In the above wide-ranging conversation with Chris Van Vliet, Matt & Nick Jackson addressed a couple of names who are often linked to All Elite Wrestling.
One comes up because he’s been promoted as a member of their roster, and even had a match booked for Double or Nothing before creative differences caused a change. The other comes up because, well... we wrestling fans like to follow John Cena’s advice and never give up, regardless of how many times it’s made clear to us that we should.
PAC
Matt: He’s coming. I mean, eventually. Yeah, he’s coming though. We’re pretty much at 99%...
Nick: It’s a work in progress. It’s obvious that Matt and I are big fans of his. We met him like 10 years ago over in Japan so we’ll always have ties with him and we wanna work things out with him.
Matt: It’s a priority for us, and I think we’re gonna make this thing work.
Nick: I think it’s just a matter of trying to fit his schedule with ours and hopefully, things work out.
CM Punk
Nick: We’ll be honest. Of course, we would love him to come to our company. At this time, I just don’t think he wants to.
Matt: When he wants to come back to wrestling, it’ll be his decision.
Van Vliet: You think it’s a “when”, or you think it’s an “if”?
Matt: If. I think it’s an “if.”
Nick: Matt talks to him all the time about it and it’s just, the timing’s not right, I guess.
Matt: Professional wrestling - he knows better than anybody - this is the most demanding thing in the world. You can’t just find yourself back in it one day and be like ‘okay, I guess I’m doing this again.’ You really have to want to do it, and that’s up to him.
Van Vliet tries to push the Punk issue a bit, saying the Bucks could offer him a customized, less grueling schedule as Executive Vice-Presidents of AEW. But he still can’t get more than a “we’ll see” from Matt.
And so we shall. On both men’s futures, with AEW or anywhere else.