CM Punk & Bryan Danielson Approached By ROH In 2020
Former Ring of Honor owner Cary Silkin has revealed the company made an audacious move to lure Bryan Danielson and CM Punk back in 2020.
Bryan Danielson and CM Punk both made their name in Ring of Honor in the 2000s before both men joined WWE. The beginning of 2014 proved to be a pivotal time in both men’s careers as the night after that year’s Royal Rumble CM Punk walked out of the company while Bryan Danielson continued on his inexorable rise to the main event of WrestleMania 30 and the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
Six years later in 2020, CM Punk was still out of wrestling while Bryan Danielson was enjoying a renaissance in WWE after previously having to retire from the ring due to injury.
The launch of AEW in 2019 reinvigorated the wrestling industry as a whole but saw Ring of Honor lose many of its top stars as they left en masse to Tony Khan’s promotion.
In conversation with Wrestling Inc’s Nick Hausman, former ROH owner Cary Silkin has revealed that prior to the pandemic that shut the world down in 2020, the promotion’s former owners Sinclair Broadcasting were trying to make a huge play to bring Danielson and Punk back into its fold:
“Then in 2020, pre-pandemic, when he was out of wrestling, Sinclair, when they were still trying to grow this was … And I don’t remember if it was before the first All Out, All In or after, might have been after that. Sinclair was trying to lure CM Punk or Bryan Danielson or both.”
“I said to Joe [Koff], ‘I know Punk.’ I said I could reach out to him and I did. I called him up. I didn’t text him and he was in L.A. doing something and maybe some kind of film work and I gave him Greg’s number and vice versa, or Joe’s number and nothing ever happened.”
Both CM Punk and Bryan Danielson joined AEW within weeks of each other at the end of the summer of 2021. While Danielson is a key part of the Blackpool Combat Club, the situation with Punk went south after he was involved in a backstage brawl following All Out.
In March 2022 Tony Khan announced that he had bought Ring of Honor with many expecting the company to shut down after they announced an extended hiatus. Since Khan’s acquisition, ROH talent and titles have appeared on AEW television.