Tony Khan Vacates AEW World Title, Trios Titles On 9/7/2022

Tony Khan vacated the AEW World Championship and the AEW Trios Championships after CM Punk, The Young Bucks and The Elite brawled backstage following Punk’s explosive comments in front of a spineless AEW Media Scrum.

Without mentioning CM Punk or The Elite, Tony Khan announced that both the AEW World Championship and the AEW Trios Championships have been vacated. The Trios Championships will be decided tonight in a six-man tag team match pitting The Best Friends (Chuck Taylor, Orange Cassidy and Trent) against the Death Triangle (PAC, Rey Fenix and Penta El Zero M).

The AEW World Championship will be decided by an AEW Grand Slam Tournament of Champions. The tournament features the following:

• Hangman Page
• Bryan Danielson
• Sammy Guevara
• Darby Allin
• Chris Jericho
• Jon Moxley

“AEW will be at our very best these next few weeks on our way to AEW Grand Slam,” said Tony Khan backstage after making the announcements.

Since all of the prevailing drama was exclusively online, and not covered on AEW television heading into tonight, anticipation was building on social media toward this pivotal broadcast. “Dynamite” was a trending topic hours before going on the air. It’ll be interesting to see if all this online backstage drama will translate to a bounce in television viewership past hardcore fans. Anything under one million viewers will be a tell-tale sign that it didn’t.

AEW All Out was supposed to be a cause for celebration. On what was supposed to be the one-year anniversary of CM Punk’s first pay-per-view match, and a big AEW world title win in his hometown of Chicago, Punk pulled a Will Smith by sabotaging his own career highlight.

CM Punk wasted little time shooting on The Young Bucks, Hangman Adam Page and Colt Cabana in front of a terrified room filled with AEW-friendly journalists (and Nick Hausman of Wrestling Inc), who didn’t dare follow-up on with any questions about Punk’s real-life tirade. Just as the wrestling media at the AEW Media Scrum was too scared to ask CM Punk, Tony Khan embodied that fear by sitting quietly as Punk tore into his company, his executives and his wrestlers.

Reports of a violent backstage brawl between Punk, Ace Steel, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, have since surfaced with many accounts noting Nick Jackson was cracked in the eye with a steel chair by Ace Steel. All parties involved in the fighht, in addition to Christopher Daniels, Pat Buck, Michael Nakazawa and Brandon Cutler were suspended as Tony Khan tries to seize back control of his company.

To add injury to insult, the 43-year-old CM Punk reportedly suffered a serious injury during his main event match against Jon Moxley.

Last week’s broadcast of AEW Dynamite, the go-home show for AEW All Out, garnered 1.020 million viewers.

AEW Dynamite Ratings

• August 31, 2022 | 1.020 million
• August 24, 2022 | 1.049 million
• August 17, 2022 | 957,000
• August 10, 2022 | 972,000
• August 3, 2022 | 938,000

• AEW Dynamite Venue: Key Bank Center (Buffalo, N.Y.)
• AEW Tickets Distributed: 5,331
• AEW Tickets Available: 2,056

AEW Dynamite Winners and Match Card | 9/7/2022

Tony Khan Vacates AEW World Title, Trios Title

Fans were chanting “MJF” after AEW aired an All Out vignette to open the show.

Tony Khan was booed by fans in Buffalo, N.Y. MJF is clearly the babyface of this situation.

Tony Khan, who was backstage, vacated both the AEW Trios Championships and the AEW World Championship. He didn’t name CM Punk, Kenny Omega or The Young Bucks by name. When Khan announced the Tournament of Champions, it was booed too.

MJF and Jon Moxley Face Off

MJF came out portraying an inauthentic babyface—Josh Allen jersey and all—before predictably turning on the crowd.

Jon Moxley cut a rah-rah promo and I have a feeling whoever can tow the company line the best will get be world champion. Tony Khan is looking for an unapologetic company guy and Jon Moxley just set the bar.

MJF overdosed on WWE references (Cody Rhodes, Nick Khan, Triple H) just days after my viral video about ex-WWE guys doing the same thing.

Jon Moxley admitted he was supposed to be on vacation until about two days ago, and it didn’t get a single reaction. It continues to become apparent that maybe these fans aren’t 100% familiar with all this backstage drama, which AEW never addressed on television.