Last night’s 25th Anniversary edition of WWE’s SummerSlam event was a decent entry in the history of the pay-per-view though there have certainly been stronger offerings. While last night did provide less comedy skits than we’ve become accustomed to with WWE’s recent PPV offerings, it felt like the show was lacking some spark (and the Kevin Rudolf musical performance didn’t help). Despite that, a strong focus on in-ring action is hopefully a sign of good things to come every week on Raw as the three hour format opens things up for more wrestling.

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WWE Champion C.M. Punk kicked off Raw 1001 to great effect, but the start of the three-hour era was otherwise rocky at best.

It’s easy to find people talking about Raw 1000 and the consensus seems to be that it was a raging success. Here at the Warm Up, we’ll be watching for all the weeks that follow and with that in mind we’re more concerned with the long game. Week one of the next thousand episodes of Raw was not without it’s weak moments last Monday. It was better than most but hopefully tonight doesn’t drop further off a very familiar cliff.

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Tonight promises 3 hours of big names and at least one big match that we had predicted as a main event for SummerSlam. Last week’s Raw was a huge improvement coming off the Money in the Bank pay-per-view that saw a lot of changes in direction for top names. The quality of the show has been declining in recent months, especially as we contrast where interest in the show was last year prior to and post-Money in the Bank 2011.  It’s a safe bet that WWE will pull out all the stops tonight but the big questions are will it pay off based on what we’ve seen lately and how long can they continue to produce three hours of television that will keep people watching on Monday nights. 

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John Cena won his first Money in the Bank contract last night and promises big news tonight on Raw.

As the epic 1000th episode of Monday Night Raw get ever closer, last week’s show was nearly a complete disappointment. Perhaps more disappointing is the state of the WWE as it comes off the annual Money in the Bank pay-per-view one year after C.M. Punk had the world watching as he won the WWE Championship on the final night of his contract. The unknown and excitement of last Summer appears to have been replaced with the same old situations as more energy appears to be going into next week’s history making Monday than last night’s pay-per-view. 

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Raw is not War, nor Jericho, nor is it Monday Night Raw starring Brock Lesnar. It’s the YES Network presents AJ’s Kiss of Death.

Tonight Raw pulls into CM Punk’s favorite venue THE PEPSI CENTER in Denver, Colorado. Let’s hope AJ doesn’t share his love of the soft drink because I think we had our fill of her last week. It’s a shame mainly due to the fact that AJ has become and important figure in the WWE landscape and the positive reaction to her has led to overkill. The current WWE status quo is a far cry from where things were heading into last year’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view that featured C.M. Punk on the final night of his contract taking on John Cena for the WWE Championship.

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