Regarding those who are hurt, old, tired, and work with children

A week ago, CM Punk retrofitted his old pipe bomb to detonate all over All Elite Wrestling... how did The Best In The World's much ballyhooed and highly anticipated turn into such a mess, so fast?

By Bill Hanstock

The pro wrestling world did a combination of exploding and melting down over Labor Day Weekend, and if you’re on sports Twitter at all (and you subscribe to a Mets newsletter, so don’t lie to me), you probably saw some oblique references or video clips or screenshots of a bloody guy at a press conference. 

And while the stuff that happened at said press conference was pretty paradigm-shifting for the pro wrestling industry, it was extremely inside baseball stuff that took place at an after-midnight press conference, streamed on a niche platform, after a pay-per-view. So, relatively very few sports fans saw it go down live. (This isn’t WWE, by the way, this is their chief competitor, All Elite Wrestling, so it’s possible you’re even less aware of this than you thought you were.)

And then there was a fistfight, resulting in over half a dozen suspensions and, very possibly, eventually, some important people losing their jobs.

This is a moment when folks who are wrestling fans but not habitual viewers might be dropping back in, because it’s top-notch drama. I’ll try to do my best to pare years of history and backstory down to the most important broad strokes. I literally spent more than one chapter of my book on AEW and the major players, so if any of this interests you at all, make like Jay Sherman and Buy My Book.

If you’re familiar with anyone involved here, you’re almost certainly familiar with CM Punk, whose most famous/infamous moment came with his “pipe bomb” promo in 2011.