The Last Perfect WWE Raw
The Miz didn't come to win the King Of The Ring earlier in the show, but he came to play here, legging it to the ring to cash in his Money In The Bank briefcase with the sort of believable urgency that's been somewhat lost by the more recent laboured attempts.
Far from a finisher-and-home, Miz plays confident killer believably for one of the only times in his career, zeroing in on Orton's bum knee as a crowd set to beat the traffic have stayed put and stayed standing. The energy is real, and not at all what you may remember if you were enduring these shows at the time.
When Punk dropped the "Pipe Bomb" the following June, he was highlighting this period as much if not more than any other, but this episode and this match in particular serves as a magnificent rule-proving exception. Orton gets two exhilarating hope spots, but hasn't got the legs for the RKO against a fresh Challenger. The Skull Crushing Finale sends Michael Cole into hysterics, proto-meme Angry Miz Girl into an absolute fury, and has a genuine Shawn Michaels moment in the middle of the ring as Raw goes off the air.
Punk out-commentates the commentators one final time by noting that while we all thought Cena's firing, Wade Barrett's dominance and Randy Orton's knee were the stories, Miz was the guy waiting to steal the headlines. The show goes off the air with the sort of flourish they’ve been known to put in the actual script, but so rarely deliver.
Michael Cole declares it the start of the "Era Of Awesomeness" to brand the f*cking thing before the wrestler himself even can, but if only he knew. "It is always this awesome? I'm coming back next week!" notes Punk, actually sounding earnest for a change. It was if he knew he was jinxing it just enough to cut the promo that would make him the biggest star eight months later. Or at very least beginning a programme with John Cena that hid in plan sight for an entire month, at which point he'd take over The Nexus from Barrett too. Samoa Joe is stealing Raw from the desk at present, but don't expect storytelling this neat if he ever fancies another run of the ropes any time soon.
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