Cash Wheeler Reveals Scrapped Plans For CM Punk AEW Singles Match: ‘He Ended Up Wrestling Penta Instead’

AEW

Cash Wheeler has revealed details of a scrapped plan in AEW for him to face CM Punk, noting that the star ended up wrestling Penta.

Former AEW World Tag Team Champions, FTR have been a unit since debuting in the company back in May 2020, having formed a tag team with the star now known as Dax Harwood in WWE some around six years earlier.

Speaking to LNG Productions, Cash Wheeler would be asked why he rarely competes in singles matches, revealing that one against CM Punk was scrapped, saying:

“There’s been a couple times. Like I was supposed to wrestle Punk in a singles, but I wanna say it was right after we had the stuff with The Briscoes and The (Young) Bucks, I think.

“I was like I don’t know if me wrestling as a heel in a singles match is the way to follow up on all this stuff right now, and everyone agreed.

“I think he ended up wrestling Penta instead, that was probably the better call anyway because I think Penta’s a great performer.” 

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Punk notably defeated Penta in their one singles encounter, on the April 13, 2022 edition of AEW Dynamite.

Wheeler has occasionally competed in singles action, facing PAC on the April 2, 2025, episode of AEW Collision, along with beating Dax Harwood in the Owen Hart Foundation Men’s Tournament 2022 Qualifier on Dynamite, as just two examples.

Known as The Revival in WWE, the duo would part ways with the company in April 2020, with Wheeler revealing that splitting from Randy Orton was “the final straw“, leading to Wheeler and Harwood asking for their release.

Singles Competition For Tag Team Stars

A tag team is often presented as a single unit, with two stars focused on a shared goal, typically seeking championship opportunities somewhere down the line.

For successful tag teams, they’ll often be associated with each other in the mindset of the fans – The Hardys, Edge & Christian/Copeland & Cage, The Dudleys, to name just a few who have gone on to legendary status.

This isn’t to say that they will always stick together, with their fortunes dictated by a number of factors that can lead to either member of the team undertaking a singles run.

For some, singles success leads to glory, as was seen with the rise of Shawn Michaels after he put his Rockers teammate Marty Jannetty through a window to bring their tag team to an end. Matt and Jeff Hardy have both gone on to notable singles careers, as have Edge & Christian, continuing that legacy in AEW as Copeland & Cage, recently reuniting and becoming World Tag Team Champions.

It’s no surprise that Tony Khan has described Copeland and Cage as “red hot“, but they very much were so in both their singles runs in AEW thanks to the upsides of both stars for any booker.

Being able to see that upside in a tag team as singles competitors is no doubt a reason why some creatives will toy with the idea of splitting up a successful pairing, relatively safe in the knowledge that they can be brought back together again at a later date.

Perhaps there’s a future in AEW where Tony Khan will see how Harwood and Wheeler fare individually for a period of time, although seeing FTR together and dominant, champions or not, still has plenty of mileage to explore.

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• ftr
• cash wheeler
• AEW
• cm punk

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