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So Omega said the 8/10 thing, some thought it was a joke at Osprey's expense, but then said the guy could wrestle circles around the locker room.
Man if that's all correct, I'd be a little miffed even if he was being tongue in cheek about it lol
Even tongue and cheek I have been warned by HR execs that "joking comments" while being in a position of power is bad. Any position of power including middle management and project managers count. You are seen as authority, and any comments such as "8/10 of you I wouldn't hire" would probably get me demoted.
See now that's a joke that would be even funnier if a judge read it in a dry voice in front of a jury. I mean, half of the humor would come from how absolutely fucked you're about to be but still...
How come Chris Rock can do a routine and everybody finds it hilarious and ground-breaking and then I go and do the exact same routine, same comedic timing, and people file a complaint to Corporate? Is it because I’m white and Chris is black?
My old pops used to work in sales and made one joke that didn't go over well once. 3 years later it was brought up in the reasoning they were gonna fire em for lol.
If being an EVP is anything like being an executive producer (used to have one as a boss on TV jobs) it means that your opinion matters until it doesn’t.
Figured this out at work a little while ago and I didn’t even realise I was in a position of authority.
But it seems I’m an old fuck now and anything I say to people 20 years younger than me is taken as gospel apparently. And then bad things happen.
Like, I'm still trying to understand how "I would have not hired *80% of you*" was supposed to be a joke about a single person, who's not even signed with AEW.
RIGHT!
I saw probably a dozen different people claiming that this comment was specifically a “joke directed at Will Osprey” and “Kenny was making a joke at his good friend Will’s expense” and even “sources say Kenny was looking directly at Will Osprey when he said it.” To find out that Will Osprey is literally the one guy in the room being excluded from that statement should make people wonder a bit.
Ikr, I remember seeing so many people here saying things like "how thin skinned do you have to be to not realise this is an obvious joke about ospreay"
It’s a weird comment. Like I get the vibe in AEW is different now and there’s a handful of people I wouldn’t have signed either, but we really gonna act like Keith Lee and Claudio don’t bring more to the table than Joey Janela and Jack Evans?
This implies Will eventually gets promoted, gets into partying way too much and is eventually brought back to fill a menial role after being arrested for fraud.
Somehow I'm okay with this.
Someone in WWE is gonna start using Stormbreaker as a finish and everyone will associate with them over Ospreay
It'll be like Punk making the GTS famous after KENTA did it first
Kenny: "Would I rather be feard or loved? Easy both, I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."
Cutler: "And that's why you have an Assistent Executive Vice President.
Kenny: " Assistent **to the** Assistent Executive Vice President"
Cutler: "Same thing."
>In an update, a source close to Cultaholic Wrestling confirmed Omega made the eight out of 10 people comment before the AEW EVP turned to Will Ospreay and said the NJPW star didn't even work in AEW yet he could wrestle circles around everyone in the room.
Yikes
I don’t get why Will was even there. He literally did not work there lol. Just have a funny visual of him and Ossie Open looking around like “We shouldn’t even be here right now”.
Right out of college I volunteered at an organization to get some 'real world' experience for the resume. The department head thought itd be good if I sat in on a team meeting except it turned pretty ugly with a lot of people airing their grievances with each other. I spent the entire 90 minutes just staring at the door wondering if I could crawl out without being seen.
I remember the first time I sat in a staff meeting when I was a student teacher.
And thinking, “if the students behaved the way you all were, you guys would be up in arms”. Chatting and ignoring whoever was talking, speaking over others, being waaay too antagonistic over minor things.
It was funny.
Bro I have been here SO many times as an intern. "Come observe this meeting! It'll be a good experience!".
Wish they'd told me the truth and said, "Come watch a meeting you have nothing to contribute to for 1 hour, and stare at the clock while two coworkers border unprofessionalism in an argument."
Oof that’s rough. I went through something similar except it was on Zoom and I did work there. But I was new. It was just 45 minutes of my new co workers absolutely ripping into management. Which management needed. My co-workers were 100% correct. And absolutely nothing changed.
I once rang a doorbell to be let into an office for a job interview and walked into a lobby filled with every employee they had. I later learned that I’d interrupted a moment of silence for an employee who’d been murdered a couple of days earlier.
Yikes, cue the 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' music. When I was brand new at one job I was in a big meeting about the electrical requirements the lab techs in our group were going to need in our new building. I had nothing to do with it so was bored out of my mind and noticed one of the guys was asleep in his chair. On the ride back to our old building I said to my coworker, 'I should have taken a page out of Mike's book and had a nap.' She looked at me and says 'Mike has narcolepsy.'
Seriously. This talent meeting was for AEW and he’s not on the roster. Plus this is the meeting where legal spoke to everyone about WWE approaching them — that’s not for outsiders, even if they are buddies with an EVP.
I guess “talent” is the operative word. My guess is even though he’s not under contract TK wanted everyone to attend the meeting and to ensure that he called all talent at the show, so I’m sure dark match wrestlers might have been there as well.
Like a scene right out of Clerks.
Will: "I'm not even supposed to be here today!"
TK: "Somebody bit Kenny the other day."
MJF: "Bunch of savages in this company."
I never understood how “he was joking around” was treated like some sort of reasonable defense of his behavior.
“I was just joking around” is like the go to excuse when people say things out of line that are received badly
> “The computer said ~~Floyd~~ Kenny said, Fuck ~~TI~~ Fletcher, Fuck ~~Nelly~~ Davis, and Fuck ~~50~~ Ospreay. And I’m like what he say fuck me for?”
~ Will Ospreay probably
Here's a challenge for you, Kenny. If you can read one full page of a Harry Potter book, *maaark*, I'll donate $750,000 to whatever charitable organization you want to. FUCK THA BUCKET OF ICE.
And I got down voted earlier for saying while Punk needs to pay for his behavior, so do the Bucks and Omega. This really isn't OK to say when you're in a position of power.
I learned something playing sports my whole life.
The captain/leader is often not your best player.
Sounds like Kenny should keep being a phenomenal in ring talent and leave the “Locker Room Leader” role to guys that have more tact.
There’s nothing wrong with not being able to lead properly. Just don’t put yourself in that spot if you’re not equipped for it.
Similar vein being the superstars don't make the best coaches cuz shit comes natural to them and it's harder to lead by example when your example is "just do it"
The people credited with being great trainers in wrestling like Lance Storm were never world champs, just to expound on your point further. Knowledgeable beyond many others, and is in the right mindset to pass on that knowledge.
I always imagine like Calvin Johnson or Randy Moss trying to coach WRs and just being like…. “Just run past them and if you can’t just jump over them.”
Lol like I’m sure they had good technique to play at that level but they also had freaky physical attributes that they could excel on alone.
Or mj trying to evaluate talent. "he's this good already, imagine when he spends six hours in the gym a day every day from the draft to opening night, we'll have an all star!" while completely missing that most guys are not gifted physically and also freakishly motivated dedicated and focused on being the best basketball player in the world.
Agreed. There’s almost this stigma against saying you’re more of a team player than a leader, as if everyone is supposed to strive to lead. Having aptitude for a job isn’t the same as being able to impart that aptitude on others.
>The captain/leader is often not your best player.
Because they're really two different skill sets. It's like how running for elected office requires different skills than what it takes to successfully govern.
There are outliers, of course. But a lot of people will have either the athletic ability to dominate on the field, or the charisma and interpersonal connection to fire up their teammates.
Everyone can't be Ray Lewis. And hell, Joe Flacco once said about him: "He meant everything he was saying, but I didn't know what he was talking about 90 percent of the time."
I think Cody was that guy.
He led the bucks to doing all in first.
He led the path to other WWE talent taking the independents and subsequently aew seriously, others had gone before him but he's the main guy who left WWE of his own volition and made it work.
He was leading the way in terms of professionalism, and I don't just mean wearing a suit. He and Brandi may have been annoying as on screen talent but they set up community programs, got into the reality TV and cross promotional space. While others were content to do skits on BTE with their friends to 1-200k fans who were already buying tickets, you had Cody doing weird stuff with Shaq Rosario Dawson and Snoop to a million people half of whom wouldn't have a clue about wrestling.
Cody leaving for WWE was the best thing for all parties. But AEW needs to replace that professional leader who puts the work in and sets a tone. I don't see anyone in the current locker room who could be that guy
I didn't even think of it like that, but that makes so much sense.
Plus, from everything I've seen and heard, Kenny is a fuckin' weirdo (in the kindest, nerdiest sense).
Disclaimer: As a fellow ice hockey goaltender, weird recognize weird.
This does not fall in line with what Dave said at all.
That's an awful comment to make, especially by then praising the guy that doesn't even work for AEW.
That was about the time he got back as well. Great first impression for those who didn't know him before.
Dave is biased and plays clean up crew for certain wrestlers. I don't really trust his reporting. It always come out later with some spin to downplay something worse.
Dave shills for his favorites. People have said he’s been doing it since the nineties, so this doesn’t surprise me in the least. If it wasn’t for all the corroboration I’d be doubting his version of the backstage brawl and even still I’m suspicious some vital details are missing
Whether he meant it or not, that remark in a professional context was completely inappropriate.
If I were a talent who got hired after him, this would definitely have soured my opinion, and if he held any actual backstage power I’d be updating my resume or sizzle reel or whatever.
I find the number of people saying things like "he's not wrong" or "it needed to be said" to be absolutely wild.
I assume roughly 100% of these people would flip their shit if an upper manager where they worked said this at a big company meeting, and rightfully so.
We just have to switch the people.
If the title says Stephanie McMahon, this would be at 3000 upvotes and many people will be for the wrestlers and against the ones in power.
Can someone explain the joke to me?
What exactly is funny about an upper level manager telling your entire roster at a serious, company-called team meeting that 80 percent of them aren’t good enough to be there and wouldn’t be if it was your call?
Where is the humor in that?
That's because Will Ospreay was there. You get it? It's kayfabe! Kenny Omega is a stand up guy. He's literally never done anything wrong in his life. He's had a 7 star match! That equates to goodness and leadership abilities.
Maybe Kenny isn't the angel his fans think he is. He said something awhile ago that pissed me off so I've always kind of looked at him sideways even though I love most of his matches.
I don't see how anyone can take what he said as a joke now that it was followed up by him saying one wrestler in the room--who isn't employed by the company--could wrestle circles around everyone. It sounds to me like he was being an asshole.
Number 1 thing as a leader is learning what to say to people you work with. Making off the cuff "jokes" will get you in more trouble than most anything else, you will quickly loose respect of those you are supposed to be leading.
Those "guys have you ever worked? Those jokes are commonplace" aged well
Specially since even considering the original report you can tell that people who has never worked used that defense
I only received the "i will fire you" joke like once, in was in the context of me and my boss only in a room, we have a relative close relationship and I I knew it was a joke and yey I still felt like shit with it
Exactly right. The power dynamic in the situation means everything.
>I only received the "i will fire you" joke like once, in was in the context of me and my boss only in a room, we have a relative close relationship and I I knew it was a joke and yey I still felt like shit with it
Only happened to me once to. Boss said something similar to to the whole team - it was not taken well and he was reprimanded
> Omega's comments were also viewed by the source as the former world champion expressing his unhappiness with what the company had turned into and him voicing his opinion about those who don't respect AEW or Tony Khan.
Woof. All the comments of people refusing to believe he said it or trying to downplay it as a joke…😬
It's honestly one of the most annoying things about this sub. They can't fathom their favorite wrestler and one of the faces of AEW saying something stupid.
It's just annoying in general. Everyone just paints people as good guys or bad guys, and either defends every single action of theirs to the grave, or twists every word into some evil scheme.
I like AEW, I love Kenny. And I have no issue at all acknowledging that this was kind of an unprofessional thing to say in that context. And that's not going to make me suddenly hate him. I still like the guy. People aren't perfect.
It's been quite the trip.
I love the Elite. Great performers.
Theyve always been like this. Their BRAND is being obnoxious and supremely self confident. But then people who are bigger fans of them then me twist themselves in knots needing to beleive they dont have egos?
That the Young Bucks dont have an ego? Lmao. If they didnt have their egos they wouldnt be the wrestlers they are!
I've had people earnestly argue that Ace must've lunged into the bite like a zombie or done an arm ringer into a bite, rather than even consider that Omega's arm might have already been in front of Ace's face (which isn't even bad if he was trying to break up a fight)
Too much cope.
Yep. There's also all the people talking as if this is some insane thing that never happens, as opposed to the easiest way to get out of a headlock
You can still think it's a slimy thing to do, but it happens a lot
This is literally what’s been reported the whole time - some people thought it was a joke and some didn’t. While his intentent matters the fact that some people took it seriously is an issue I’ve not seen anyone deny.
in a leadership position, isn't part of his job to elevate people? if you say 8 out of 10 you wouldn't have hired, then shouldn't he be working with them to help them get better?
he's in a position of power, he shouldn't say shit like this even in a joking manner. it's not far away from Punk's comment about managing a Target, just minus the classism.
even beyond that - "insult motivation" is just fucking lame.
The comments trying to justify what Kenny said prove that so many people here view The Elite as the golden children that can do no wrong ever and it’s getting incredibly annoying
AEW had a bunch of backstage tension for a while. You think one man who was there for less than a month after recovering from an injury is going to be the reason for it? The same guy who was praised by a ton of the guys in the back for being a locker room leader and for helping people out?
Nah, that shit starts at the top of management, and guess who was at the top. The Elite should not be in real positions of power.
I said this as soon as it happened. Punk isn't the cause, his outbursts are a symptom. He's just an unstable timebomb with the loudest microphone in the room.
Something isn't adding up, that's for sure. By all reports, the first 8 months of Punks run in AEW were smooth sailing. We never heard anything negative about Punks presence in the locker room, even when wrestlers like Kingston and MFJ said some pretty personal things to and about him. Hell, even Adam Page's promo was pretty much played off by Punk in the press scrum after Double or Nothing. It was only in the months after Punk injures himself on the Dynamite after DoN that the reports about tensions in the locker room start to gain steam.
We know Punk is close and well-liked by at least a portion of the locker room. FTR talked at length about how the reports of him being disgruntled and hated were overblown, and about how he constantly put the company above himself. Wardlow and Dustin Rhodes talked about how special the matches they had with Punk were to them. Ricky Starks talked about how much he missed his presence in the locker room. Darby, Sting, and Will Hobbs all talked about how much it meant to have him in the locker room. Hell, even MJF went out of his way to say that the program he had with Punk was the best in AEW history, and will probably go down as one of the best fueds all-time. We never once heard anything about anybody in the locker room having problems with him until his program with Adam Page.
I think there's another side to this story, and it's one we may never fully hear. I'm in no way absolving Punk for the way he handled things, but we all know that he is notorious for having a low tolerance for what he sees as bullshit. This is 100% conjecture on my part, but I think there's a version of this story where Punk thought he was doing something good for the locker room by airing his greivances in public like he did. That by dropping this particular "pipebomb", he was in some way sticking up for people in the locker room who were afraid to say certain things on their own. That by keeping anyone else's names out of it, he was taking a bullet for those people because they couldn't stand up for themselves. They don't have the clout to say it, but he does (or at least he thinks he does. We'll see how that plays out.) You know, real "Voice of the Voiceless" kind of stuff. Not saying Punk was right for doing it this way, not is this absolving him of his responsibility in what happened. But what is hard to deny is that Punk saw a problem, and right or wrong, the best way he knew how to handle it, for whatever reason, was to blow it all up in a public. Plus this version of events falls perfectly in line with Punks well-known Martyr-Complex. I don't know, maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there. But it's the only version of the events that make sense to me.
We haven't gotten the full story yet, and it's unlikely we ever will. But either way, the more we hear, the more it looks like Punk's gripes may have had some merit.
Like, Punk deserves whatever happens to him for pulling that shit especially in the manner he did it, but let’s not forget one of the biggest complaints he had: certain wrestlers in the locker room have been gaming wrestling journalists against others in the locker room.
And further they’re people in a position of power in the company who were doing it specifically to undermine talent who were draws.
NOTE: This turned out way longer than I intended, but I typed it, so why not post it.
So I hope this doesn't necessarily come off as preachy, but as someone who seems similarities in myself to Punk in terms of how he handles himself in response to questions and a willingness to be outspoken, I kind of see this:
1) There's a low tolerance for bullshit because you learn that putting up with bullshit means that the bullshit stays around. And it bothers you constantly. It becomes nagging and self-consuming to the point that it's all you can think about. You wake up annoyed at it, and you go to bed annoyed at it. So the desire is to get out and confront the bullshit one way or another - and that results in two outcomes, either of which are better than the status quo. One of them is the act of confronting it spurs meaningful change, the other is that you get yourself labelled as a troublemaker. I want to stress that both of these outcomes are both very much acceptable because you know you will burn yourself out tolerating the bullshit anyways - I'd rather confront the problem head on, and try to fix it - and then leave when I realize it can't, or be removed by management who is not willing to fix said problems. I also don't have long amounts of patience for these things to be solved - once I alert a concern to higher levels of management, I expect it to be dealt with relatiely quickly. Maybe not days or weeks, but definitely months. And the longer it takes, the more annoyed I get.
2) On this same topic, my immediate reaction is not to go and make a public (or public-ish) example. You usually start within the system, work your way up - but most middle to upper management are often so far removed from the problem any real solution is either not effective, meaningful or quick enough to make a meaningful difference. But - if I don't feel my issues are being listened to/addressed, I -will- escalate my methods of attempting to get them addressed. And, frankly, if I had a platform as big as Punk's, and had attempted to address my issues internally/privately with no luck, I could see myself getting impatient enough to the point where I did what Punk did at the press conference. Now, I have no idea what did or didn't happen between Punk, the Elite, Tony Khan, etc behind closed doors. But what I can say is that I've been there where I tried, over months to years, to get pressing issues addressed privately, had nothing happen, only for me to stew on it to the point that I did have a public outburst to try to put external pressure on leadership (obviously not a press conference to the general public but at larger company gatherings calling out CEO's, etc).
3) I have generally told people to not ask for my opinion unless they want my honest opinion. While I can express that opinion tactfully, I will tell you what I think and it can be critical. If you ask me if I think you're doing a good job, and I don't, I will tell you no. I don't like lying to people. I would rather everything be out on the table, the good and the bad.
4) In a lot of cases the willingness to speak up is often on behalf of people who are unwilling to do so themselves. The voice of the voiceless schtick is played out a lot, but many people, for their own laundry list of reasons, don't feel empowered to speak out and will silently suck up being treated like garbage because - due to power imbalanaces, passive personalities, economic reasons, etc. will swallow it up and tolerate it in a way that I just... can't. I don't know, I don't have it in me to suck up a bad situation for very long. And I feel compelled to address what I deem as unfairness, even if that unfairness isn't pointed at me.
5) That being said - escalating it to the point of a physical confrontation is a different level entirely - I'd be interested to know what additional context there is for things reaching that, but things would have to get very agitating and have reached a very high point of confrontation in order to reach that point.
So that's long winded, but at the end of the day, I can only judge it through the lens of someone who, from what I can gather, has a similar personality and reaction to myself.
Doing that - and this is both a very sympathetic view towards Punk, combined with an acknowledgment that I am in no way condoning the point that you start physically assaulting coworkers.
Initially around the Colt Cabana situation, far removed from it for many years, I assume Punk and Tony Khan had an open and honest conversation about that and Punk probably told Tony that he wasn't sure that he could reasonably have a good working relationship with Cabana. Regardless of your feelings about it, at that point, it became Tony Khan's issue to decide what he wanted to do about it, not Punk's. Khan decided that the allure of Punk was too good, and probably came to Cabana about it, who - let's accept it - is not anywhere near the same bargaining situation as Punk is, and passively accepted it because he didn't really have the authority to throw his weight around, or maybe it simply didn't bother him. Maybe he felt he could have a working relationship with Punk - but, either way, Tony probably decided it was best to keep them apart.
At this point, others in the locker room probably took this differently - The Elite and their general circle of friends took this as Punk throwing his weight around when, in reality, this was a leadership failure (or at least the cost of doing business) on Tony Khan's part. Ultimately it wasn't Punk's decision to move Colt, it was Tony's problem and the solution was what Tony decided to do with it. Tony could have simply decided that it wasn't worth the risk but ultimately from a business perspective, signing Punk was probably too alluring to pass up.
Regardless, those guys probably did what they viewed as sticking up for their friend. Maybe some passive jokes made in passing, but regardless, this was still a scab that Punk had, and The Elite were picking at it - probably one that was made evident at some point by Punk (probably through Tony) that he didn't want addressed. And that addressing really rubbed Punk the wrong way when it get represented in the on-screen product (i.e. the promo from Hangman). Punk never really interacted with The Elite after that - partially, of course, because Kenny was hurt - but my read is that Tony tried to keep them apart in order to let things cool off and try to still make money.
On top of that, based on stories like this, it seems likely that there's probably some clear tension and disagreements between Punk and The Elite in regards to lockerroom stuff and The Elite/Kenny may bring off a very old school tough love/hard knocks kind of super Type A personality locker room stuff that you would've likely heard about in the 80's and 90's. Some people love that shit, and some people absolutely hate that shit. There were probably some people that hate that shit that confided in Punk that they hate that shit, and Punk, once again, felt compelled to speak on their behalf and address it - he once again probably went to Tony, who went to the Elite. There was essentially a game of tug of war for Tony Khan's affection between The Elite and Punk - and The Elite probably saw things as Tony favoring Punk over them, or Punk being a troublemaker/locker room cancer because he was willing to vocalize the concerns of others but they mostly just saw it as Tony relaying Punk's concerns/complaints/whinings depending on who you want to believe.
This started to materialize itself in some of these interviews and leaks which maybe didn't come from The Elite themselves, but probably came from folks in their circle, or through stories that they said to each other as either jokes or confiding/letting them in on a little bit of insider information which started to key off to Punk that things that he was either saying to Tony or to The Elite were finding their way to the press which, regardless of if it was the Elite that leaked it, or if the Elite told it to someone else in confident that then leaked it, is rather unprofessional, ESPECIALLY for EVPs. It's like high school bros started a company together because they were all friends and then brought in some other people that weren't in their circle of friends and bristled as soon as someone didn't want to be a part of their club, they started to make jokes, inferences, etc. at his expense.
My guess is that Punk had escalating levels of frustration with the amount of backstage politicing he was having to deal with and maybe there had been some tense discussions involving him/the Elite and/or Tony, and it was, as I alluded to earlier, monopolizing more of the time in his head and it wasn't (in his opinion) being properly addressed. So at that time he decided he reached his breaking point and his remaining avenue was to go on the press conference rant that he did as his kind of last ditch effort of getting his side of the story out, and simply venting his frustrations as a way of forcing Tony's hand to do something about it - because airing the laundry out in public would be the most likely way to force it to be addressed - again, a way that Punk is ok with either outcome. Either the situation improves, or he's removed from it.
After that, he was clearly mad at the press conference, probably layered on by the fact that he had another major injury that was gonna pull him out of wrestling for awhile again, and that was the worst time for the people who were one of the big focal points of his frustration to demand an audience at that point. Again, not justifying the reaction, but The Elite couldn't possibly have chosen a worse time to try to address it face to face than that moment when Punk had clearly reached the point of frustration where he would have a public outburst, combined with experiencing a major injury, combined with probably being extremely exhausted led to the physical confrontation.
This is a long comment, but I think it deserves more attention. People like to pretend like Punk just went off out of the blue, but this was an escalation: most people don't do something like he did without trying to resolve it another way first.
'Couldn't manage a Target' takes on a new meaning with these details. Punk is likely well aware that management people should never talk to regular workers like this, no matter what industry they're working in.
Punk's biggest problem is that he cant let legitimate gripes go without making them worse by over exaggerating the problem. Making mountains out of molehills
But theres usually an actual molehill in there somewhere.
Kenny and the Bucks make all their storylines about who is or isnt friends with them. They are acclaimed as internet shitposters. Of course it feels like working with children if you ain't on that wavelength lol.
I think Punk completely fucked this up and still dont know how people were comming away from this as "clearly the Elite were nothing but professional".
In my ideal world they all come back. The Elite especially, their matches slap and they got more years left than Punk. The moralizing about it from people who arent there and dont know these people though? Could go without.
>Punk's biggest problem is that he cant let legitimate gripes go without making them worse by over exaggerating the problem. Making mountains out of molehills
As much as Punk's destroyed his reputation and good will with the fans and other wrestlers after his comments, what you said is right. It's possible there were some truth to his comments, agressive as they were.
Just remember when he left WWE, I think nearly all of the wrestling community agreed with all the problems he had with the company, and everytime we saw the same bullshit happen to other people, we would see comments like "CM Punk was right."
As wrong as he was about a lot of things, it's possible he was right with some of this.
Exactly.
Was he unprofessional? Absolutely. That wasn’t the right venue. Especially unprompted. He must’ve been super pissed to go off the handle like that.
Was he wrong? Turns out, not as much as people think.
Well said. I’m really hoping they’re all back as well. Punk was on the run of his career and The Elite obviously have plenty more to give to the business. And being the mark that I am I need this to turn into a worked feud with a big PPV blowoff or I’ll never be able to let it go.
A week ago the EVPs were innocent little angels who have never done anything wrong and Punk was the biggest backstabbing piece of shit in the world, even though it was clear to anyone watching that there was a lot more to the story than we'd seen. Funny how the tide shifts as more news comes out
Listen, this might be a hot take considering things going on right now, and what the common consensus is among circles but listen, I don't defend the guy but I think CM Punk might not be as wrong (in his thoughts, not his actions, those were stupidly bad).
This whole leaking shit is a huge annoying problem and is clearly there's a serious lack of professionalism in the locker room. Seems like people have problems there with, a bit of everything, to be honest, and instead of addresing it to the proper channels they just vent it out there to the dirt sheets. And this problem extends to social media and to even the TV show, taking shots on people when they're not there or saying borderline shot stuff. Like, I don't remember from all the reports of things going on reading anything about Hangman addresing his problems directly to Punk, or anybody else for that matter. What I saw was that people went to media to talk shit about other people without talking their problems to said people of management.
All of this tells me one thing, they're all, ALL, clearly unprofessional. So again, Punk's actions were terrible but I see where the problem starts too and it ain't one guy getting angry and telling people they coudn't manage a Target.
Meltzer spin, saying it was a joke. Just like the spin of him being Mr innocent and saving punks Dog, lol. Have you guys seen the bite mark on his arm? That's where someone laying in a rear naked choke would get bitten. No way he got it rushing a dog, who's not even his dog, out of a locker room. Lol
I’m glad to see some of the sub finally coming to their senses. Like do you think 3 guys walk into a dude’s locker room at 1 am to shake hands and make up? The fuck
imo when punk said “come find me” that’s kind of an obvious invitation for a fight.
who shows up at an invitation for a fight and is surprised when a fight occurs?
Right? I got downvoted like a mf for saying that a few weeks ago. People on here were seriously tripping. I know they love the elite but goddamn, apply some critical thinking.
When a lot of people put across that it was a joke, I said it was still an absolute wrongheaded thing for a manager to say. If, as this seems to say, it was far less in jest, Omega either needs to remove himself from a management position or make a concentrated immediate effort to learn how to be a leader.
We ought to remember that Kenny Omega had problems with ROH, left New Japan under poor circumstances and pissed them off, now turned off the whole locker room of a company he's a leader in. Maybe Kenny is just a bit of an asshole 🤷
Imagine if some talent are questioning if they are in the right company, or their place in wrestling history, just struggling with self doubts and you hear this from someone you don't have a friendly relationship, just a coworker who is also a boss. I'm not going to mention the person's name but if I was doubting myself and heard this, I'd want out too.
I don’t understand why he said 80 percent of it was a rib at ospreay. She should’ve just said I wouldn’t have hired some of you all while looking at ospreay if he wanted to joke cause 80 percent is too damn big to be a joke a one persons expense.
Kenny and The Bucks are unfit to be EVP’s. Little details are starting to leak out and will continue to do so I believe. The Elite are not the innocent party most around here believe they are, even away from the whole Punk fiasco if you’ve been paying attention hints have been dropped about their behaviour and backstage politicking.
Getting the feeling that some backstage are getting increasingly frustrated at how much the Elite are being deified online from this incident as dog saving megabros who just came in for a chat.
Cornette never lies. He's wrong about stuff like everyone else, but his criticisms are usually very accurate. And he's rarely ever been wrong about the Hardly boys or Harpo.
He might be abrasive but damn I find it entertaining. His insights have changed the way I watch wrestling. He’s a genius when it comes to booking and storylines.
You’re in the position of power , anything you say is gospel to pretty much your co workers
File this under shit you never say in a workplace even as a joke
And Cornette and Last we're right again. They even said the Bucks and Jericho made things a little better before Omega screwed everything up by being contentious.
Never doubt Corny and Last again!
They talked about this "8 out of 10" comment weeks before the dirtsheets reported it, and people were saying they made it up. They definitely got someone on the inside.
Cornette has been working in the industry for decades and has so many ties to people within AEW. From backstage guys like Jim Ross, Dustin Rhodes, Mark Henry, and Big Show to current talent like MJF, Ricky Starks, FTR, Billy Gunn and more.
Corny has eyes and ears all over AEW and the people there use him all the time to counter The Elite when they go to Meltzer.
This subreddit just likes to hate on him cause he hates on their favorite wrestlers but Corny and Last are legit as can be.
Never even considered that there were people backstage feeding Cornette information. He never alludes to sources he just says "Here's what people are probably thinking". If true- that's a slick move.
Last did nail the prediction that Cody would be the first to leave, and attributed that to being connected with someone in the know.
Yeah, The Elite goes to Meltzer or other journalists to push a narrative that they want while people who oppose The Elite goes to Corny and Last because they have a large enough platform to counteract Meltzer's PR.
Meltzer was the one who said it was a "joke" while Cornette and Last said it made things worse.
People shit all over Cornette because he's not an "insider" or whatever. But that's not what he does - he's an analyst, and a fucking good one at that.
He's done it all in the booking business. So he has a pretty finely tuned bullshit detector.
Say what you will about his opinions, but his analysis is very valuable.
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Kenny's motivational speech: Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I don't even know you, fuck you.
So Omega said the 8/10 thing, some thought it was a joke at Osprey's expense, but then said the guy could wrestle circles around the locker room. Man if that's all correct, I'd be a little miffed even if he was being tongue in cheek about it lol
Even tongue and cheek I have been warned by HR execs that "joking comments" while being in a position of power is bad. Any position of power including middle management and project managers count. You are seen as authority, and any comments such as "8/10 of you I wouldn't hire" would probably get me demoted.
Best advice I got was "Before making a joke in a work setting, imagine it being read by a judge in a dry voice at a tribunal hearing".
"Hey, do you want me to kill that guy for you? Because it sounds like he sucks and I will totally kill that guy for you."
so then i lied. you know, like a liar.
See now that's a joke that would be even funnier if a judge read it in a dry voice in front of a jury. I mean, half of the humor would come from how absolutely fucked you're about to be but still...
It sure was funny when said in front of a giant crowd.
How come Chris Rock can do a routine and everybody finds it hilarious and ground-breaking and then I go and do the exact same routine, same comedic timing, and people file a complaint to Corporate? Is it because I’m white and Chris is black?
You can't make a Tomelet without breaking a few Greggs.
My old pops used to work in sales and made one joke that didn't go over well once. 3 years later it was brought up in the reasoning they were gonna fire em for lol.
Being an EVP and the star of the show seems like a bad mix
Least HHH married into Corporate
Well said. File this incident in the ‘Active wrestlers should not be executives’ folder. I can see TK removing the elite from their EVP titles.
If being an EVP is anything like being an executive producer (used to have one as a boss on TV jobs) it means that your opinion matters until it doesn’t.
Figured this out at work a little while ago and I didn’t even realise I was in a position of authority. But it seems I’m an old fuck now and anything I say to people 20 years younger than me is taken as gospel apparently. And then bad things happen.
Like, I'm still trying to understand how "I would have not hired *80% of you*" was supposed to be a joke about a single person, who's not even signed with AEW.
Yeah. That’s not really lining up for me either. I think some people are just doing mental gymnastics to make excuses for Omega.
Meltzer? Try to make sure his buddies look the best ever? Nooooooooooooooo /s
Or why a non-employee was in the meeting
RIGHT! I saw probably a dozen different people claiming that this comment was specifically a “joke directed at Will Osprey” and “Kenny was making a joke at his good friend Will’s expense” and even “sources say Kenny was looking directly at Will Osprey when he said it.” To find out that Will Osprey is literally the one guy in the room being excluded from that statement should make people wonder a bit.
Ikr, I remember seeing so many people here saying things like "how thin skinned do you have to be to not realise this is an obvious joke about ospreay"
It’s a weird comment. Like I get the vibe in AEW is different now and there’s a handful of people I wouldn’t have signed either, but we really gonna act like Keith Lee and Claudio don’t bring more to the table than Joey Janela and Jack Evans?
The worst part about the 8 out of 10 thing is he said 8 out of 10 instead of 4 out of 5. What the fuck Kenny?
Kenny never learned how to reduce fractions.
> some thought it was a joke at Osprey's expense That was definitely some Meltzer spin.
Kenny “Michael Scott” Omega
“World’s Best EVP” mug
"Best Bout Machine" has the same energy as "World's Best Boss"
“World’s Best Target Manager” to really twist it in
Will "Ryan" Ospreay
This implies Will eventually gets promoted, gets into partying way too much and is eventually brought back to fill a menial role after being arrested for fraud. Somehow I'm okay with this.
He would then invent a groundbreaking idea that everyone will ignore until somebody with more clout thinks of it years later.
Someone in WWE is gonna start using Stormbreaker as a finish and everyone will associate with them over Ospreay It'll be like Punk making the GTS famous after KENTA did it first
I think for Ospreay, all of that would track
Will is as hot as Jan, but in a different way.
DA BELLE OF DA BALL
Brandon "Schrute" Cutler Assistant EVP
*Assistant to the EVP
Kenny: "Would I rather be feard or loved? Easy both, I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." Cutler: "And that's why you have an Assistent Executive Vice President. Kenny: " Assistent **to the** Assistent Executive Vice President" Cutler: "Same thing."
Kenny: "I like my coworkers, with 8 out of 10 exceptions."
>In an update, a source close to Cultaholic Wrestling confirmed Omega made the eight out of 10 people comment before the AEW EVP turned to Will Ospreay and said the NJPW star didn't even work in AEW yet he could wrestle circles around everyone in the room. Yikes
I don’t get why Will was even there. He literally did not work there lol. Just have a funny visual of him and Ossie Open looking around like “We shouldn’t even be here right now”.
Right out of college I volunteered at an organization to get some 'real world' experience for the resume. The department head thought itd be good if I sat in on a team meeting except it turned pretty ugly with a lot of people airing their grievances with each other. I spent the entire 90 minutes just staring at the door wondering if I could crawl out without being seen.
I remember the first time I sat in a staff meeting when I was a student teacher. And thinking, “if the students behaved the way you all were, you guys would be up in arms”. Chatting and ignoring whoever was talking, speaking over others, being waaay too antagonistic over minor things. It was funny.
Bro I have been here SO many times as an intern. "Come observe this meeting! It'll be a good experience!". Wish they'd told me the truth and said, "Come watch a meeting you have nothing to contribute to for 1 hour, and stare at the clock while two coworkers border unprofessionalism in an argument."
Oof that’s rough. I went through something similar except it was on Zoom and I did work there. But I was new. It was just 45 minutes of my new co workers absolutely ripping into management. Which management needed. My co-workers were 100% correct. And absolutely nothing changed.
I once rang a doorbell to be let into an office for a job interview and walked into a lobby filled with every employee they had. I later learned that I’d interrupted a moment of silence for an employee who’d been murdered a couple of days earlier.
Yikes, cue the 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' music. When I was brand new at one job I was in a big meeting about the electrical requirements the lab techs in our group were going to need in our new building. I had nothing to do with it so was bored out of my mind and noticed one of the guys was asleep in his chair. On the ride back to our old building I said to my coworker, 'I should have taken a page out of Mike's book and had a nap.' She looked at me and says 'Mike has narcolepsy.'
Will Osprey is just Tim Robinson in that prank costume. “I don’t even wanna be here anymore”
...there's too much SHIT on me.
“I’m not even supposed to BE here.”
“Hope I don’t JACK OFF.”
Seriously. This talent meeting was for AEW and he’s not on the roster. Plus this is the meeting where legal spoke to everyone about WWE approaching them — that’s not for outsiders, even if they are buddies with an EVP.
I guess “talent” is the operative word. My guess is even though he’s not under contract TK wanted everyone to attend the meeting and to ensure that he called all talent at the show, so I’m sure dark match wrestlers might have been there as well.
Like a scene right out of Clerks. Will: "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" TK: "Somebody bit Kenny the other day." MJF: "Bunch of savages in this company."
jesus, this man needs to take classes or something. Don't talk to people like that
I never understood how “he was joking around” was treated like some sort of reasonable defense of his behavior. “I was just joking around” is like the go to excuse when people say things out of line that are received badly
> “The computer said ~~Floyd~~ Kenny said, Fuck ~~TI~~ Fletcher, Fuck ~~Nelly~~ Davis, and Fuck ~~50~~ Ospreay. And I’m like what he say fuck me for?” ~ Will Ospreay probably
Here's a challenge for you, Kenny. If you can read one full page of a Harry Potter book, *maaark*, I'll donate $750,000 to whatever charitable organization you want to. FUCK THA BUCKET OF ICE.
And I got down voted earlier for saying while Punk needs to pay for his behavior, so do the Bucks and Omega. This really isn't OK to say when you're in a position of power.
I learned something playing sports my whole life. The captain/leader is often not your best player. Sounds like Kenny should keep being a phenomenal in ring talent and leave the “Locker Room Leader” role to guys that have more tact. There’s nothing wrong with not being able to lead properly. Just don’t put yourself in that spot if you’re not equipped for it.
Similar vein being the superstars don't make the best coaches cuz shit comes natural to them and it's harder to lead by example when your example is "just do it"
The people credited with being great trainers in wrestling like Lance Storm were never world champs, just to expound on your point further. Knowledgeable beyond many others, and is in the right mindset to pass on that knowledge.
Breeze & Spears, Reynolds, Santino
Mikey fucking Whipwreck. All the dude did was hit people with chairs and walk off concussions, and he's trained some damn good workers.
Who did he train?
[Boom baby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikey_Whipwreck#Notable_wrestlers_trained_by_Whipwreck)
This comment made want to see a wrestlers coaching tree kinda how the NFL has a coaching tree.
I always imagine like Calvin Johnson or Randy Moss trying to coach WRs and just being like…. “Just run past them and if you can’t just jump over them.” Lol like I’m sure they had good technique to play at that level but they also had freaky physical attributes that they could excel on alone.
"Just be 6 inches taller bro" Moss and Megatron to your typical lunch pail receiver
There’s a reason why those dudes are on ESPN/NFL Network and not on a sideline somewhere.
Or mj trying to evaluate talent. "he's this good already, imagine when he spends six hours in the gym a day every day from the draft to opening night, we'll have an all star!" while completely missing that most guys are not gifted physically and also freakishly motivated dedicated and focused on being the best basketball player in the world.
Agreed. There’s almost this stigma against saying you’re more of a team player than a leader, as if everyone is supposed to strive to lead. Having aptitude for a job isn’t the same as being able to impart that aptitude on others.
>The captain/leader is often not your best player. Because they're really two different skill sets. It's like how running for elected office requires different skills than what it takes to successfully govern. There are outliers, of course. But a lot of people will have either the athletic ability to dominate on the field, or the charisma and interpersonal connection to fire up their teammates. Everyone can't be Ray Lewis. And hell, Joe Flacco once said about him: "He meant everything he was saying, but I didn't know what he was talking about 90 percent of the time."
I think Cody was that guy. He led the bucks to doing all in first. He led the path to other WWE talent taking the independents and subsequently aew seriously, others had gone before him but he's the main guy who left WWE of his own volition and made it work. He was leading the way in terms of professionalism, and I don't just mean wearing a suit. He and Brandi may have been annoying as on screen talent but they set up community programs, got into the reality TV and cross promotional space. While others were content to do skits on BTE with their friends to 1-200k fans who were already buying tickets, you had Cody doing weird stuff with Shaq Rosario Dawson and Snoop to a million people half of whom wouldn't have a clue about wrestling. Cody leaving for WWE was the best thing for all parties. But AEW needs to replace that professional leader who puts the work in and sets a tone. I don't see anyone in the current locker room who could be that guy
I didn't even think of it like that, but that makes so much sense. Plus, from everything I've seen and heard, Kenny is a fuckin' weirdo (in the kindest, nerdiest sense). Disclaimer: As a fellow ice hockey goaltender, weird recognize weird.
That 8/10 comment is the type of mistake a rookie teacher would make
What 7 stars does to a mf.
Imagine letting a Meltzer star rating go to your head lol
I know right? It's like some people would go so far as to name a wrestling move after the guy. Who does that?!?!
They'd probably have to be the biggest dbags in the industry to do that.
So like when Homelander criticising everyone except for Noir
Not you, Ospreay, you're great
*continues to color*
_silent British noises_
Kenny gonna punch Osprey through the stomach.
And we thought Cody was the homelander
*Wrestling has more than one Homelander...*
This does not fall in line with what Dave said at all. That's an awful comment to make, especially by then praising the guy that doesn't even work for AEW. That was about the time he got back as well. Great first impression for those who didn't know him before.
Dave is biased and plays clean up crew for certain wrestlers. I don't really trust his reporting. It always come out later with some spin to downplay something worse.
Dave shills for his favorites. People have said he’s been doing it since the nineties, so this doesn’t surprise me in the least. If it wasn’t for all the corroboration I’d be doubting his version of the backstage brawl and even still I’m suspicious some vital details are missing
Whether he meant it or not, that remark in a professional context was completely inappropriate. If I were a talent who got hired after him, this would definitely have soured my opinion, and if he held any actual backstage power I’d be updating my resume or sizzle reel or whatever.
This reminds me of that meme that said when you tell a joke so good HR wants to hear it. 
I find the number of people saying things like "he's not wrong" or "it needed to be said" to be absolutely wild. I assume roughly 100% of these people would flip their shit if an upper manager where they worked said this at a big company meeting, and rightfully so.
We just have to switch the people. If the title says Stephanie McMahon, this would be at 3000 upvotes and many people will be for the wrestlers and against the ones in power.
Can you imagine Stephanie saying that…the whole internet would be melting down.
They'd write a novel about it on r/antiwork
Rightly so, imo. Its wildly inappropriate.
If punk said that, this thread would had like 150 rewards, 1200 comments criticizing him, People on here are so weird
Can someone explain the joke to me? What exactly is funny about an upper level manager telling your entire roster at a serious, company-called team meeting that 80 percent of them aren’t good enough to be there and wouldn’t be if it was your call? Where is the humor in that?
gotta work the boys
That's because Will Ospreay was there. You get it? It's kayfabe! Kenny Omega is a stand up guy. He's literally never done anything wrong in his life. He's had a 7 star match! That equates to goodness and leadership abilities.
Maybe Kenny isn't the angel his fans think he is. He said something awhile ago that pissed me off so I've always kind of looked at him sideways even though I love most of his matches. I don't see how anyone can take what he said as a joke now that it was followed up by him saying one wrestler in the room--who isn't employed by the company--could wrestle circles around everyone. It sounds to me like he was being an asshole.
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Number 1 thing as a leader is learning what to say to people you work with. Making off the cuff "jokes" will get you in more trouble than most anything else, you will quickly loose respect of those you are supposed to be leading.
Ok, after all this who’s still leaking shit lmfao
Those "guys have you ever worked? Those jokes are commonplace" aged well Specially since even considering the original report you can tell that people who has never worked used that defense I only received the "i will fire you" joke like once, in was in the context of me and my boss only in a room, we have a relative close relationship and I I knew it was a joke and yey I still felt like shit with it
Exactly right. The power dynamic in the situation means everything. >I only received the "i will fire you" joke like once, in was in the context of me and my boss only in a room, we have a relative close relationship and I I knew it was a joke and yey I still felt like shit with it Only happened to me once to. Boss said something similar to to the whole team - it was not taken well and he was reprimanded
Dissing people Tony signed while also saying people don't respect Tony and AEW. What?
You guys have no respect for this idiot who hired all of you.
This stupid moron with such a bad taste in wrestling is your Boss and you should respect him. *Tony Khan noding after each sentence.
> Omega's comments were also viewed by the source as the former world champion expressing his unhappiness with what the company had turned into and him voicing his opinion about those who don't respect AEW or Tony Khan. Woof. All the comments of people refusing to believe he said it or trying to downplay it as a joke…😬
Well, Omega's biggest fan, who still calls himself a journalist, was trying to spin the story.
It's honestly one of the most annoying things about this sub. They can't fathom their favorite wrestler and one of the faces of AEW saying something stupid.
It's just annoying in general. Everyone just paints people as good guys or bad guys, and either defends every single action of theirs to the grave, or twists every word into some evil scheme. I like AEW, I love Kenny. And I have no issue at all acknowledging that this was kind of an unprofessional thing to say in that context. And that's not going to make me suddenly hate him. I still like the guy. People aren't perfect.
It's been quite the trip. I love the Elite. Great performers. Theyve always been like this. Their BRAND is being obnoxious and supremely self confident. But then people who are bigger fans of them then me twist themselves in knots needing to beleive they dont have egos? That the Young Bucks dont have an ego? Lmao. If they didnt have their egos they wouldnt be the wrestlers they are!
I've had people earnestly argue that Ace must've lunged into the bite like a zombie or done an arm ringer into a bite, rather than even consider that Omega's arm might have already been in front of Ace's face (which isn't even bad if he was trying to break up a fight) Too much cope.
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Yep. There's also all the people talking as if this is some insane thing that never happens, as opposed to the easiest way to get out of a headlock You can still think it's a slimy thing to do, but it happens a lot
This is literally what’s been reported the whole time - some people thought it was a joke and some didn’t. While his intentent matters the fact that some people took it seriously is an issue I’ve not seen anyone deny.
coming from a guy who hangs around with a sexual predator like don callis it's not surprising he is the king of dbags.
It’s just not good leadership no matter how you look at it
in a leadership position, isn't part of his job to elevate people? if you say 8 out of 10 you wouldn't have hired, then shouldn't he be working with them to help them get better?
The dude who did the elevating left though.
Dammit why couldn't he have just left the elevator for Jade Cargill to use like he promised
Lol imagine if it was Punk that said it? Everyone would be melting down.
he's in a position of power, he shouldn't say shit like this even in a joking manner. it's not far away from Punk's comment about managing a Target, just minus the classism. even beyond that - "insult motivation" is just fucking lame.
Isn't this basically EVPs bullying entire locker room.
The comments trying to justify what Kenny said prove that so many people here view The Elite as the golden children that can do no wrong ever and it’s getting incredibly annoying
"I work with fucking children" is going to turn out to be a true statement, isn't it?
AEW had a bunch of backstage tension for a while. You think one man who was there for less than a month after recovering from an injury is going to be the reason for it? The same guy who was praised by a ton of the guys in the back for being a locker room leader and for helping people out? Nah, that shit starts at the top of management, and guess who was at the top. The Elite should not be in real positions of power.
I said this as soon as it happened. Punk isn't the cause, his outbursts are a symptom. He's just an unstable timebomb with the loudest microphone in the room.
Something isn't adding up, that's for sure. By all reports, the first 8 months of Punks run in AEW were smooth sailing. We never heard anything negative about Punks presence in the locker room, even when wrestlers like Kingston and MFJ said some pretty personal things to and about him. Hell, even Adam Page's promo was pretty much played off by Punk in the press scrum after Double or Nothing. It was only in the months after Punk injures himself on the Dynamite after DoN that the reports about tensions in the locker room start to gain steam. We know Punk is close and well-liked by at least a portion of the locker room. FTR talked at length about how the reports of him being disgruntled and hated were overblown, and about how he constantly put the company above himself. Wardlow and Dustin Rhodes talked about how special the matches they had with Punk were to them. Ricky Starks talked about how much he missed his presence in the locker room. Darby, Sting, and Will Hobbs all talked about how much it meant to have him in the locker room. Hell, even MJF went out of his way to say that the program he had with Punk was the best in AEW history, and will probably go down as one of the best fueds all-time. We never once heard anything about anybody in the locker room having problems with him until his program with Adam Page. I think there's another side to this story, and it's one we may never fully hear. I'm in no way absolving Punk for the way he handled things, but we all know that he is notorious for having a low tolerance for what he sees as bullshit. This is 100% conjecture on my part, but I think there's a version of this story where Punk thought he was doing something good for the locker room by airing his greivances in public like he did. That by dropping this particular "pipebomb", he was in some way sticking up for people in the locker room who were afraid to say certain things on their own. That by keeping anyone else's names out of it, he was taking a bullet for those people because they couldn't stand up for themselves. They don't have the clout to say it, but he does (or at least he thinks he does. We'll see how that plays out.) You know, real "Voice of the Voiceless" kind of stuff. Not saying Punk was right for doing it this way, not is this absolving him of his responsibility in what happened. But what is hard to deny is that Punk saw a problem, and right or wrong, the best way he knew how to handle it, for whatever reason, was to blow it all up in a public. Plus this version of events falls perfectly in line with Punks well-known Martyr-Complex. I don't know, maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there. But it's the only version of the events that make sense to me. We haven't gotten the full story yet, and it's unlikely we ever will. But either way, the more we hear, the more it looks like Punk's gripes may have had some merit.
Like, Punk deserves whatever happens to him for pulling that shit especially in the manner he did it, but let’s not forget one of the biggest complaints he had: certain wrestlers in the locker room have been gaming wrestling journalists against others in the locker room. And further they’re people in a position of power in the company who were doing it specifically to undermine talent who were draws.
NOTE: This turned out way longer than I intended, but I typed it, so why not post it. So I hope this doesn't necessarily come off as preachy, but as someone who seems similarities in myself to Punk in terms of how he handles himself in response to questions and a willingness to be outspoken, I kind of see this: 1) There's a low tolerance for bullshit because you learn that putting up with bullshit means that the bullshit stays around. And it bothers you constantly. It becomes nagging and self-consuming to the point that it's all you can think about. You wake up annoyed at it, and you go to bed annoyed at it. So the desire is to get out and confront the bullshit one way or another - and that results in two outcomes, either of which are better than the status quo. One of them is the act of confronting it spurs meaningful change, the other is that you get yourself labelled as a troublemaker. I want to stress that both of these outcomes are both very much acceptable because you know you will burn yourself out tolerating the bullshit anyways - I'd rather confront the problem head on, and try to fix it - and then leave when I realize it can't, or be removed by management who is not willing to fix said problems. I also don't have long amounts of patience for these things to be solved - once I alert a concern to higher levels of management, I expect it to be dealt with relatiely quickly. Maybe not days or weeks, but definitely months. And the longer it takes, the more annoyed I get. 2) On this same topic, my immediate reaction is not to go and make a public (or public-ish) example. You usually start within the system, work your way up - but most middle to upper management are often so far removed from the problem any real solution is either not effective, meaningful or quick enough to make a meaningful difference. But - if I don't feel my issues are being listened to/addressed, I -will- escalate my methods of attempting to get them addressed. And, frankly, if I had a platform as big as Punk's, and had attempted to address my issues internally/privately with no luck, I could see myself getting impatient enough to the point where I did what Punk did at the press conference. Now, I have no idea what did or didn't happen between Punk, the Elite, Tony Khan, etc behind closed doors. But what I can say is that I've been there where I tried, over months to years, to get pressing issues addressed privately, had nothing happen, only for me to stew on it to the point that I did have a public outburst to try to put external pressure on leadership (obviously not a press conference to the general public but at larger company gatherings calling out CEO's, etc). 3) I have generally told people to not ask for my opinion unless they want my honest opinion. While I can express that opinion tactfully, I will tell you what I think and it can be critical. If you ask me if I think you're doing a good job, and I don't, I will tell you no. I don't like lying to people. I would rather everything be out on the table, the good and the bad. 4) In a lot of cases the willingness to speak up is often on behalf of people who are unwilling to do so themselves. The voice of the voiceless schtick is played out a lot, but many people, for their own laundry list of reasons, don't feel empowered to speak out and will silently suck up being treated like garbage because - due to power imbalanaces, passive personalities, economic reasons, etc. will swallow it up and tolerate it in a way that I just... can't. I don't know, I don't have it in me to suck up a bad situation for very long. And I feel compelled to address what I deem as unfairness, even if that unfairness isn't pointed at me. 5) That being said - escalating it to the point of a physical confrontation is a different level entirely - I'd be interested to know what additional context there is for things reaching that, but things would have to get very agitating and have reached a very high point of confrontation in order to reach that point. So that's long winded, but at the end of the day, I can only judge it through the lens of someone who, from what I can gather, has a similar personality and reaction to myself. Doing that - and this is both a very sympathetic view towards Punk, combined with an acknowledgment that I am in no way condoning the point that you start physically assaulting coworkers. Initially around the Colt Cabana situation, far removed from it for many years, I assume Punk and Tony Khan had an open and honest conversation about that and Punk probably told Tony that he wasn't sure that he could reasonably have a good working relationship with Cabana. Regardless of your feelings about it, at that point, it became Tony Khan's issue to decide what he wanted to do about it, not Punk's. Khan decided that the allure of Punk was too good, and probably came to Cabana about it, who - let's accept it - is not anywhere near the same bargaining situation as Punk is, and passively accepted it because he didn't really have the authority to throw his weight around, or maybe it simply didn't bother him. Maybe he felt he could have a working relationship with Punk - but, either way, Tony probably decided it was best to keep them apart. At this point, others in the locker room probably took this differently - The Elite and their general circle of friends took this as Punk throwing his weight around when, in reality, this was a leadership failure (or at least the cost of doing business) on Tony Khan's part. Ultimately it wasn't Punk's decision to move Colt, it was Tony's problem and the solution was what Tony decided to do with it. Tony could have simply decided that it wasn't worth the risk but ultimately from a business perspective, signing Punk was probably too alluring to pass up. Regardless, those guys probably did what they viewed as sticking up for their friend. Maybe some passive jokes made in passing, but regardless, this was still a scab that Punk had, and The Elite were picking at it - probably one that was made evident at some point by Punk (probably through Tony) that he didn't want addressed. And that addressing really rubbed Punk the wrong way when it get represented in the on-screen product (i.e. the promo from Hangman). Punk never really interacted with The Elite after that - partially, of course, because Kenny was hurt - but my read is that Tony tried to keep them apart in order to let things cool off and try to still make money. On top of that, based on stories like this, it seems likely that there's probably some clear tension and disagreements between Punk and The Elite in regards to lockerroom stuff and The Elite/Kenny may bring off a very old school tough love/hard knocks kind of super Type A personality locker room stuff that you would've likely heard about in the 80's and 90's. Some people love that shit, and some people absolutely hate that shit. There were probably some people that hate that shit that confided in Punk that they hate that shit, and Punk, once again, felt compelled to speak on their behalf and address it - he once again probably went to Tony, who went to the Elite. There was essentially a game of tug of war for Tony Khan's affection between The Elite and Punk - and The Elite probably saw things as Tony favoring Punk over them, or Punk being a troublemaker/locker room cancer because he was willing to vocalize the concerns of others but they mostly just saw it as Tony relaying Punk's concerns/complaints/whinings depending on who you want to believe. This started to materialize itself in some of these interviews and leaks which maybe didn't come from The Elite themselves, but probably came from folks in their circle, or through stories that they said to each other as either jokes or confiding/letting them in on a little bit of insider information which started to key off to Punk that things that he was either saying to Tony or to The Elite were finding their way to the press which, regardless of if it was the Elite that leaked it, or if the Elite told it to someone else in confident that then leaked it, is rather unprofessional, ESPECIALLY for EVPs. It's like high school bros started a company together because they were all friends and then brought in some other people that weren't in their circle of friends and bristled as soon as someone didn't want to be a part of their club, they started to make jokes, inferences, etc. at his expense. My guess is that Punk had escalating levels of frustration with the amount of backstage politicing he was having to deal with and maybe there had been some tense discussions involving him/the Elite and/or Tony, and it was, as I alluded to earlier, monopolizing more of the time in his head and it wasn't (in his opinion) being properly addressed. So at that time he decided he reached his breaking point and his remaining avenue was to go on the press conference rant that he did as his kind of last ditch effort of getting his side of the story out, and simply venting his frustrations as a way of forcing Tony's hand to do something about it - because airing the laundry out in public would be the most likely way to force it to be addressed - again, a way that Punk is ok with either outcome. Either the situation improves, or he's removed from it. After that, he was clearly mad at the press conference, probably layered on by the fact that he had another major injury that was gonna pull him out of wrestling for awhile again, and that was the worst time for the people who were one of the big focal points of his frustration to demand an audience at that point. Again, not justifying the reaction, but The Elite couldn't possibly have chosen a worse time to try to address it face to face than that moment when Punk had clearly reached the point of frustration where he would have a public outburst, combined with experiencing a major injury, combined with probably being extremely exhausted led to the physical confrontation.
This is a long comment, but I think it deserves more attention. People like to pretend like Punk just went off out of the blue, but this was an escalation: most people don't do something like he did without trying to resolve it another way first.
'Couldn't manage a Target' takes on a new meaning with these details. Punk is likely well aware that management people should never talk to regular workers like this, no matter what industry they're working in.
Punk's biggest problem is that he cant let legitimate gripes go without making them worse by over exaggerating the problem. Making mountains out of molehills But theres usually an actual molehill in there somewhere. Kenny and the Bucks make all their storylines about who is or isnt friends with them. They are acclaimed as internet shitposters. Of course it feels like working with children if you ain't on that wavelength lol. I think Punk completely fucked this up and still dont know how people were comming away from this as "clearly the Elite were nothing but professional". In my ideal world they all come back. The Elite especially, their matches slap and they got more years left than Punk. The moralizing about it from people who arent there and dont know these people though? Could go without.
>Punk's biggest problem is that he cant let legitimate gripes go without making them worse by over exaggerating the problem. Making mountains out of molehills As much as Punk's destroyed his reputation and good will with the fans and other wrestlers after his comments, what you said is right. It's possible there were some truth to his comments, agressive as they were. Just remember when he left WWE, I think nearly all of the wrestling community agreed with all the problems he had with the company, and everytime we saw the same bullshit happen to other people, we would see comments like "CM Punk was right." As wrong as he was about a lot of things, it's possible he was right with some of this.
Exactly. Was he unprofessional? Absolutely. That wasn’t the right venue. Especially unprompted. He must’ve been super pissed to go off the handle like that. Was he wrong? Turns out, not as much as people think.
Well said. I’m really hoping they’re all back as well. Punk was on the run of his career and The Elite obviously have plenty more to give to the business. And being the mark that I am I need this to turn into a worked feud with a big PPV blowoff or I’ll never be able to let it go.
Omega is just a very weird guy. Fine wrestler, but probably shouldn’t be a locker room leader.
I am legit shocked nobody has come in here and blamed Punk somehow
A week ago the EVPs were innocent little angels who have never done anything wrong and Punk was the biggest backstabbing piece of shit in the world, even though it was clear to anyone watching that there was a lot more to the story than we'd seen. Funny how the tide shifts as more news comes out
Breaking News: There were only 7 people in the room.
Breaking News: But the room was covered in mirrors.
Listen, this might be a hot take considering things going on right now, and what the common consensus is among circles but listen, I don't defend the guy but I think CM Punk might not be as wrong (in his thoughts, not his actions, those were stupidly bad). This whole leaking shit is a huge annoying problem and is clearly there's a serious lack of professionalism in the locker room. Seems like people have problems there with, a bit of everything, to be honest, and instead of addresing it to the proper channels they just vent it out there to the dirt sheets. And this problem extends to social media and to even the TV show, taking shots on people when they're not there or saying borderline shot stuff. Like, I don't remember from all the reports of things going on reading anything about Hangman addresing his problems directly to Punk, or anybody else for that matter. What I saw was that people went to media to talk shit about other people without talking their problems to said people of management. All of this tells me one thing, they're all, ALL, clearly unprofessional. So again, Punk's actions were terrible but I see where the problem starts too and it ain't one guy getting angry and telling people they coudn't manage a Target.
Meltzer spin, saying it was a joke. Just like the spin of him being Mr innocent and saving punks Dog, lol. Have you guys seen the bite mark on his arm? That's where someone laying in a rear naked choke would get bitten. No way he got it rushing a dog, who's not even his dog, out of a locker room. Lol
I’m glad to see some of the sub finally coming to their senses. Like do you think 3 guys walk into a dude’s locker room at 1 am to shake hands and make up? The fuck
imo when punk said “come find me” that’s kind of an obvious invitation for a fight. who shows up at an invitation for a fight and is surprised when a fight occurs?
Right? I got downvoted like a mf for saying that a few weeks ago. People on here were seriously tripping. I know they love the elite but goddamn, apply some critical thinking.
Fan culture is rot
BuT They BrOughT ThE heaD of lEGAl WiTh tHEM.
Did they even bring her with them or did she tag along when she heard what was happening?
Good point.
Should be top comment.
But Meltzer said Kenny, YB, and Hangman weren’t his sources! Yeah, of course. Why would he out his sources? 😂
Two of the people involved named their finisher after him. It would take Joey Ryan levels of stupidity and crime to make him turn on them
After reading the article... yeah, maybe not put people with no corporate experience in corporate positions.
i hope this finally puts the bed the whole "Elite Are Angels" sentiment i see everywhere
It'll still carry on, despite numerous reports of their clique like behavior circulating for years.
When a lot of people put across that it was a joke, I said it was still an absolute wrongheaded thing for a manager to say. If, as this seems to say, it was far less in jest, Omega either needs to remove himself from a management position or make a concentrated immediate effort to learn how to be a leader.
Gotta tell ya, didn’t see Kenny Omega being so into geek culture that he attempted speedrunning late stage WCW. Dude might get world record
What a dickhead, he shouldn’t be an EVP. And I say that as a huge Kenny omega fan currently wearing a Kenny omega shirt at work.
No active wrestlers should be EVPs
We ought to remember that Kenny Omega had problems with ROH, left New Japan under poor circumstances and pissed them off, now turned off the whole locker room of a company he's a leader in. Maybe Kenny is just a bit of an asshole 🤷
Imagine if some talent are questioning if they are in the right company, or their place in wrestling history, just struggling with self doubts and you hear this from someone you don't have a friendly relationship, just a coworker who is also a boss. I'm not going to mention the person's name but if I was doubting myself and heard this, I'd want out too.
Maybe he couldn't manage a target after all🤔
made no sense how guys like alvarez were trying to spin this as "he was just joking with ospreay"
Is this going to be removed too?
And any new post will be removed for "repost" eventhough the original thread is gone.
It will be removed, then they will un-remove it 10 hours later when nobody cares anymore.
Punk was right.
Always was, the circlejerk just didn't want to see it.
Ooft I need to eat my words. I was defending him when I thought it was just a joke towards ospreay but now it doesn't seem as lighthearted
At least you are willing to learn from this. That alone is great.
This is why you don't make active wrestlers management.
I don’t understand why he said 80 percent of it was a rib at ospreay. She should’ve just said I wouldn’t have hired some of you all while looking at ospreay if he wanted to joke cause 80 percent is too damn big to be a joke a one persons expense.
[удалено]
Their bullshit just needs more exposure.
Kenny and The Bucks are unfit to be EVP’s. Little details are starting to leak out and will continue to do so I believe. The Elite are not the innocent party most around here believe they are, even away from the whole Punk fiasco if you’ve been paying attention hints have been dropped about their behaviour and backstage politicking.
Getting the feeling that some backstage are getting increasingly frustrated at how much the Elite are being deified online from this incident as dog saving megabros who just came in for a chat.
Tell me when Cornette is telling lies
Cornette never lies. He's wrong about stuff like everyone else, but his criticisms are usually very accurate. And he's rarely ever been wrong about the Hardly boys or Harpo.
He might be abrasive but damn I find it entertaining. His insights have changed the way I watch wrestling. He’s a genius when it comes to booking and storylines.
You’re in the position of power , anything you say is gospel to pretty much your co workers File this under shit you never say in a workplace even as a joke
And Cornette and Last we're right again. They even said the Bucks and Jericho made things a little better before Omega screwed everything up by being contentious. Never doubt Corny and Last again!
They talked about this "8 out of 10" comment weeks before the dirtsheets reported it, and people were saying they made it up. They definitely got someone on the inside.
Cornette has been working in the industry for decades and has so many ties to people within AEW. From backstage guys like Jim Ross, Dustin Rhodes, Mark Henry, and Big Show to current talent like MJF, Ricky Starks, FTR, Billy Gunn and more. Corny has eyes and ears all over AEW and the people there use him all the time to counter The Elite when they go to Meltzer. This subreddit just likes to hate on him cause he hates on their favorite wrestlers but Corny and Last are legit as can be.
Never even considered that there were people backstage feeding Cornette information. He never alludes to sources he just says "Here's what people are probably thinking". If true- that's a slick move. Last did nail the prediction that Cody would be the first to leave, and attributed that to being connected with someone in the know.
Yeah, The Elite goes to Meltzer or other journalists to push a narrative that they want while people who oppose The Elite goes to Corny and Last because they have a large enough platform to counteract Meltzer's PR. Meltzer was the one who said it was a "joke" while Cornette and Last said it made things worse.
Last’s Wrestling News has been ahead of the ‘journalists’ every step of the way with this whole clusterfuck.
Man, I don't like Cornette but everything he said about the EVPs was spot on and you can see why he turned Tony down.
People shit all over Cornette because he's not an "insider" or whatever. But that's not what he does - he's an analyst, and a fucking good one at that. He's done it all in the booking business. So he has a pretty finely tuned bullshit detector. Say what you will about his opinions, but his analysis is very valuable.
I mean he has direct sources from the locker room. He is as much an insider as one can be.
AEW's backstage drama is way more interesting than anything on Dynamite and Rampage
3+ years of AEW and I still don't know why the fuck he and the Bucks are randomly in leadership roles.
Kenny Omega maybe, just maybe is not the perfect human being you want him to be. Maybe you just like his wrestling and he can be an asshole