With the back and forth of rumor and hearsay about Punk’s possible departure, break, rest, whatever you want to call it, there have been several debates about Punk’s value to the company. And although Punk is a tremendous asset, he is not essential to the survival of the WWE. No one particular wrestler is. The company is set up around this fact, and the storytelling style they use is also built around the flexible to change things on the fly, and substitute different people into different storylines. Remember when Edge retired, and everyone wondered who would step into his role? It was circumvented, and now Smackdown is routinely a stronger show than Raw, now with Christian and Randy Orton as the main players.

That is not what I want to discuss, however. With these discussions, I think everyone is missing the more important focus, and that is just how good this Charles Montgomery Punk guy is at what he does. From top to bottom, I cannot think of an active wrestler that is better than Punk. He has no real flaws. He is great on the mic, knows how to work the crowd expertly, and is amazing in the ring. I don’t think his in ring work is applauded enough, because it’s the small things that truly make him so great. The facial expressions, the yelled comments.

His short interplay with Stone Cold last night was the highlight of the night for me, and the possibility of a Punk/Stone Cold feud leaves me extremely hopeful.

Many will say that Punk is already regarded as one of the top wrestlers around, especially on the web. I would say that he’s actually underrated, even by that standard. We are watching one of the best of all time, and he is only getting better.