Although critics felt this week’s edition of WWE RAW was a strong show from start-to-finish, there was some concern that WWE missed the boat by rushing CM Punk’s return.
Insiders, however, argue that what WWE was originally planning for Monday would have been even worse at building CM Punk as a top-level star.
According to F4WOnline.com, WWE’s original plan still called for Punk to return on Monday’s show, but said return would not have been limited to a staredown with John Cena. Instead, Punk’s return late in the show would have led to a confrontation with Triple H that ended in the latter’s favor.
HHH was to get the better of Punk and lay him out with a Pedigree, allowing Alberto Del Rio to successfully cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase on Punk. This would have led to Del Rio vs. John Cena at Summerslam as a title match and Punk vs. Triple H as a non-title grudge match.
Although the theory for this idea was that HHH would come off as a huge heel in the beating and thus give CM Punk a proper opponent against whom to build up his babyface character (rather than the babyface John Cena), the concern was that the RAW beatdown would have immediately killed Punk’s momentum.
A feud and pay-per-view match between CM Punk vs. Triple H is still being discussed, but it obviously will not be as imminent as first planned.
