Booker T Discusses AEW Collision’s Ratings Decline, CM Punk’s AEW Firing, More
On a recent edition of his “Hall of Fame” podcast, two-time WWE Hall of Famer Booker T commented on CM Punk’s firing from All Elite Wrestling, the recent ratings drop for AEW Collision, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On AEW Collision’s ratings being down on September 2: “It hasn’t been around long enough to have history a part of it. To be fair, that show has been dropping since its inception, right? I think the last two ratings that went out were in the threes like 376 [thousand] and now what.. It was really just a bad night for wrestling. As well as, the way it was structured. Certain guys could be on the show, and certain guys couldn’t be on the show. I think that kind of like henpecked them, put them in a position where they only had so much to work with. So I don’t know if that show is going to last too much longer. I do know they’re spending money to make it happen. I know that show is not happening for free or anything like that. So I don’t know. I don’t know. CM Punk definitely — If that many people dropped off, CM Punk was definitely a part of that, that of the viewer base that was watching the show.”
On 96,000 fans tuning out of AEW Collision after Tony Khan’s announcement: “Look I mean, we all know CM Punk has his fans. I mean, you say something — I said the smallest little bit of things from a constructive aspect about CM Punk, CM Punk fans to just come after me like with Razor’s Edge, you know what I mean? Daggers, just want to kill me. So, CM Punk has an abundance of fans out there. I’m sure CM Punk being fired from AEW is going to affect them in some way, in some form, just because they had always been trying to crash that million [viewer] ceiling. And they did it a couple of times, and I think they did it with CM Punk. And I think, CM Punk even said they drew their biggest house on his back. So I think it’s going to be a significant drop-off without CM Punk. How Big, We’re going to find out. Tony Khan kind of backed himself into this situation, though. I mean, I don’t think Tony Khan has anybody to blame but himself. Not trying to bring Tony Khan — he backed himself into this situation, hiring CM Punk, pretty much giving him the keys to the castle and saying, ‘Man, whatever you want because we’re looking for ratings. We need the ratings.’ And he got what he paid for. It’s just that simple.”
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