I may have skipped last month’s show, but Summerslam tonight is an interesting one on a couple of levels.

Summerslam is traditionally one of the WWE’s big shows of the year (in the second tier after Wrestlemania, along with Royal Rumble in January and Survivor Series in the autumn).  This is really is just a hangover from the days when there were only four PPVs a year, but the name still has a certain added credibility – not least because the company usually puts a bit more effort into these shows.

This year, it’s something of a one match show.  But it’s a match that they’ve been building to for months, in a storyline which has dominated Raw for much of that time.  And now, for the first time, it’s a leading to match.  All too often, the WWE loses its nerve with this sort of long-term build, but this time they’ve got it right, and in theory at least, that ought to result in a lot of interest for this show.  Whether the match will be any good… well, that’s more of an unknown factor.  But unusually, that might even add to the curiosity here.

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It’s been a while since the WWE put on a pay-per-view that seemed like quite such an afterthought. But a number of injuries to top names have derailed the build for this show, and the whole thing has rather been overtaken by a storyline that, in theory at least, doesn’t feature on the show at all.

Fatal 4-Way continues the WWE’s big idea of giving each show its own gimmick.  But there’s a limit to how many gimmick matches you can do.  We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, with a show notionally built around 4-way matches.  (The “fatal” bit is, presumably, because the WWE rules make these matches sudden death – first pinfall or submission wins the title, regardless of who gets pinned.  Also, it’s alliterative.)

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Here’s something we haven’t had in a while – a WWE pay-per-view with no theme whatsoever.

For a while now, the WWE’s philosophy has been that every show needs its own gimmick.  And to be sure, there was an issue in the past with all the second-tier shows being rather interchangeable.  But if every show has a theme, it becomes rather wearing.  Moreover, it means that you get gimmick matches because of the show theme, rather than to serve a story.  (Traditionally, you start a feud with a regular match and build to gimmicks in the rematch as the stakes get higher…)

This month, we do indeed have a regular card of wrestling matches.  There are gimmicks, but for storyline purposes.  And for once, the midcard wrestlers are getting a reasonable amount of exposure.

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Traditionally the month after Wrestlemania is a bit quiet.  That’s partly because the WWE ends all its major storylines at the big show, and partly because they usually haven’t given a great deal of thought to what comes next.  So the following pay-per-view, which used to be Backlash, has generally been a bit forgettable, at least from a storyline standpoint.

The WWE have rejigged their pay-per-view schedule for 2010, so as to cut back the number of shows, and to pursue their policy of giving every show a theme of its own.  So Backlash has been dispensed with, and we’re jumping straight to Extreme Rules, the show where… well, this takes a bit of explaining.

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And so we come to Wrestlemania 26, the biggest event of the WWE calendar, and effectively the end of the current season.  Granted, the next season starts 24 hours later with the next episode of Raw, but April is usually a breather month before any major new storylines get underway.  Insofar as a never-ending series can be said to build to a climax, Wrestlemania is that annual climax.

Normally I’d do this preview over the weekend, but I’m going to be out of town, so we’ll just have to do it now… (more…)

The build for Wrestlemania continues tonight with the second pay-per-view of 2010.  The February show is always a slightly awkward one.  January has the Royal Rumble, with the winner getting a title shot in the main event at Wrestlemania… in March.  Once they started running monthly pay-per-views, that left the question of what to do in February.  Since the brand split has left the company with two versions of the world title, an obvious solution would be to pick the second challenger in February.  But for some unfathomable reason, the WWE has instead decided that February is an ideal month to have both world titles defended in convoluted six-man cage matches.  This has never struck me as the best way to build to the biggest title matches of the year, but there we go.

And so, in keeping with the policy of giving every pay-per-view its own gimmick, the February show is now Elimination Chamber.

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As always, the WWE’s first pay-per-view of 2010 is one of the big ones.  Traditionally, the biggest show of the year in always Wrestlemania in the spring – this year, March 28th.  And back in the days when there were only a handful of PPVs each year, the Royal Rumble was the start of an extended build to Wrestlemania.  It’s a simple idea: the winner of the titular battle royal becomes the number one contender for the World Title, and the title match headlines Wrestlemania.  Then you spend two months building to it.

It’s a bit more complicated now.  The brand split means that Raw and Smackdown (and ECW, as if anyone still cares) all have their own separate versions of the world title, so the winner gets to choose which champion he faces.  And there’s also a February pay-per-view to fill – ideally by selecting challengers for the other major titles.  But the basic idea remains the same.  The build to the major show starts tonight and lasts for two months. (more…)

The WWE’s 2009 pay-per-view schedule wraps up tonight with TLC, another of the themed events which they’ve been trying over the last few months.  This one is notionally chosen by fans polled on the website, but (as usual when the WWE allows the fans to vote) anyone could have seen the result coming a mile away.  The fans have opted for the most spectacular, and least practical, option.  And now the writers have to try and make it work. (more…)

Continuing another series from If Destroyed, it’s time for another WWE pay-per-view preview.  Mercifully, the days of three-week gaps between shows appear to be behind us, as the 2010 schedule is generally more relaxed than this year’s.  So this time, the writers have had plenty of time to build to the show.  This isn’t to say they’ve done it very well.  But they’ve had the time.

Survivor Series is traditionally one of the big shows of the year – which is to say, it’s the Thanksgiving show, and they’ve been using the name for 23 years now, so it must be important.  As we’ve mentioned before, the WWE is currently on a kick of giving every show a gimmick, but Survivor Series always had one: 5-on-5 tag team elimination matches.  Fortunately, the company seems to have figured out that you can’t always shoehorn the main event storylines into the gimmick match du jour, so a pattern is emerging: two title matches to headline the card, three gimmicks below. 

And this month’s card looks like this… (more…)