Questions persist about who started CM Punk/Elite fight, police involvement (UPDATED)

The latest Wrestling Observer Radio has the latest on the biggest story coming out of a busy weekend — the backstage brawl between The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega and CM Punk & Ace Steel that took place after All Out.

As every wrestling fan who’s checked a wrestling website since Sunday (Sept. 4) knows, the fight took place after Punk addressed lingering rumors about his role in Colt Cabana being moved off AEW television and into a behind-the-scenes role with Ring of Honor at the post-PPV media scrum. His comments included insulting remarks about Hangman Page, whose promo alluding to the Cabana situation back in May is a trigger point for everything that followed, and The Elite trio, who he referred to as “people who call themselves EVPs.”

We’re already into our third or fourth round of reports on the “melee”, and there’s a lot of agreement about details.

First and foremost, despite what a portion of the internet thinks and will probably always think, the fight was not a work. Police were involved at the time of the incident*, and none of the principals are talking because of possible pending legal action.

Among people Dave Meltzer & Bryan Alvarez spoke to, no one disputed that Punk punched Matt Jackson, or that Steel threw a chair which hit Nick Jackson and pulled Kenny Omega’s hair & bit him. Where there isn’t agreement, per Alvarez:

“The disagreement between the two sides is that the one side claims that CM Punk threw the punch first. The Young Bucks walked in, and he started punching. The other side claims that The Young Bucks stormed in and were the aggressors, and that Punk & Ace were defending themselves. Those are the two sides of the story, and depending on who you talk to — who was there, who heard what from who — you’re gonna hear one side of the story or the other.”

Sorting out which side of the story is the truth will fall to Tony Khan, whose leadership is already in question since the issues between the two sides were apparently well known backstage for months, and because he took no steps to stop or redirect Punk at the scrum. Meltzer believes an official decision on addressing the entire embarrassing situation won’t come quickly. That’s partly because of the involvement of police and lawyers, but also because that’s how TK handled a similar crisis when Jeff Hardy was arrested earlier this summer.

And as if all of that wasn’t enough of a disaster, Meltzer says Punk was in the trainer’s room at the end of the night, so he may have been injured in the brawl.

Just some stuff to look forward in the sixth and seventh reports we get on the brawl, probably coming later today or tomorrow.

* UPDATE: Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful tweeted that Hoffman Estates Police were not dispatched to Now Arena after All Out, so add that to the list of “disputed” items.