This past Friday’s First Dance special episode of AEW Rampage inside the United Center in Chicago saw the highly-anticipated and most-awaited AEW debut of former WWE Star “The Best In The World” CM Punk. CM Punk’s AEW debut on Rampage was reportedly the biggest and most talked about moment in wrestling’s modern era and it even surpassed expectations as well as estimated viewership numbers and TV ratings.
AEW announcer Tony Schiavone recently took to his “What Happened When” podcast, where he revealed the full details of what transpired prior to, during and after CM Punk’s appearance on AEW Rampage.
This is what Tony Schiavone said:
“During Rampage, I’m one of the 3 people in the back that sat at the Go Position. There’s Tony Khan, the coach in the middle, and me on the right. He came out, and he stayed in the back and talked to everybody. He was very, very nice as you might imagine. I talked to him about his promo.”
“He said, ‘I really don’t know. I’ve been thinking about so many things to say, and I really don’t know what I’m going to say’. We did know the one thing he was going to touch on was Darby to set up the PPV match. From then on, we had no idea what he was going to say or how he was going to say it, and to be honest you, if he did, he didn’t let us on. It really looked like to me that he was really thinking about this hard and it weighed on it for some time. You’ve been gone for seven years and you’re such a star. He’s such a great talker and a great worker. You’re back in Chicago and you sell out the building just on a rumor. That’s star power.”
“He walked out of the Go Position. Everybody bumps fists. We’re all excited, Tony’s excited, and then everybody starts to come out at the Go Position because we have a monitor out there. Kenny was out there, The Young Bucks, everybody. They didn’t want to sit in the back and watch it. They wanted to come out right behind the curtain and feel it. I’m going to be honest with you, it was one of those from the heart, just a** kicking moments. He did it. He came back and people were so excited about it.”
