CM Punk must win the Owen Hart Men’s Tournament

The Owen Hart Tournament is coming to a close and CM Punk should be the one to win it all.

This Saturday the Owen Hart Tournament will come to a helm with CM Punk taking on Ricky Starks. While there is no real reward for winning like a title shot, momentum is up for grabs by winning the tournament.

Since returning, Punk has wins over Satoshi Kojima and Samoa Joe in singles action, and if he wants to get back the title he never lost, he has to win the tournament.

Some may say “I thought the point of CM Punk coming to AEW was to put over young talent”, and while that may be partly true, Ricky Starks can still have his moment to shine.

We saw something similar to this at AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming when Ricky Starks took on MJF for the AEW World Championship. Before the match, of course, no one thought Starks would win the match, but with enough near falls and crowd support it suddenly seemed Starks winning could become a reality.

The same match format should be used at Collision, because right now does anyone truly think Starks is going over against the main star of the show? Starks can get his moment in the spotlight to move him toward the top side of the AEW mid-card, while CM Punk takes care of business.

The interesting dynamic created when Punk wins is that he gets to either carry around the Owen Hart Cup or wear the pink belt around his waist, all while carrying around the bag that holds his AEW World Championship. Punk really needs that visual to be on AEW television to feel like he already belongs back in the main event scene, instead of being the ‘hot tag’ man in an eight-person tag match.

If Punk can get more hardware to kick off his now 3rd run in AEW, he immediately has a reason to challenge MJF for AEW World Championship. Punk now would own more gold than MJF, if AEW decides to use the pink belt Adam Cole received last year.

There is no way anyone could convince me CM Punk should be putting over Ricky Starks this early into his return as the main star on Collision, and Punk must also win to continue to build heat by beating a top babyface. If we eventually get to Punk vs MJF again, based on how the crowd is reacting to MJF, it makes a ton of sense to reverse the roles and have CM Punk as the heel and MJF be the babyface everyone knows he needs to tap into.