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As WWE is touring Australia, New Zealand and South Africa next week, they taped the July 4th edition of Raw last night. CM Punk will likely be on the tour, given the latest update on his indefinite suspension from wwe.com:
UPDATE: As of Tuesday, June 28, WWE and CM Punk have reached an agreement that Punk will fulfill his non-televised live event obligations for the remainder of his contract, through July 17. Furthermore, both sides have mutually agreed not to disparage one another.
Which begs the obvious question - how did WWE handle the fallout from CM Punk's inspired shoot promo at the tapings and did the creative team drop the ball on the best angle they've shot since last year's NXT rookies (soon renamed Nexus) attack of John Cena? Find out after the jump.
The following spoilers are courtesy of f4wonline.com, pwtorch.com and prowrestling.net:
- The show opened with John Cena complaining about Punk's indefinite suspension and being pulled from the Money In The Bank PPV title match. In an ironic twist, Cena defended Punk's "freedom of speech" and criticised WWE for their past firing of Daniel Bryan and their bad habit of confiscating fan's signs. He closed the segment by demanding answers from Vince McMahon and wanting to thrash things out in the ring later.
- In what will likely be at the top of the second hour, Alberto Del Rio beat Rey Mysterio and R-Truth in a Triple Threat match to ostensibly become the new number one contender to Cena's WWE championship and replace Punk in the Money In The Bank main event. Given how they're pushing that it's Del Rio's destiny to win the WWE title, he's almost certainly going to win it soon, the only question is how soon.
- Unsurprisingly Del Rio winning the title shot was a red herring and Punk got his title shot back in the show ending confrontation between Cena and Mr McMahon. Playing off the Montreal Screwjob, McMahon explained that he suspended Punk "for being a punk" that was making outrageous contractual demands and that he couldn't afford him stealing his World title and taking it to another promotion. This was when Cena stepped out and in the ensuing argument, which included a good line from Vince warning Cena not to wind up like Hulk Hogan did, Cena got so mad that Vince didn't trust him to beat Punk, that he handed his now "meaningless" title belt back to Vince and was about to quit. This caused Vince to change his mind, giving Cena the match with Punk he so craved, but if Punk leaves Chicago with the title, then Vince would fire Cena. A perfect ending, well it would have been if they hadn't had Cena lose a similar stipulation just seven months ago at the 2010 Survivor Series and made the stip meaningless by having Cena appear on Raw every week, before quickly and nonsensically overturning it.