When Kevin Owens walked up on CM Punk during last week’s SmackDown, announcer Corey Graves told the audience the two men had “a lot of history” and then wasn’t allowed to say another word about it. This week, Dave Meltzer filled in the rest on Wrestling Observer Radio, and the story he told traces back more than a decade, to a pizza order in Chicago.
How It Started: A Podcast and a Lawsuit
In November 2014, Punk appeared on Colt Cabana’s podcast, Art of Wrestling, and criticized how WWE medical staff, specifically Dr. Chris Amann, had handled a staph infection and a concussion during his final run with the company. Amann responded by filing an $8 million defamation lawsuit against both Punk and Cabana in February 2015. It would take three years to resolve.
What Meltzer Says Actually Ended the Friendship
According to Meltzer, the lawsuit itself wasn’t what broke Punk and Cabana’s friendship. It was what happened during it.
“They (WWE) sued. And Punk basically said, you know, these guys at WWE, they may go back to WWE. We have to break away. We cannot talk to anyone from WWE. So Punk cut off everyone from WWE. And he had, Kofi Kingston was a good friend of his. There were others. He cut them off cold. They were all stunned. It’s like, I thought we were friends. Cut them off cold because of the lawsuit. And he told Cabana to do the same thing. And Cabana agreed to do the same thing. At the time, I believe, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens were in developmental. So they were not main roster guys. And they were coming through Chicago. And they went out for pizza with Colt Cabana. And Punk found out, and that was it.”
Worth noting up front: this part is Meltzer’s account of a private falling-out from over a decade ago, not something Punk, Cabana, Owens, or Zayn have confirmed on the record themselves. What is on the record is that Punk and Cabana’s public relationship never recovered. A jury cleared both men of the Amann defamation claims in June 2018, but two months later, Cabana filed his own suit against Punk, claiming Punk had texted him a promise to cover his legal fees and then didn’t follow through. That case settled in 2019.
Where the Story Resurfaced: Brawl Out
Punk signed with AEW in 2021. Cabana joined the company too, then was let go a short time later, a decision that reportedly created backstage tension over whether Punk had pushed for it. That tension boiled over in September 2022, after Punk beat Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship at All Out. During the post-match media scrum, Punk went off on the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, and Adam Page, and directly on Cabana, saying on camera that he hadn’t considered Cabana a friend “since at least 2014, late-2013,” while denying he’d had anything to do with Cabana’s release.
Minutes later, it turned physical backstage. Punk and his longtime coach, Ace Steel, got into a fight with Omega and the Young Bucks. Steel threw a chair that struck Nick Jackson and was accused of biting Omega. Everyone involved was suspended, Punk and the Elite were stripped of their titles, and Steel was fired outright. The incident became known as Brawl Out.
Where It Ended: The Firing
Punk stayed in AEW for another year, but the relationship with the locker room never fully reset. In August 2023, he clashed backstage with Jack Perry over a segment Perry wanted to do involving real glass, and the disagreement turned physical again at All In in London, with bystanders needing to separate them. Days later, AEW’s Discipline Committee terminated Punk’s contract “with cause.” He returned to WWE in 2025.
Meltzer’s Bigger Claim
This is the part of Meltzer’s commentary that’s pure speculation on his end, drawing a straight line from a pizza dinner to Punk’s entire AEW run. He said it plainly:
“Everything that’s happened in wrestling, everything that happened in AEW, it all came because Colt Cabana went out to pizza with Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. So Kevin Owens is a big part of this story. That’s the stuff that nobody’s talking about. And legitimately, it’s just like, Colt Cabana went out to pizza with two of his buddies, and everything that happened in AEW was because of that. Everything stemmed from that. And here we are. And now Kevin Owens is doing a program with CM Punk for the first time in their careers.”
That’s a lot of weight to put on one dinner, and it’s worth reading as Meltzer’s interpretation of how a decade of grudges connect, not as something any of the four men involved have verified. What isn’t in dispute is the trail of confirmed events behind it: a real lawsuit, a real backstage fight, and a real firing.
Full Circle in 2026
Owens returned at SummerSlam and beat Gunther, Sami Zayn, and Finn Balor in a fatal four-way to become the number-one contender for Punk’s Undisputed WWE Championship, the same title Punk had just defended against Cody Rhodes on night one. It’s the first time Punk and Owens have ever been booked in a program together, and if Meltzer’s timeline holds up, the two men now standing across the ring from each other trace back to a lawsuit, a lost friendship, and a pizza order that happened before either of them had wrestled a single main roster match.
