AEW

One of the big question marks off the back of AEW firing CM Punk is the future of AEW Collision on Saturday nights.

Punk wasn’t only the top on-screen star of Collision, but he also had a major influence on the show behind the scenes, essentially choosing who’d be used and pushed on the show.

That is obviously no longer going to be the case, and even the exact same day Punk was fired, we saw the Young Bucks show up on Collision which almost definitely wouldn’t have happened with him there.

So changes are clearly afoot, but the big question on everyone’s minds is who’s going to be the new CM Punk of Collision.

There might not be an exact like-for-like replacement as there’s expected to be more crossing over between shows now, but we may have our closest answer.

At AEW All Out, CM Punk was literally replaced in a strap match against Ricky Starks by Bryan Danielson.

During the post-show media scrum, it seemed very clear that Tony Khan was suggesting Danielson will be involved with Collision going forward, even for the simple reason of it’s a more convenient night for him to work than Wednesdays.

Danielson has had influence and involvement on AEW creative for a little while now, and that’s essentially what Punk was doing for Collision, so Danielson seemed pretty eager to fill those boots if he needed to.

If you wanted another angle on it, AEW has updated all the advertisement posters for upcoming Collision shows on its website, and the person replacing Punk at the forefront of most of them is Jay White.

With that said, there are some exceptions, with Darby Allin front-and-center for the episode in his hometown of Seattle, and Samoa Joe, Miro and Ricky Starks the focus on others.

Tony Khan did mention during the media scrum that the shows have different identities, so while there’ll be more crossing over between Dynamite and Collision now, there may still be people you see way more on one show than the other, just because they fit the identity of that show better, or even – like mentioned for Danielson – just because they have a preference on which day they’d rather work.

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• Collision
• Bryan Danielson
• cm punk
• tony khan
• AEW

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