Wardlow Hopes Match With CM Punk Will Put AEW Dynamite Over 1 Million Viewers Again
Ahead of his match against top AEW star CM Punk on tonight's Dynamite, Wardlow sat down with PWInsider. He says he is looking forward to this big match to showcase how far he's come since debuting with AEW in 2019.
"Well, for starters, we're also off our first week of being on TBS, which we had over a million viewers. So we're back on TBS this week, week two. Got to get over a million again and I think myself and CM Punk will deliver," Wardlow explained. "As you asked, how does this vary from the other hyper pressure situations? And if we could say one thing about my career in AEW is that they love throwing me in high-pressure situations. You see me wrestle every few months, and it's a big one every few months.
"We had the MMA cage match, as you said. We had Blood and Guts, Cody cage match, Jericho. All things leading up to those matches, the days leading up, I'm usually very intense, very focused. The difference this time with Punk is I seem to be much more calm. And I believe the reason is I simply don't believe this is happening. It's CM Punk. Jericho was always a possibility. A lot of names were always a possibility in my mind. But CM Punk was one of those guys who I never expected to step in the ring with. But after [tonight], he might be back into retirement."
Wardlow vows to unleash "absolute mayhem" on Punk tonight and believes this match will play out differently than other matches CM Punk has competed in.
"I don't think it's going to be your typical CM Punk match. I know he's put on a lot of bangers with the AEW roster. This ain't going to be a five-star, pretty match. This is going to be absolute mayhem and CM Punk is probably thinking about retiring again."
In recent weeks, more so than ever, AEW has been featuring Wardlow as an unstoppable powerhouse. He happily delivers powerbomb after powerbomb to his opponents, securing an easy victory each time. The heavyweight revealed that certain WWE Hall of Famers greatly influenced the style of his finisher.
"This is when life gets wild and you start to think about manifestation and destiny because two out of the handful of wrestlers that I grew up obsessed with and truly studied and looked up to was A -Kevin Nash, jackknife powerbomb, and B – Batista, Batista bomb. I didn't come into AEW saying, 'Hey, I want to do a powerbomb.' This is something that organically came about, and it's just so sweet, too sweet you could say, that I grew up doing so many jack-knife powerbombs and Batista bombs to my friends on trampolines and now I'm in the middle of an AEW ring just murdering people with powerbombs. It's a beautiful thing."