The continued absence of CM Punk continues to be one of the biggest stories in WWE behind the scenes. On screen, they won't even utter his name. Backstage, he's likely on their mind a lot. There are three really big dates that concern WWE prior to WrestleMania. The first one is February 23, which is the night of the Elimination Chamber PPV. The second one is the next night on Raw, February 24, that is the night when WWE will launch the WWE Network in America. The third really big night coming up is the March 3rd edition of Raw that is emanating from Chicago, which is the hometown of CM Punk. The newest issue of the
Wrestling Observer by Dave Meltzer reports that there's some concern within WWE about how the crowd might react that night. There have been CM Punk chants in other cities for weeks, so when WWE comes to Chicago they can likely expect more of them. How does WWE plan to counter them? Well, there's not much they can actually do except bring back some stars from the past for WrestleMania. It's been known for a couple of weeks now that The Undertaker and Hulk Hogan are both scheduled to return to WWE on that February 24 edition of Raw. Whether they are advertised for it, we don't know yet. They might be. What that means is they'll likely be on the March 3rd edition of Raw too. The current thinking by WWE is that they figure if they have enough star power on the show it might cause the crowd to not chant for CM Punk like you might expect. Going into the Los Angeles Raw this week, WWE officials feared fans would hijack the show and ruin the John Cena vs. Randy Orton main event like they did at Royal Rumble. They countered that by bringing out Daniel Bryan twice, including right before the main event. In other words, they wanted the fans to tire themselves out. It's that old boxing strategy move! My question for WWE is this. How are you supposed to quiet the crowd if you book some match like Alberto Del Rio vs. Sheamus that we've seen dozens of times before and they get bored by it, so they chant for CM Punk? You won't be able to stop them unless you mute the crowd with the volume mixer. The idea of bringing out guys like Undertaker and Hogan for nostalgia pops is fine in theory, but it's not like they are going to be out there for three hours either. At this point we don't know if Punk has any interest in coming back to WWE. If he does, it could be on that Chicago episode of Raw or perhaps at WrestleMania. The ongoing CM Punk saga continues.