The AEW: Fight Forever release date is only giving wrestling fans more wild conspiracy theories about why the game's taken so long

gamesradar.com:

The AEW: Fight Forever release date has finally been set for June 29, but after years of waiting, the announcement has only given wrestling fans more fuel for their wild speculation about why the game's taken so long.

AEW management had been teasing a game since 2019, before the scrappy wrestling promotion had even aired its first TV episode. Plans for Yuke's, the former WWE 2K developer, to make the game were made official in 2020, and the title of AEW: Fight Forever was finally announced in 2022. Throughout this protracted marketing cycle, news about the game tended to more often come through wrestling rumor mills than proper announcements, and despite positive responses to showings at events like Gamescom, fans have been a bit skeptical about whether this game's going to deliver a proper alternative to 2K.

Insider reports suggested that AEW: Fight Forever was expected to launch in September 2022 - but that month proved to be a controversial one for AEW. That's when the formerly long-retired megastar CM Punk defeated Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship during All Out, and in a post-show media event, went extremely off-script to air his personal grievances against several fellow wrestlers. After some of the founding members of AEW confronted Punk over those comments, a backstage fight ensued that wrestling enthusiasts coined 'Brawl Out'.

While all that sounds like it should be a wrestling storyline, it's sadly quite real. Punk was unceremoniously stripped of the championship and quickly disappeared from AEW television. A few months after the brawl, a new trailer for Fight Forever was released, and at that time the game's cover art was altered to remove CM Punk. AEW insisted that Punk had not been removed from the