>>13417689yeah they later revealed that tony kahn himself was the "someone".
it's also worth pointing out that a lot of the negotiations the elite did when they were leaving new japan were text and phone-based. this is a necessity for people who are actually working regularly overseas and can't just drop what they're doing to meet face-to-face. so the elite were essentially treating punk in the same way they negotiated their own contracts.
punk was also negotiating with fox for that wwe backstage show at the same time as aew, and wwe backstage was his preferred option. at that time, noted punk proxy jim cucknette said how smart punk would be for picking the choice where he didn't take bumps. cucknette also predicted aew wouldn't last to march 2020. when punk debuted on backstage he promised to "change the culture".
instead wwe backstage did abysmal ratings and got cancelled.
his burial of the elite over the texts was probably designed with three purposes in mind: to excuse his return to wwe-related programming instead of the alternative, to rase his profile ahead of his debut at backstage and show he was a good solder by burying the competition.
it was only when the utter failure of wwe backstage was apparent that punk went to aew.
