Dave Meltzer Says CM Punk Should Have Been Fired Sooner

CM Punk should have been fired from AEW a lot sooner says Dave Meltzer.

The saga of CM Punk in AEW finally came to an end on September 2nd when the company announced that Punk had been “terminated for cause with immediate effect.” Punk’s firing came on the back of an altercation with Jack Perry backstage but there is believed to have been a further confrontation between Punk and Tony Khan with Khan noting that he felt his life was in danger.

But this is far from Punk’s first controversy in AEW with the star being embroiled in a backstage fight with The Elite at All Out in 2022. On that occasion, all involved were suspended pending an investigation with CM Punk only returning to the company in the summer of 2023 in part due to an injury suffered during his All Out match with Jon Moxley.

Should CM Punk have been fired earlier?

Speaking about the situation on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that with hindsight he believes CM Punk should probably have been let go a lot earlier:

“So he got fired over what happened Sunday (at All In), but the lawyers and everyone else talked about a lot more than Sunday. They talked about everything, stuff that has come out and lots of stuff that has not come out. Should it have been sooner? Of course, it should have been a year ago but hindsight is whatever. But when he came back, you give him a chance.

“I will tell you when I didn’t have a good feeling before he came back. The two times that he tried to quit or whatever it was, the first one was serious the second one was somewhat. The first time I thought it was a pretty bad situation. He’s not changing, he didn’t learn when he did the promo when he came back [at Collision]. He did the interview, it was just one thing after another. It wasn’t going to work, it was a disaster. There is so much more to it than what has come out, but the big stuff has.”

There have been conflicting reports over whether or not CM Punk and The Elite were set for a sit-down meeting ahead of All In to help clear the air between those parties.

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