So, a lot of thoughts about this. Spoilers I guess but, Punk beat Hangman at DoN '22 last night. It was not surprising necessarily, but I did kind of think Hangman could do it. Regardless, I felt something more watching it.

I think this is really like the closing of a certain part of AEW's initial story here. This is the first time the title has been in the hands of someone who was not either A) The Elite or tangentially related to them, or B) A Day 1 AEW guy.

Hangman said he wanted to protect AEW from Punk, which is, you know, it is what it is, but it's also got a certain element of doom tied to it. The crowd cheered because they wanted Punk to win, but do they recognize the cost here. Punk is going to have this title for a very long time. And he can tell the story any way he wants, my guess is it'll be very similar to a lot of his other work, but this is very much a new status quo. With Kenny gone, Hangman on the bench (presumably) the Bucks relegated to subservient Adam Cole nerds, and the rest of the Elites' version of Bullet Club vanished into the ether, this is a time when the main characters of AEW since 2019 are all more or less sidelined away from the mountaintop and into the AEW midcard abyss where the stories are bad and the wins don't matter.

Quite frankly the direction AEW has taken since Punk/Bryan debuted last year has been drastically different and not all for the better. The “Things Just Happen” tally has been skyrocketing, and the overall twisting and binding narratives that used to tie every single thing together are all lost and forgotten. The big characters of the pandemic era are all forgotten and even Moxley is like the third most important member of his burgeoning faction.

There are simply too many dudes and not enough show. Everything has gotten very shallow, because the depths of storytelling we used to see are not possible when you have 8 matches to do in 1.5 hrs once a week.

While CM Punk winning the world title is not at all, on the surface, a bad thing, I believe it is the first real visible sign and omen that the company as it existed for the past 3 years, that relied on weirdos and outcasts from other promotions, is not just on the way out-- it's completely gone.