CM Punk misses wrestling and ‘wants to come back’, says Dax Harwood

FTR are committed to AEW. Dax Harwood says the team re-signed with Tony Khan’s company sometime in the past couple months, with the decision made prior to Vince McMahon’s return to WWE and the deal done before he & Cash Wheeler won the AEW Tag belts last week. On the latest FTR with Dax Harwood podcast, he said:

“Yes, we have re-signed with AEW. Another misconception was ‘FTR found out Vince was back in charge and they decided to stay’, or ‘FTR told Tony, Give us the belts or we’re going to WWE.’ If you think we went into the building Wednesday night with no contract signed and we said, ‘We’re not going to sign this contract unless you give us these belts’, man, you’re so short sighted.

“I told you on the podcast a month ago, or maybe it was three weeks ago, whatever it was, we knew what we wanted to do and everything was getting fine tuned, you know, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s and all that stuff. We knew way before Vince got back in charge what was going to happen, but yes, we have re-signed with AEW.”

That fact makes the duo’s continued stumping for the return of CM Punk even more interesting. Whatever bridges were left between Punk & AEW seemed to be burned by last month’s public airing of disagreements surrounding last summer’s World title program between Punk & Jon Moxley, but that didn’t stop FTR from pitching a match with Punk against the Elite trio he brawled with backstage after All Out last September.

Now, Harwood’s explained more about why he’s been suggesting that match for this year’s All In PPV in London’s Wembley Arena.

“I will say this the reason I’m fantasy booking that [Punk & FTR vs. Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks] is because outside of Roman Reigns and — you please correct me if I’m wrong, outside of Roman Reigns and maybe, this is not including like Brock Lesnar, or Logan Paul or whatever. But outside of Roman Reigns and maybe Cody Rhodes — the biggest name in professional wrestling right now is CM Punk. Right? Definitely the biggest name in AEW.

“So if we want — if we want to take AEW to the next level, if we’re here to work for AEW, if we’re here to make professional wrestling better because of AEW? The way you do that is you take the biggest star that you have, and one of the biggest stars in the world, and you put them on the card, and you make money with them.

“Also, on top of saying that, I talk to Punk almost every day, and Punk misses wrestling, that’s your headline, Punk misses wrestling, and Punk wants to come back. And he wants to give back to the fans, he wants to get back to wrestling. So I’ll leave it at that.”

While he doesn’t say it explicitly, the implication is that Punk wants to return to AEW. Unless Khan will release him from his contract, it’s likely Punk’s only option for getting back to wrestling.

Is conveying his love of the business via Harwood the best way to make that happen? It’s likely only one part of the strategy. We’ll find out in the weeks and months to come if it’s going to be a successful one.