CM Punk Says WWE Is Absolutely AEW's Competition

CM Punk Says WWE Is Absolutely AEW’s Competition

CM Punk says WWE is competition to AEW.

Punk appeared on WFAN’s Moose & Maggie Show earlier today to promote his ring return against Darby Allin at Sunday’s AEW All Out pay-per-view. He was asked if WWE is competition for AEW.

“Yeah I think it be straight up telling a big old like if you said that you didn’t want to beat them in whatever metrics they deem successful,” Punk said. “If you ask them, they’ll say AEW is not their competition, which is great because I think everyone sees through that. If you ask us, I’ll say yeah, absolutely they’re our competition. However, we’re focused on what we’re doing. We’re focused on the people in the building that have paid to see AEW. And we’re not so much worried on anything else.

“I know that TNT executives love ratings. That’s what they’re business is driven by. I’m focused on the fans, and I think that’s how you grow the business. I think that’s how we’ll eventually grow AEW. If you’re talking about head to head competition with WWE, they have about a 30 year head start. AEW has been around for 2 years. I like what we’ve been doing and it’s fun again for me. So I’m not trying to bankrupt anybody, put anybody out of business. But it’s 100% competition. If you say it’s not, you’re fooling yourself, or you’re pretending somebody doesn’t exist or whatever. And I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot.”