During the post-All Out media scrum, AEW President Tony Khan revealed that Bryan Danielson, CM Punk and Adam Cole all agreed to come to AEW on handshake deals before they put pen to paper when they arrived. You can check out some highlights from the scrum below:
On agreeing to give Hangman Page time off and having backup plans: “I had a feeling, but I had a lot of backup plans. I would have given him time off either way. I mean, even if I didn’t have the guys in, I would have found a way to make it work and accommodate him because it was for a very important reason. He’s a big part of AEW. He’s one of our really important stars. I really didn’t have everything exactly in the place until we got there.”
On signing Punk, Bryan and Cole: “I think you’ve all heard the story, which is true, that Punk didn’t actually sign anything until that night. But we had a handshake and I trusted him. Same thing with Bryan. I think Bryan just signed. I trusted him. You know, we have a good relationship and we built that. Same with Adam Cole.”
On planning the All Out PPV: “I wasn’t sure everything was going to fall into place, but they all just kind of one by one starting to look more likely. You know when something’s like, this could happen and then every day it starts to look a little bit better, a little bit better and it’s like Mr. Punk said, I don’t know if there’s a day I could put my finger on all these things and when they all were gonna hit. They just kept looking a little bit better every day. Definitely every good conversation I had with each of them I felt a little bit better about what we were doing tonight.”
(h/t – Fightful)
