Backstage News On CM Punk's Back-To-Back Injuries

Not long after the bell rang for the main event of AEW's All Out pay-per-view, CM Punk suffered another serious injury . According to Dave Meltzer in the latest Wrestling Observer, Punk tore his tricep while performing a tope dive through the ropes on his opponent, Jon Moxley. Punk worked the rest of the match with the injury, and won, but his second reign as champion would prove as brief as his first, as Meltzer believes the tricep injury requires a six-to-nine month recovery. In other words, the AEW World Championship would been vacated after All Out even if Punk hadn't gone on an expletive-laced tirade in the post-show media scrum, leading to a massive backstage fight that resulted in suspensions for several of AEW's top stars and the vacating of the newly-established AEW Trios Championship, as well as the world title.

Punk first won the AEW World Championship back at Double or Nothing in May, but was injured immediately thereafter, something about which Meltzer has also provided more detail. According to Meltzer, the foot injury "took place when he jumped off the ramp to be hugged by fans, but didn't realize the severity of it, did a full match, came off the top rope a few times on the foot, and needed four-and-a-half hours of surgery and extensive rehab to return for [All Out]."

The foot injury occurred on the June 1 episode of "AEW Dynamite," which saw Punk team up with FTR to take on Max Caster and The Gunn Club. In that case, rather than vacate the world title, AEW opted to crown an interim champion in the form of Moxley, who ended up defeating Punk to unify the two titles before losing them back to Punk at All Out.