C.M. Punk’s latest turn as a heel was cemented last week with a brutal assault on Jerry “The King” Lawler. Punk’s reception tonight in his hometown of Chicago is expected to remain overwhelmingly positive regardless.

Last week’s Raw saw C.M. Punk showed definitively that he was no longer walking the line between good and evil as he goaded Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler into a fight and then proceeded to brutally beat him inside a steel cage to end the show. Regardless of the direction of this storyline, a large part of the audience still cheered Punk. With such headway made to show this new side to Punk’s demeanor, tonight’s Raw eminates from Chicago where Punk will absolutely be received as a babyface. Will he apologize for his actions or give his reasons for attempting to teach Lawler the meaning of “RESPECT!”

Read more of this article »

Even at his worst, C.M. Punk should be better than demanding respect and attacking Hall of Famers like Jerry “The King” Lawler. We’ll see how much lower he can stoop tonight in Oakland, CA.

Last week’s post-SummerSlam edition of Monday Night Raw exhibited some incredibly lazy storytelling as well as a near-interminable length clocking in at 3 hours and 14 minutes. (Apparently we need this. Who knew that this was a thing? Now it’s not just about the game and how you play it, but how much time you spend playing the game.) With this kind of time being put into the product, storylines need to have more direction. There’s too much focus on buzzwords (RESPECT!) and not enough consistency with characters and fleshing out the actual plots. It’s something that we can hope they either overcome, or find something shiny to distract us with.

Read more of this article »

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.

Read more of this article »

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.

Read more of this article »

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.

Read more of this article »