A little later in the show, the discussion continued to focus around Punk, but the hosts instead began to discuss the effect of his departure on AEW. Bully feels that losing Punk and Cody Rhodes has hurt the promotion's popularity, but the problems go deeper than that.

"I think wrestling fans like to be on the winning team, and WWE right now ... is the winning team," Bully stated. "If you're looking for the stuff that you get in AEW, and I'm talking about the ... exciting, acrobatic type of matches, ... you can find that in the WWE also, and you can find it with psychology and selling."

Bully believes that Punk's departure had an immediate effect, with a number of fans dropping off after he was fired. Since then, there has been an "erosion" of the promotion's TV audience and a noticeable drop in enthusiasm, and he blames AEW's creative direction rather than any individuals.

Over in WWE, Bully believes that Punk, along with stars like Roman Reigns, do make a minor difference in the TV audience. However, most viewers are tuning in simply because they watch WWE TV every week. Though many of WWE's numbers were declining in Vince McMahon's final years atop the promotion, popularity is on the rise following Paul "Triple H" Levesque taking over as head of creative.

"WWE has always had competition that fans have wanted to run to," Bully said. "The empire of the WWE has never been taken down."