>>8859635>>8859687AEW insider here.
Discovery basically wants Punk back and made it clear that any renewal will hinge on Punk being back on the shows and at the top of the card. Tony's been bullshitting them saying that Punk's not gone but that he can't do anything until Punk's 100% healed because "we rushed him back and he got hurt again".
Now the kicker is that because of the Elite/Jericho, Tony can't find any heels to work with Punk due to their hate boner for Punk for upstaging him. Hence the talk about turning Punk heel. Now, Punk's OK with this since he can work with Darby and Sting (who have stated they WOULD work with Punk, damn Jericho and the Elite) but Punk wants complete creative control over his heel run which amounts to "Punk turns evil because Tony was a pussy who let the Elite try and murder him (literally, he wants to explicitly call what happened a murder attempt) and did nothing to punish them and that he's going to burn AEW to the ground in retaliation".
As for FTR, Tony's holding the AEW tag belts and a guaranteed year long reign/free reign to pick their opponents as they did last year, but he wants them to turn heel. Partly because again, the Bucks have been manipulating shit so that none of their friends want to work with FTR outside the Acclaimed/Gunns/Sting and Allen and Tony thinking that FTR would work better as dominant heel champions than as dominant babyfaces. But FTR's been betrayed too many times, so they are wanting that third match with the Bucks and a decent period as tag champions before turning heel, so that the Bucks can't backstab them via turning face/once again exiling the FTR to the fringes while the Bucks get the air time and big matches.
