talkSPORT recently caught up with Cody Rhodes to discuss Wednesday's Fight for the Fallen event, and asked him about those claims from Konnan that CM Punk wanted an "astronomical amount" of money to sign with All Elite Wrestling when they first approached the WWE Superstar.
It's no secret that Punk instead chose to become one of the hosts on WWE Backstage, a show Fox Sports 1 recently cancelled...now, his in-ring future remains as unclear as it's ever been.
"As far as the CM Punk negotiations go, everyone heard the famous ‘he got a text from us,'" Rhodes recalls. "Yeah, of course there were negotiations and he did ask for a great amount of money and Punk is worth a great deal of money."
"But you also have to – and this isn’t speaking to Punk specifically, this is speaking to recruitment and what we’ve learned in wrestling in general – a lot of people think ‘these wrestlers are running this wrestling company’. These wrestlers are doing everything they can to run the creative, the brand and the marketing and things, but there are some very smart and fiscally conservative people who surround us and flank us because this isn’t my money. At all."
"And I don’t want a situation that happened with WCW or Jim Crockett promotions where we think we’re flying so high that we can do anything," he continued, making it clear that AEW isn't looking to make the same mistakes WCW once did. "No – this is a business. And we have to turn a profit."
As for what he believes the future holds in store for Punk, Rhodes added: "I think there is a good relationship there. I think I have a good relationship with Phil, I believe Tony does too and I’m not sure really when it comes to him, it’s not so much about the money. It’s about are you interested in doing this? Because the price tag becomes a lot more justifiable if you’re genuinely interested in what we’re doing at the high speed we’re doing it. And again, that’s not even specific to him, just in general, if the passion is not there, the money is not there."
It's hard to imagine the one-time Best in the World returning to WWE, and if he is ever going to wrestle again, then it would be great to see what sort of impact he could make on Dynamite each week.