In this day and age, it'd be difficult to keep Punk off tv for 3 months, especially when the second biggest show is around the corner.
I'm not expecting three months, business can't survive that way. However, they barely skipped a week of programming. When you have one of those earth shattering, ego smashing promos like Punk's, it makes sense to milk it for a little while.
Now that "He's back" what the hell was all the promo really about? Is he now happy to be back in the fold and another cog in the big WWE machine? I guess that's what they will feed off, but to me, they missed the boat......in a big way.
The fact that the next big PPV is coming up just shows that these guys are really stuck for ideas. Couldn't Punk keep the whole 'outsider', 'angry ex-WWE employee' thing going and play the media at large for all it was worth? Hell, he could even announce he is buying a ticket to shows and there wasn't a damn thing that the WWE could do about it. Have him rush the ring, do something brutal to screw Cena and ruin the main event? The 'cops' could then do a pretty convincing job of reefing him out and being heavy handed towards him.
The problem is, these guys rely on wrestlers being there in-ring every week, something that wasn't the case in some of the biggest fueds.