>>11476096He does have to work anon. This entire situation is about work. He was going broke during Covid. He hadn’t drawn a dime for half a decade. He took that job with Fox to try and backdoor a way back into WWE. If he popped a rating he could negotiate with some leverage. It crashed and burned spectacularly so he played his last card which was AEW. In case you didn’t notice from almost ten years of talking shit, Phil hates wrestling and it’s the last thing he wanted to do. He just didn’t have a choice. He played the game right with Tony Khan, showing him he’d have to be won over and catered to. He wanted more money in one year than he’d ever made in his career and all sorts of concessions. The first thing the guy did was get himself injured so he didn’t have to work for a year. He creates a situation where if he comes back he has even more control over how he works and the environment but less actual work. That’s not even a sweet enough deal and he tries to figure out a way to sit home and collect the rest of his contract.
He had legit grievances with WWE. They had him on the road for 300 days a year. They were selling a lot of CM Punk Merch, putting his face on the cover of their video game, using him as a work horse. He wasn’t the same caliber of superstar as Cena or Brock but he was being paid 1/10 what those guys were, asked to work 10 times as much and in fairness he was probably 75% as over as them. He wasn’t getting treated how he should. he had wrestled for 15 straight years without a break and his body was breaking down.
He finally comes back to wrestling when he gets what he always wanted. Top billing, creative control, top guy pay and a very relaxed schedule. He just seems to hate the business so much and can’t work with other people that he destroyed the best situation he could ever get. it’s just his personality type.
