Tony Khan Says CM Punk, Adam Cole & Bryan Danielson Came To AEW on Handshake Deals

AEW All Out was a huge night for AEW last night, with CM Punk’s first match in seven years and the AEW debuts of Bryan Danielson, Ruby Soho and Adam Cole. During a post-show media scrum (via Fightful), AEW President Tony Khan said that Danielson, Punk and Cole all agreed to come into AEW on handshake deals before signing when they arrived. Here are highlights:

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.”

AEW All Out also featured Kenny Omega defeating Impact Wrestling Champion Christian Cage in the main event to retain the AEW World Championship, CM Punk defeating Darby Allin in his return to the ring, Chris Jericho defeating MJF, the Lucha Bros defeating the Young Bucks in a steel cage match, Jon Moxley defeating Satoshi Kojima, Britt Baker defeating Kris Statlander, Miro defeating Eddie Kingston, and the AEW debut of another former WWE star, Ruby Soho, who won the Casino Battle Royale. Many are already calling the show one of the greatest in the history of professional wrestling. Check out our complete AEW All Out results for the rest of the results. This sets up a highly anticipated episode of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday night and raises the question of how WWE will respond on WWE television (Smackdown and WWE RAW) after countering CM Punk debuting on AEW Rampage with Brock Lesnar returning at Summerslam. Cole said after All Out that he himself was surprised when he realized his WWE contract was expiring as soon as it did, paving the way for a new deal with AEW.