AEW’s New Saturday Show Expected To Include CM Punk, Plans To Split Roster

There is a major update on AEW’s new Saturday television show and how CM Punk will be involved as well as something of a split roster.

The former two-time AEW World Champion CM Punk is expected to return to AEW soon. The company is tentatively planning for Punk’s return on the June 21st episode of Dynamite in Chicago, which is Punk’s hometown, but that’s not a sure thing at this point.

It was also reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that not only is CM Punk coming back, but with the new Saturday show starting soon, AEW might be splitting their large roster.

“The return of CM Punk is a tenuous situation because the dressing room issues involving him have not been settled at all at press time. The working idea was that the Saturday show would star Punk and that they would split crews to a large degree. History does show that the splitting crews never lasts long, but in this case the idea is to ease the dressing room problems in the sense those who have not made up would be kept on different crews and wouldn’t have to interact with each other.”

“Still, there are going to be instances, such as PPV shows or Wembley Stadium and some television shows where it has to be all hands on deck.”

As he continued, Dave Meltzer revealed more about the plans for the Saturday night AEW show as well while noting it’s not known officially if it will be on TBS or TNT.

“Regarding the new Saturday show, what we know is that the 7/8 Regina taping starts at 6 p.m. Central time. Since you advertise a start time at least 30 minutes before cameras roll, that would indicate the new show, if it does happen, is right now slated for either a 7:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. Eastern start time, most likely the latter. We are under the impression that this deal is not 100 percent finalized but it has been talked about for months.”

“We’re not sure if it’s TBS or TNT, but if it’s TNT there will be a lot of sports preemptions and if it’s TBS there will be some. It also means it goes head-to-head with major sports almost every week including UFC most weeks and UFC PPV shows 12-13 times a year, college football all fall, almost every major boxing show, every major sport at one time or another and WWE PPV shows nearly every month since WWE is trying to move its major events from Sundays to Saturdays as much as possible.”

“We’ve heard talk of a June start, but there are no TV taping dates on Saturdays announced yet for June. Obviously the working plan is for the show to be rolling by 7/8 at the latest, and I don’t see the big debut episode of a new show being in Regina.

It was also noted by Meltzer that the two-hour show would “have qual the star power of the Wednesday show” (Dynamite) although nothing is official until it’s announced.

What all of this also means is if you are a fan of Tony Khan teasing huge AEW announcements, there likely will be some big ones coming very soon.