On the June 6 episode of AEW Rampage, CM Punk announced that he suffered a foot injury and would be sidelined for the foreseeable future.
Punk had just won the AEW World Title at AEW Double or Nothing and was set to face Hiroshi Tanahashi at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door.
Speaking at the AEW All Out media scrum, Punk detailed the severity of his injury.
"I did the stage dive, what an idiot. I must have hit my foot on the top of the guard rail, but I didn't feel it. You would think that shit would hurt, but people caught me, put me back down, I waited for FTR, it just didn't feel right. I thought I just whacked it, but then I wrestled on it, blew a springboard, came off the top with a double axe, did all this shit. What I eventually did was, yeah, I fractured my foot, but then I pulverized the bone. Surgery was supposed to be an hour, it wound up being four a half (hours). I got three plates and 16 screws in my foot and I essentially have a new foot now. It is 100%, but it's a new 100%. Every day, I rehab. This is the worst injury I've ever had. I was in the bedroom for two weeks and it was really hard for me because I wanted to have this great summer, do good for Tony, sell tickets, draw money and ratings," he said.
Punk credited his wife AJ Lee for helping him through the process.
"The rehab, I could tell you how hard and painful and grueling it was, but I wouldn't be able to do it justice. I was doing two and a half hours of rehab, plus, once they told me I could bike, I was biking my life away. Then I would go to the gym later and lift weights. I was trying to bust my ass to hurry up. Not necessarily hurry up to get back, but hurry up and get healthy. If I'm not healthy, I'm no good to anybody. It was really tough. If I was 23, it would have been a hard injury because I literally couldn't do anything, trying to get around on crutches, up and down stairs. It was pretty bad and depressing," he said.
Punk returned to the ring on the August 24 episode of AEW Dynamite, quickly losing to Jon Moxley and playing off the foot injury.
He was healthy in the main event of AEW All Out, defeating Moxley to win the AEW World Title.
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