AEW "denied" rumor about re-hiring CM Punk's close friend - Reports

All Elite Wrestling and CM Punk are reportedly at odds once again, this time over one of The Straight Edge Superstar's closest friends, Ace Steel.

Steel was fired by AEW in the aftermath of the "Brawl Out" incident in September 2022, where he supposedly threw a chair at Nick Jackson and bit Kenny Omega. However, bringing Steel back to the company was one of Punk's demands as he also is preparing to return to All Elite Wrestling.

Rumors began to swirl that Ace Steel has actually been re-hired already and that he has been working remotely with AEW for some time. However, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter claims that isn't the case.

"Steel had been in talk with Impact until several weeks ago, concurrent with the detailed story (and as noted denied to us by AEW) that he had inked a new deal to return. The story is that Tony Khan told CM Punk that Steel could have his job and work closely with Punk but that he would work remotely and not be brought to the Collision tapings.”

Meltzer also noted that a number of top talents in AEW didn't know about Ace Steel possibly returning to the company and that they were shocked to hear about it. On top of this, the rumors of Steel coming back to All Elite Wrestling as a producer for the new Collision show are also not true.

"I don’t believe anyone, past Punk and whoever he may have told, knew about Ace Steel (Chris Guy) returning until a few found out about a week ago. It also should be noted that while we had heard talk about a Steel deal to return as a producer for Collision from multiple sources, we had also been told from the top in checking that we were told it was not true." [H/T Wrestling News]

CM Punk was reportedly pulled from the AEW Collision announcement due to this falling out

On May 17th, it was announced that AEW would be getting a third televised wrestling show called "Collision," which is set to debut on June 17th on TNT.

CM Punk was set to be the featured attraction of AEW's new show but wasn't featured on any of the promotional material that was released at his request due to Ace Steel's stance with the company, leading fans to believe that perhaps the former WWE Superstar won't be involved anymore.

This worry was amplified by the fact that the rumored venue of Collision's debut, the United Center in Chicago, was the only venue not announced by Tony Khan on the May 17th edition of Dynamite when he ran down the first six Collision events.

Do you think CM Punk will be at AEW Collision on June 17th? Let us know in the comments section down below!