Tony Khan had a fiery answer to Eric Bischoff calling CM Punk a financial flop f

[Liz]

The post-Double or Nothing media scrum didn't featured any statement about the MJF situation that dominated the lead-up to the May 29 PPV in Las Vegas. AEW owner/president/booker Tony Khan said he wouldn't comment on it. But it did feature a spicy, profanity-laced speech from TK about CM Punk's impact on AEW.

It came up in a response a question about Eric Bischoff's criticisms of Khan's company on his podcast & social media, and specifically charges that the signing of Punk has been a "financial flop":

"That's fucking bullshit. I can tell — there's only one person who can attest to that. I don't what other people — I can only attest to what's happened here, and in public record, and some of these things are a matter of public record, because of things of freedom of information and stuff. We do have over the years a good amount of financial data in pro wrestling. I can tell you, like no one wrestler has ever come in and made a bigger plus-delta financial difference in the history of my company going into, this is the third year anniversary this week, going into year four no one person has ever made a more positive impact. We just did a record pay-per-view buy. Every PPV we've done, he's done a four PPV cycle now, ever one of them was the record.

"The matches, he carried the Friday night war, which by the way is a matter of record in fucking court, in the state of California, that we won the Friday night war. Just ask [WWE lawyer] Jerry McDevitt cause he fucking wrote it [in his response to MLW's anti-trust case, cited as proof WWE doesn't have a monopoly in the wrestling business].

"This guy [points at Punk] won it, versus Matt Sydal, who's a great wrestler, he had another goddamn great match on Friday night. This fucking guy he fucking did the Friday night war, he did The First Dance, he's done the record Double or Nothing, he did the record All Out in his debut, he was a big part of a record Full Gear — great match with Eddie Kingston. He's wrestled a bunch of young guys, a bunch of veterans in between there — Will Hobbs, Daniel Garcia, goddamnit. And then he showed up, did the biggest program in terms of everything, TV, box office with MJF. And then he did the goddamn main event here. He's the biggest part of financial success in the history of this company... LET'S FUCKING GO."

Tell us how you really feel, TK.

Punk smiled as he told his boss, "good answer," then paraphrased a tweet he sent in response to another Bischoff critique, saying opinions from people like the former WCW President & WWE General Manager should "die in the dark." Tony said he didn't want anyone to die, but started to launch into more about Easy E's "shitty opinion" which is "the most bullshit opinion I've ever heard." Then the new AEW World champ moved the presser on the next question.

He's not wrong, and taking what many feel is bad faith criticism from a guy you've welcomed into your product in the past probably strikes a nerve. It'll be interesting to see how it plays, especially the Friday night war talk considering folks behind-the-scenes at WWE are rumored to already be about his Money in the Bank tweet.

Check it out:

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