REPORTS: Suspensions levied following incident at AEW All In

Originally published at REPORTS: Suspensions levied following incident at AEW All In

Several reports are out stating that suspensions have been levied over the incident with CM Punk and Jack Perry during All In.

Bryan Alvarez of the Wrestling Observer site was the first to report that the belief internally was that suspensions had been placed on both performers until the completion of the investigation. On Tuesday, Justin Barrasso of SI.com reported the same.

AEW President Tony Khan began the post-All In press conference by acknowledging there was a backstage incident and that they were investigating the matter but could not speak about it until more was known.

Punk and Perry had a physical altercation following Perry’s match on the Zero Hour portion of All In, and immediately before Punk’s match with Samoa Joe. During the match, Perry looked into the camera and made reference to using real glass and adding, “Cry me a river” as a direct reference to a several-week-old story involving Perry wanting to use real glass for an angle and receiving resistance from Punk. Perry allegedly felt he was portrayed poorly in how the story came out and blamed Punk.

The suspension of Punk obviously throws into question the status of the performer for the shows in Chicago this week including Sunday’s All Out pay-per-view at the United Center. While not announced for a match on the pay-per-view, clearly, he would have been the focal point of the show.  

POST Wrestling reached out to multiple officials at AEW regarding the suspensions and either received no response or they could not comment on the matter.

Having Justin Barrasso report on this as well provides some credibility to the story.

But right now this feels like rumors that are being reported as facts in the pro-wrestling news echo chamber. Barrasso doesn’t say at all how it was confirmed or who confirmed it. John hasn’t gotten a response from AEW. Reporting these kind of stories without any concrete support is what gets the wrestling news media in trouble so many times.

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I couldn’t agree more. WON is unfortunately the hearsay hub, bouyed but its former status not doing that kind of thing. And so much of wrestling news is just echoing other reports, literally amplifying the speculation. It’s a mess.

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Fans just need to think while they read.

You can argue that this “belief“ wasn’t enough for WON to report anything in the first place. But as far as the actual reporting goes, this is fine with me. I haven’t seen any credible journalist claiming that anything is a fact.

The problem is when journalists trust a source that they shouldn’t, but they don’t care as long as they can truthfully say they sourced it.

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This is sports media in general. Even with the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB etc. most stories that come out are reported the exact same way until an official statement is made.

In wrestling its more prominent, sometimes right (ie. Punk/Bryan signing with AEW) and sometimes it’s BS (ie. Saudi’s buy WWE). I think all we can do as fans is trust those that get it right most of the times.

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