For those that somehow missed the news, former WWE Champion CM Punk finally made his return to professional wrestling industry on the Fox Sports 1 show WWE Backstage. Punk will be featured on the program so that he may offer his expert analysis on the WWE product, and to prepare for his new role, he has decided to catch up on the five years of pro wrestling that he missed. In a tweet discussing his prep work, Punk tagged not just WWE personnel like Renee Young, Booker T, Paige, and Vince McMahon, but he also tagged AEW President Tony Khan. This tweet then set off a chain of events that ended with Khan roasting WWE wrestler Randy Orton over Orton’s recent Twitch controversy.
Khan responded to CM Punk’s tweet by making a joke about WWE’s recent Saudi Arabia situation where a huge portion of the roster was stuck in the country for disputed reasons. This in turn prompted a response from Randy Orton, who posted an outdated article that criticized some supposed business dealings by Khan’s father. “I thought you only tagged me in your posts when you were grasping for leverage,” Khan replied. “That article"s over a year old + is about baseless claims made about my dad years ago. That’s the best you can do, nothing. Meanwhile in the time since that was written, you used the N word on twitch.”
Khan’s reply to Orton has over 6,000 likes at the time of this writing. CM Punk himself even “liked” Khan’s first tweet referencing the Saudia Arabia situation. Orton has yet to respond to Khan’s latest comment.
For those who may not be in the know, Randy Orton used a racial slur on Twitch while streaming with his friend. Orton quickly realized what he said, and joked that he may not have a job when he woke up the next day. Some online that were reportedly watching the stream claimed that Orton had been drinking during the broadcast, and it seemed unlikely that he meant to use the slur.
What makes this situation even more interesting is that in that same stream where he used a racial slur, Orton praised AEW. “That AEW looked f****** cool, huh? Did you watch that show last night? Oh my god. I’ll tell you what. It’s that big match feel, the big show feel. Cody and Sammy Guevara, that kid can do some s***. I’d love to work with that kid. They had a great match. I thought opening the show with that match was a good idea and well received.”
Whether or not Orton responds to keep this Twitter spat going remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to see if he has a comeback for Khan.
