I interviewed Heyman years ago, and from what he told me, the company wasn’t sure how it would work out with bringing Brock back, so the idea was to do one match, see how it goes, and then work from there. Obviously things ended up fine, but they didn’t want to get into a situation where they have him return, he goes over Cena and then disappears again, hence having Lesnar job in that match at Extreme Rules.
Through that lens, if WWE decides it’s worth the potential headache of bringing Punk back, I wouldn’t be surprised at all they had him job in his first match or position him very cautiously on the card at a minimum. Nothing about the guy screams long-term stability. In other words, I wouldn’t expect Punk to immediately go over Seth Rollins in multiple PPVs right away like Cody Rhodes did.
