CM Punk continues to shine in AEW, and he’s set to face Eddie Kingston in a buzzworthy bout at AEW Full Gear.
While many fans are looking forward to this bout, others continue to critize the way the company has booked “The Second City Saint” since he arrived because it’s hard to see the long-term direction for his storylines.
Punk has previously claimed that he’s an artist who’s “painting a picture,” and he told fans to let him paint it. In an interview with Chris Mueller of Bleacher Report, the former world champion again addressed this criticism. He noted that, because fans have gotten so used to being presented with one style, they automically reject something that’s different. Punk expressed that he’s doing what he wants to do, and the “whole picture” won’t clear until the story is finished, whenever that may be. He acknowleged that some steps along the way are booked “on the fly,” but others are planned.
“I think it’s important. I think AEW as a whole has a bit of an uphill battle to kind of tell the stories we want to tell,” Punk said. “I think the majority of people currently watching wrestling have been fed the same thing for 20-25 years so that when they see something different, they automatically don’t understand it, don’t like it, or try to dissect it.
“There are a million different styles of pro wrestling, there are a million different booking philosophies, and I’m just kind of doing what I want to do. You can’t really look at the whole picture until you know we’re done telling the story. I can’t tell you when we’re going to be done telling the story. Stuff does change, we come up with stuff on the fly, some stuff is planned. There are a lot of moving parts, but I just think it’s a different way to do stuff and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad or wrong.”
As he has in the past, Punk emphasized that he just wants to face fun, and as long as he’s enjoying himself, he won’t worry about the criticism. He also described how he’s confident with both the direction and the pace of his story in AEW.
“And honestly, this is all meant for me to kind of have fun with, so as long as I’m having fun and I’m doing what I want to do, I don’t listen to the criticism, I can understand the criticism because we’re not doing what people are used to what they’ve seen for 20 years, but we’re moving in the right direction and at the pace we want to go,” said Punk.
Either way, the next major stroke in of Punk’s painting will come at AEW Full Gear when he faces Kingston in what promises to be an electric match.
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