AEW: Punk, Cole, and Bryan are the 2021 edition of The Outsiders

Last Sunday was one of the best PPVs in the last couple of years if not, all time. AEW All Out 2021 had great matches, CM Punk’s highly anticipated return, and additional surprises.

AEW gave the fans a surprise appearance from Minoru Suzuki confronting Jon Moxley and Ruby Soho entering in the women’s battle royal.  However, the two surprises that everyone will be talking about for a long time are the debuts of Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson in AEW.

Cole, Danielson, and Punk put so much attention on AEW that they are now the talk of the town. These three additions to the roster are gaining a lot of buzz for AEW. There hasn’t been this much buzz for a wrestling company besides WWE since Scott Hall and Kevin Nash showed up on WCW Monday Night Nitro in 1996.

Are Punk, Cole, and Danielson the 2021 edition of The Outsiders for AEW?

Yes, they are. Obviously, they are not in a group like Hall and Nash when they joined with Hulk Hogan to form the nWo. Punk is feuding with Team Taz, Cole is with The Elite, and Danielson is feuding with The Elite, mainly with AEW  World Champion Kenny Omega.

Off-screen, though, this trio has the same impact on AEW that Hall and Nash did for WCW. Their presence alone gave their respective companies a boost. Wrestling fans are tuning in AEW more often now because Danielson, Punk, and Cole are there. The same thing happened on Nitro in 1996 when Hall and Nash showed up.

All of them were big names in WWF/WWE even though Cole stayed in NXT during his time there. And all of them left WWE/WWF when their contracts were up except for Punk, who walked out of WWE on Jan. 27, 2014, and was fired on his wedding day in June. 13, 2014. He never wrestled again until Sept. 5, 2021, at All Out.

The differences between Hall and Nash with Punk, Cole, and Danielson are that Hall and Nash signed with WCW because they were offered more money from WCW than with WWE. Punk, Cole, and Danielson signed with AEW because they wanted to wrestle guys in AEW while growing the company plus having creative freedom. I’m sure they were offered a lot of money from AEW, but they might have made twice the money in WWE.

They went to AEW anyways because of the creative freedom and the chance to wrestle guys that they never faced. Tony Khan will have to approve their ideas but unlike WWE, where you don’t have a say 99 percent of the time about your position, you do have a voice in AEW. Even if your idea is bad, at least the idea was considered instead of getting shot down most of the time.

Even though Hall, Nash, Punk, Cole, and Danielson made a huge impact on their respective wrestling companies, which group made the bigger impact on their companies, and how successful will they be?

Who will have the better effect on their companies?

In the short term, it’s The Outsiders invading WCW. When they showed up and formed the nWo with Hogan, WCW’s business went up. They were beating Monday Night Raw in the ratings for 83 weeks. They were destroying WWF so bad that WWF almost went out of business.

AEW is not putting WWE out of business. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, maybe never. But in the long term, AEW will a competitor to WWE, but they are not there yet. They will be there in the next couple of years, though. And again, they are not putting WWE out of business because WWE is financially secured. AEW will compete with WWE with how the fans will react to their shows and how the ratings will do.

AEW All Out 2021 will be one of if not the most important PPV in a long time. All the matches — except for Paul Wight vs QT Marshall — were good or great. We got to see CM Punk wrestle for the first time since Royal Rumble 2014. And we saw Ruby Soho, Adam Cole, and Bryan Danielson debut. It’s going to be a fun time watching AEW in the next couple of months. There hasn’t been this much excitement for wrestling in a long time. It is a great time to be a wrestling fan.