A story involving Ryan Nemeth suggests that there may have been more to AEW cutting bait with CM Punk in 2023 than just the Jack Perry incident at the London “All Out” pay-per-view.
We’re learning today that Nemeth, a former AEW underneath guy, and brother of Nic Nemeth, the current TNA world champ and a former WWE champ under the name Dolph Ziggler, filed a complaint with AEW in September outlining claims that he had faced threats, harassment and abuse from Punk during his time in the company, and alleging that AEW failed to respond to any of the incidents.
This is from a report from Fightful Select, which tells us that Nemeth’s complaint includes “emails, texts, phone call logs, and other records,” and also details something that we had heard before, but has not been confirmed, that Punk had an undisclosed executive position within AEW.
The personal beef between Ryan Nemeth and CM Punk came to a head with a tweet from Nemeth calling Punk the “softest man alive” after Punk returned to AEW in June 2023.
According to his complaint, Punk confronted Nemeth in the locker room about the tweet, and Nemeth said, subsequent to that confrontation, and his report of the confrontation to AEW management, he was not booked by AEW for two months, then had a booking for a “Collision” appearance in August 2023, but was sent home by Punk, acting either in an official or unofficial capacity as a producer for that AEW TV show.
Nemeth said he was contacted by AEW during the company’s internal investigation of the “All Out” backstage incident, where he detailed his history with Punk, and the lack of response to his complaints about Punk by AEW higher-ups.
Nemeth did make one more appearance for AEW, in November 2023, and his complaint details that he met with Khan earlier this year to discuss a return, but Nemeth said he expressed no interest in doing so.
Nemeth referred to the situation as him being “silently fired” by AEW, with Nemeth believing that Khan held him responsible for having to fire Punk.
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Chris Graham
