You can look at the Punk arrival/departure in two ways. First of all, the numbers were starting to decline during summer of 22 when he was still there but frequently injured. Either this was where they were headed anyway but interest in him saved the ratings/PPV numbers for a bit, or his departure and the backstage dirty laundry killed any momentum.
I’m on the side of they had plateaued as initial interest was waning, Punk was more famous there than anyone not named Big Show or Paige Van Zant, and it gave them another year to build someone else.
Tony didn’t, and now you are at 20-40% down YOY and the last PPV was down considerably.
