Punk. The rest of the developmental talent didn’t like this as they felt no one should talk for Punk and that DaBone was trying to watch out for himself. The locker room views Punk as a hero for standing up to Atlas and is a good source of morale in developmental, which has been down as of late. Many OVW performers have started to feel that the main goal isn’t to help them improve but to mentally beat them down for everything they do “wrong.” It is being called a miserable place to be
