AEW embarrassed itself in spectacular fashion on Wednesday’s ‘Dynamite’

All Elite Wrestling embarrassed itself on Wednesday’s episode of “Dynamite” and it was yet another unforced error by AEW’s CEO Tony Khan.

For those unaware, the company decided to air footage of the backstage altercation between CM Punk and Jack Perry from last August’s All In pay-per-view in London. The incident stemmed from a backstage disagreement between the two earlier that summer and it led to Punk’s dismissal immediately afterward. It wasn’t the first time that something like this happened as, one year prior, he got into an altercation with The Elite (The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega) following the company’s All Out PPV.

Punk has since returned to the WWE, where he has once again become one of their top stars. In the buildup to Wrestlemania 40 last week, Punk went on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Hour podcast and spoke about the incident for the first time, criticizing Khan’s leadership and the entire company.

Usually in these scenarios, a wrestling company would be wise to simply ignore something like this. Punk has been gone from the company for over six months and AEW has its own programming to worry about, particularly next weekend’s Dynasty PPV. But those comments clearly got to Khan and he immediately went into response mode.

First, he had Adam Copeland open last week’s show with a cringe promo, where he referenced the “negative BS that has been spewed” and spent the next five minutes defending the company. Later that week, the company officially announced that they were going to air the backstage footage of the Punk-Perry incident on live TV. Initially thought to be a bait-and-switch ploy to generate high ratings, they actually went through with it and aired it on Wednesday’s episode of Dynamite. In the storyline, the incident was aired as a way to build the upcoming match between the Young Bucks and FTR, who are friends with Punk. But Khan’s real-life intentions were to somehow embarrass and discredit Punk.

Let’s take a look:

This was an astronomically stupid decision for multiple reasons:

It’s just an absolutely disastrous decision on AEW’s part and this own-goal has further undermined AEW’s credibility.

As for Punk, well, he had the last laugh: