WWE's Best Match of the Week: Mark Henry vs. CM Punk for the WWE Title on Raw

It’s a rare sight to see a wrestler have two completely separate feuds for his world title, but that’s exactly what CM Punk has done over the last few weeks. 

While Punk has feuded with Chris Jericho in an extremely personal rivalry that involves the WWE championship, he’s also gotten into an extended WWE title feud with Mark Henry that has been relegated exclusively to TV. 

Henry and Punk have faced off in three WWE championship matches on three consecutive episodes of Monday Night Raw. Henry won the first encounter by countout in a really good match, and he won the second one by DQ, although it was more of an angle than a match and lasted less than a minute. 

The results of those first two matches led to a third bout between Punk and Henry on this week’s Raw, a No DQ/countouts match for the WWE championship. 

Given how good their first extended match was, I was expecting big things out of both Punk and Henry in this bout. And they definitely delivered. 

Henry and Punk showed some awesome chemistry once again, and there were a number of memorable spots that stood out to me. 

There was Punk tight rope-walking the ringside barrier and then hitting a bulldog on Henry outside of the ring, followed by Henry picking up Punk like a rag doll and tossing him into the ringside barrier.

There followed a great little sequence of moves that saw Punk go for a crossbody off the top rope, Henry catch him and Punk wiggle out of the World’s Strongest Slam attempt, and it ended with Punk hitting Henry with a big kick and his patented running high knee in the corner. 

All these great spots led to an equally great finish in which Henry ran into a steel chair that he had set up on the apron, which then allowed Punk to hit a massive top rope elbow drop on Henry while holding a steel chair, a move that allowed him to get the pin and the victory. 

The match itself wasn’t extraordinary, but it was a great, entertaining TV bout that showed just how good Henry can be when given the right opponent. 

Henry has performed really well in big matches recently, and he perhaps may be earning himself a spot back at the top of the WWE. 

If nothing else, though, he and Punk stole the show on Monday’s Raw, their second time doing so in just the last few weeks.

Note: As part of the new WWE blog, I'll be asking all of the B/R wrestling readers for questions for a new mailbag that I will post on Fridays. It will be a slideshow featuring 10-to-20 questions and answers on a wide range of topics. You can submit questions either through Formspring or Twitter, and the best ones will be answered in the B/R mailbag.