AEW's Decision to Air Footage of CM Punk Choking Jack Perry Totally Backfired

On Wednesday night's episode of Dynamite, AEW made the decision to air footage of CM Punk and Jack Perry fighting at the company's All In pay-per-view from 2023. This came in response to Punk giving an expansive interview to Ariel Helwani in which he described the incident. AEW's decision to air the footage turned out to be a terrible idea.

During his interview with Helwani, Punk described the altercation, which spawned from a disagreement he had with Perry. In Punk's retelling, Perry was arguing with backstage power players because he wanted to perform an incredibly dangerous stunt that involved real glass instead of breakaway safety glass. Punk's perception was that Perry was being too risky simply to appease a small section online professional wrestling fans.

After Perry's match against Hook, Punk met him in the backstage area. He was there about to go out for his match against Samoa Joe. Punk confronted Perry about the stunt and the two exchanged words. Then Punk claimed he didn't hit Perry, but did put him in a chokehold.

After that interview -- which was the first retelling of the incident from someone directly involved -- AEW president Tony Khan decided the company should air the footage to refute Punk's story. There's just one problem: the footage wound up showing exactly what Punk described.

Here's the relevant portion of Punk's interview with Helwani:

Here is a shorter version just discussing the fight:

And here's the footage AEW shared:

Yeah, that video shows exactly what Punk described. I'm not sure what Khan and AEW thought they were doing here but this is a pretty big bag fumble.

Punk is now with WWE, which is coming off the most successful WrestleMania weekend in its history. AEW seems to be floundering, so maybe the company was just trying to make headlines. All it did was make Punk look good and Perry look terrible.