[Evil Vito]

ESPN interview with Punk is scheduled to drop by Friday. Fightful with details:

Last week, Fightful Select reported that KENTA vs. CM Punk was the planned direction for AEW Forbidden Door. Shortly following that, we were told that Punk "wasn't thrilled with working with KENTA and he may come across badly in an interview.” However, there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye, and that might have been by design. There are a lot of facets to this that have unraveled since then that may become more clear. We’re told that an ESPN interview is supposed to drop sometime soon, where Punk was talking about a number of topics. Among those topics was The Elite, and word got back to several on the roster at the June 14 AEW Dynamite tapings, and some of it didn’t go over well based on second-hand recountings. We’re told that AEW did set up the interview and monitored things, but that CM Punk spoke in a way that would blur the lines, and create buzz for upcoming shows. Specifically, we’d heard that he’d answered questions in a way that would make the audience wonder if it was him angling for a story, or if he was shooting. We aren’t sure what eventually will make it into the final ESPN piece, but we heard that the interview was conducted last week. We’re told that Punk was very aware that it could come off polarizing based on his responses. Recently, we’d reported that CM Punk was sent a series of documents that protected AEW, which included some non-disparagements.