During an interview with the SPORT1 Wrestling podcast, CM Punk talked about the impact of him debuting in AEW along with Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole:
“How much the change from Adam Cole, Bryan Danielson and me really effects wrestling, you will only see it fully in many years, at least five. When Scott Hall and Kevin Nash went to WCW, it was big. The formation of the New World Order (nWo) with Hulk Hogan was huge, but if you look at the long-term effects, it burned out relatively quickly. Five years later, WCW came to an end. So ask me in five years where will AEW be. As for the comparison, I never said Adam, Bryan, and I were bigger than the nWo, I said the change felt bigger for us than the changes back then. This is my opinion. Others may disagree, that’s cool too. In five years, you will be able to judge it correctly.”
CM Punk also commented on why wrestlers are jumping to AEW:
“It’s the perfect storm. For 20 years, fans have only been able to see one product at a certain level, so something new is good from the outset. As a wrestler, you want to be with AEW because you have a lot of creative freedom there. That doesn’t mean that you can do what you want there. But everyone can bring in ideas, nobody is afraid of getting a negative echo.
You can work here, have fun, and earn good money with it. I still have in my head how many people have been criticized for not going together, including me. ‘Do you want to have fun here or do you want to make money?’ That was the question and I always answered, ‘Why shouldn’t it actually be possible to bring both under one roof? We can make a lot of money and have fun, and the fact that this is happening at AEW attracts many wrestlers.”
