CM Punk, Bryan Danielson & Adam Cole Signed On Night Of Their AEW Debuts

The importance of a handshake.

While some promoters would want talent to sign on the dotted line ahead of their first appearance, Tony Khan revealed during the post-All Out media scrum that Bryan Danielson, CM Punk and Adam Cole all signed with AEW on the night they made their debuts.

Danielson and Cole both appeared following the All Out main event, while Punk made his return to professional wrestling on August 20 at AEW Rampage: The First Dance.

Following a question from Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp, Tony Khan said: "I think you've all heard the story, which is true, that Punk didn't actually sign anything until that night. But we had a handshake and I trusted him. Same thing with Bryan. I think Bryan just signed. I trusted him. You know, we have a good relationship and we built that. Same with Adam Cole."

"I wasn't sure everything was going to fall into place," Khan added. "But they all just kind of one by one starting to look more likely. You know when something's like, this could happen and then every day it starts to look a little bit better, a little bit better and it's like Mr. Punk said, I don't know if there's a day I could put my finger on all these things and when they all were gonna hit. They just kept looking a little bit better every day. Definitely every good conversation I had with each of them I felt a little bit better about what we were doing tonight."