When the first RAW after Survivor Series came to an end, with the screen fading to black as CM Punk stared down the camera, the entire professional wrestling community took a collective step back and began to process what they had just witnessed.

To some, the promo was a solid base hit, the first box that needed to be checked before WWE could advance the storyline even further, but others simply didn't like it, with Kevin Nash notably calling the promo ‘contrived‘ on his Kliq This podcast.

“I thought the glad-handing on the way to the ring was not him,” Kevin Nash said via Fightful. “For somebody that was so ‘pipe bomb,' it felt very contrived. At the end, it was like, ‘Oh s**t, I better slip this in so I have some credibility.' [Quoting Punk], ‘I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to make money.' I've heard that before.”

Harsh? Eh, maybe a little bit, but it wasn't the unified opinion across the industry, as Booker T provided a retort to Nash's opinion on his own Hall of Fame podcast, suggesting that this could have been a test to see how willing Punk was to play ball in this new landscape.

“I think Kevin feels that way because, just like I, unless CM Punk really felt that way, when he said it's good to be back home, that sounds and feels like something that perhaps, ‘You gotta say this. We gotta write this for you,'” Kevin Nash said via Fightful. “Me personally, I don't see that with CM Punk. I think if someone had told him, ‘Hey, you gotta go out and say this,' he might have said, ‘No, I can't do it.' There might have been some rift there. I just don't see them putting him in that position first night back. In this business, I say everything is a test. That could have been CM Punk's test. ‘Let's see what he goes out here and say. Bringing him back in, we give him a shot. Let's see what we go out there and say. Let's see if he's gonna go out there and bury the company, or if he's gonna go out there and put us over. Let's see exactly how this thing's gonna start out.' It could have been one of those tests. Me personally, I don't know. But if it was a test, CM Punk passed it because you gotta show you're willing to play ball. Whether I tell you you need to play ball or not, you're back, and that's something that it seems like you would perhaps understand if we want to get off on the right foot. I could be wrong. But me personally, that's just the way I see it.”

Did WWE really want to see how Punk would handle his first promo? Or did they instead give Punker at least an outline of where they want his character to go and, as a result, what he should be striving for in the promo? It's impossible to know, but fortunately, fans will have even more “tape” to analyze over the next week, as the “Best in the World” is booked for both SmackDown and RAW, and both Adam Pearce and Nick Aldis will be trying to woo him for a spot on their roster.

Booker T explains what he thinks the point of CM Punk's promo was.

So, if CM Punk's promo was, in fact, a test, what kind of test did Booker T think it was? Fortunately he had an explanation that is rather illuminating.

“That's wrestling 101. That's something that we would expect. But I don't know,” Booker T noted. “For me, I wouldn't want to jump the gun too soon. We got him here, let's see where this thing goes, start slowly. That's what I would think about first, just because of the history. Everything is a test all the time in this business, for me anyway, that's the way I've always looked at it. Everything's always a test. For someone to come out there. Of course that would have sparked the interest of the Internet immediately. But it's just like Cody Rhodes winning immediately when he got back also. We wouldn't have none of the drama that we've had with Cody over the last 365 either.”

You know, Booker T does have a point, as more than a few fans wanted to see Cody Rhodes win it all right away, or at least at WrestleMania 39, by bypassing the short-term payoff, the WWE Universe has been afforded plenty of new, exciting storylines that haven't all been home runs but have been consistently over with the crowd. If Punk can follow a similar path, WWE will be in a fantastic spot for years to come.