During tonight’s heavily anticipated episode of Monday Night Raw emanating live from Chicago, the WWE Universe was on pins and needles regarding the arrival of one man: CM Punk. After leaving the company before the January 27 episode of Raw, there has been fervent speculation as to whether or not CM Punk would come back to the company.
Tonight’s episode was the pivotal moment of this saga as Chicago is the hometown of Punk. As tonight’s episode went off the air, the Second City Saint is still not with the company.
We’re here to bring to you the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Punk No Show.
The Good
The opening of the show was handled about as well as it could be considering Punk was not going to return. Starting off blasting “Cult of Personality” through the speakers was good to get the crowd to waste their best pop of the night out of the way.
Having Paul Heyman come out was a smart decision as it got the crowd to hold their breath instead of revolting the second they saw someone that was not the self-proclaimed Best in the World walk down the ramp.
Heyman kept the crowd on edge long enough that after teasing the crowd by alluding to a certain “Paul Heyman Guy” and sitting down in an all-too-familiar position in the middle of the ring, they weren’t too ornery when he made the logical progression from CM Punk to the ongoing Lesnar-Undertaker feud.
The Bad
The WWE played it smart the first hour with the Heyman promo and the great match between The Shield and The Wyatt Family (which was once again the best part of Raw). Things kind of got off of the rails afterwards, however, as the show became a plodding chore to sit through until the top of the third hour when Daniel Bryan had his segment with The Authority.
After that segment, we once again treaded water with exception of a John Cena promo, an absurdly out of place Alexander Rusev segment and the main event between Daniel Bryan and Batista, through a Vince Russo-level series of shenanigans.
The fact that the WWE didn’t even attempt to keep the crowd engaged for a significant portion of the show is beyond me. I would probably have enjoyed how the show ended with Bryan laid out any other week. Tonight, all the crowd wanted to do was see their fellow Chicagoan interfere regardless of how it fit into the story.
Doing this wasted what should be a pivotal moment of the WreslteMania main event feud, as any weight it had was nullified by the sea of CM Punk chants it was drowned in.
The Ugly
It seems that, at least for the foreseeable future, CM Punk is officially gone from the WWE. Regardless of whose side you are on in the dispute, the fact that Punk won’t be a part of WreslteMania season is a loss for everybody involved.
There’s still some time for things to change, but don’t get your hopes up. CM Punk is just a spoke on the wheel and even with him gone, the wheel keeps on spinning. The worry is if it’s going anywhere.
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