By Sean Radican, PWTorch columnist

The latest edition of Raw seemed like a two-hour infomercial to promote the big three hour Raw 1000 next week featuring tons of big names. WWE has done a good job in recent weeks having various wrestlers look back at the big moments on Raw from the past. The Rock, DX, and Mick Foley are all coming to Raw, but to make the show feel truly special. What could that be? You can’t be serious, a wedding? What about a big title match?

As much the show felt like it contained a heavy amount of filler last night, it did have a good hook at the beginning to get fans to tune in at the end of the show. Big Show and C.M. Punk kicked off the show with a good promo exchange and Show teased the idea that after he got through with Punk and knocked him out at the end of Raw, Cena would come down to the ring and cash in hit MITB briefcase.

Not that many hardcore fans of Raw felt that Cena would do something dishonorable like cash in his briefcase against a battered Punk at the end of the show, but perhaps Show’s words hooked fans in to come back at the end of Raw last night to see what Cena would do. Where last week’s edition of Raw had hardly any internal hooks throughout the show, WWE did a good job last night of bringing some intrigue to the end of the show.

Looking at Cena, it has been a tough year. He lost the match he had to win at WrestleMania, causing him to forget about WWE’s top prize until he was inserted into a former WWE Champion’s edition of MITB. Instead of fighting John Laurinaitis or an angry Big Show in a cage, Cena finally had an opportunity to attain what he has so rarely desired at the end of Raw last night.

Perhaps WWE fans were confused as to why Cena suddenly had interest in winning in MITB last week, but after winning the match, Cena had a newfound desire to win the WWE Championship by the end of Raw last night. He referred to him and Punk having a match to see who was the “best in the world” with WWE’s top prize on the line bringing about questions of what was really on the line in most of Cena’s other matches for the last six months. Words like this hadn’t been bandied about in the main event of a WWE show in quite some time.

Next week, The Rock will raise his eyebrow and trick people into believing he wants to be WWE Champion again. DX will tell thousands of youngsters everywhere at the beginning of the three-hour extravaganza to suck it. Foley will appear and say his favorite moment on Raw 1,000 is this segment right here in (insert city and state).

The real question for Raw next week is will Cena cashing in MITB against WWE World Champion be enough of a hook to really generate a big rating for the launch of three-hour editions of Raw. Fans have been conditioned that the WWE Championship is an undercard title valued by the likes of Daniel Bryan, whose loss to Punk at MITB caused him to suddenly want to get married. Will Cena going after WWE’s top prize generate enough interest to carry the ratings to heights not seen in years? We will find out next Tuesday, but for now you can only wonder if the rating would have been bigger if Cena had put up WWE’s true top prize in the match.

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