For American viewers, we now seem to be firmly in the post-PPV era.  The WWE’s website may still list these shows under the heading of “pay-per-views”, but American viewers can get them far more cheaply by subscribing to the Netflix-style “WWE Network”.  Would you rather pay $40 just for this show, or subscribe to the whole network for six months at $10 a month?  The answer ought to be obvious.  Conventional PPV providers are predictably enraged, and the satellite companies (though not the cable ones) have responded by refusing to carry the show at all.  If that seems like an odd decision, since any orders are better than none, then bear in mind if they allow WWE to act like this, they encourage other PPV providers to follow suit.

Initial Network subscription numbers are at the low end of expectations (and certainly at the low end of announced expectations, which always seemed very bullish).  One theory is that if you didn’t subscribe for Wrestlemania, you certainly won’t be subscribing for a C-level show like this.  Another way of looking at it is that a large chunk of the audience just doesn’t feel comfortable with streaming yet, especially as they haven’t done a particularly great job of promoting all the devices that can access the show.  If that’s the position, then the satellite companies’ stance may just encourage more people to take a second look at the Network.

Extreme Rules is notionally still a themed show – it used to be the annual show where everything was a chaotic gimmick match, tracing its lineage back to the ECW reunion shows of a few years back.  In fact, this year’s card features fairly conventional matches, as the WWE seems finally to have realised that gimmick matches can’t just be shoehorned into any storyline.  The reality is that this is a standard issue C-show.

1.  WWE World Heavyweight Title – Extreme Rules Match: Daniel Bryan © v Kane.  As everyone expected, Daniel Bryan finally won the World Title at Wrestlemania, and got to keep it this time.  This forms the climax of his long chase for the title in the face of the Authority’s resistance.  As always in this situation, it begs the question – so what do you do now that he’s won the thing?

Logically, it would be the automatic rematch against Randy Orton, but we’re not getting that (notionally because Orton is in the six-man tag, though you might expect him to feel more strongly about his beloved title).  Instead Bryan kicks off his title match with a defence against Kane, his former tag partner turned Authority henchman.  The official line is that this show has a “triple main event”, which is a nice way of saying that the world title match is not the real main event in anyone’s book.  Some have seen this as a sign that Bryan is going to suffer the usual fate of wrestlers who the company didn’t really want to make champion, namely a weak title reign followed by defeat and a return to the mid card.  And the build has certainly been shaky, based largely around a return to Kane’s “classic” masked psycho gimmick.

On the other hand, while it would still make sense to do the Orton match first, Kane does make sense as an opponent that Bryan can beat convincingly to establish himself as champion.  For years, he’s been kept strong against the roster as a whole while remaining a step below the real main eventers.  And there are mitigating factors in the build, given that Bryan had a week off for his honeymoon, immediately followed by the death of his father.  The match should probably be fine, and conventional wisdom is that a Bryan victory is inevitable.

2.  The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns) v Evolution (Triple H, Batista & Randy Orton).  A couple of months back, the Shield looked to be heading for a break-up with Roman Reigns as the emerging solo hero.  Instead, the whole faction ended up turning babyface by rebelling against the Authority and ceasing to act as their henchmen.  The Shield are now finally behaving as the vigilante justice squad they always claimed to be, and Triple H has responded by reuniting with Batista and Orton to put them in line.  Those three – together with Ric Flair – formed the Evolution stable a decade ago, the idea at that point being that they represented past (Flair), present (Triple H) and future (the other two).

A decade down the line, of course, they represent present, past and paster, and Triple H is officially meant to be retired.  It would certainly be a surprise if they stuck around as a group for too long.  But they’re all credible main eventers and so natural opponents for the Shield.  The Shield clearly ought to come out ahead in the end, but I can see the company deciding that there’s more than one month’s mileage in this one – what other heel trios can the Shield feud with, after all?  On paper this looks like an excellent match; either side could win but I’m tentatively going to pick Evolution.

3.  Cage match: John Cena v Bray Wyatt.  Now this is a badly, or at least weirdly, booked storyline.  As leader of the southern-gothic Wyatt Family cult, Bray Wyatt is a rising main eventer who’s been feuding with John Cena for a couple of months now.  At root, the idea is meant to be Cena as the traditional hero taking on Wyatt the charismatic cultist.  There’s a weird attempt to try and spin the crowd reaction (which has long been divided where Cena is concerned) as evidence of Wyatt’s success, even though Cena’s been dividing the crowd for years before Wyatt turned up on the scene.  And there’s a thoroughly wonky suggestion that a victory for Cena will, in some ill-defined way, stop the spread of Wyatt’s similarly ill-defined message.

All this might make sense if Wyatt was undefeated up to this point, and had consistently relied on his henchmen to help him to victory.  In that scenario, Cena could at least sensibly claim that he was going to stop Wyatt’s momentum by handing him his first high-profile defeat, and that the steel cage stipulation would force him to fight on equal terms for once.

But that’s not what happened.  Wyatt beat Daniel Bryan cleanly in January, with no outside interference – so he’s not dependent on his henchmen to beat main eventers.  And worse, Wyatt actually lost his first match with Cena at Wrestlemania.  If that high-profile defeat didn’t stop his momentum (which, after all, is notionally as a cult leader, not as a wrestler), why is a loss here so important?  It just doesn’t work as a story.

Fortunately, Wyatt’s theatrics have been enough to keep the plates spinning despite the plot falling over in a light breeze.  I imagine this will be a decent match.  Wyatt should probably win to set up a rubber match with something more concrete at stake, but the clumsy booking of this storyline means anything could happen.

4.  WWE Intercontinental Title: Big E © v Bad News Barrett.  Bad News Barrett is the former Wade Barrett, now rebranded.  This spins off a comedy skit he did for the WWE’s YouTube channel, and was initially almost unwatchable, since WWE comedy in 2014 is about as funny as the Ukraine.  Fortunately, now that he’s actually wrestling again, it’s shifted back towards simply being a catchphrase, and it’s starting to work.

Barrett won a tournament to get this title shot, over surprisingly tough competition considering the IC title’s perennial mid card status.  It’s his big push following his rebranding, while Big E has done essentially nothing for a while now.  A title switch seems practically guaranteed – unless the WWE decide it’s too predictable and take fright.  That would be the wrong move.  The match should be fine.

5.  WWE Divas Title: Paige © v Tamina Snuka.  Paige made her unannounced debut on the main roster with a surprise title win over AJ Lee the day after Wrestlemania.  After a couple of rocky years, the WWE has now picked up on the fact that the episode of Raw immediately following Wrestlemania tends to draw an unusual crowd – hardcore fans from around the world who travelled to see the big show and figured they might as well take in a TV taping while they’re in town.  Such fans are unusually well informed and can be relied upon to react to wrestlers who would be complete unknowns to any other audience.  Paige falls firmly into that category, as the inaugural Women’s Champion of the NXT developmental territory.  She was smartly debuted in front of the one crowd of the year that could be relied upon to recognise her from watching developmental television, and to be pleased to see her.

Paige’s gimmick in NXT was supposed to be that she was an “anti-diva” – in practice, a kick-ass goth who rejected the house style of the women’s division.  This got her over as a babyface, which says a lot about what the NXT audience thinks about the main roster women’s division.

On the main roster, she seems to be positioned more as the humble rookie, which I’m not sure plays to her strengths as well.  Logically she’d be facing AJ in a rematch, but AJ’s on leave for whatever reason, so we’re getting her sidekick Tamina Snuka instead.  Paige will undoubtedly retain, but at least she’s getting a match against one of the proper wrestlers on the roster.  It’ll be kept short – the women’s matches almost always are.

6.  Handicap match: Alexander Rusev v R-Truth & Xavier Woods.  Rusev is the latest Eastern European monster heel, as yet unbeaten since coming up to the main roster.  He will be facing – and almost certainly beating – two low-card babyfaces.  R-Truth must be wondering how his career came to this.   There’s no point in having a heel face two babyfaces unless he’s going to win and demonstrate his dominance; nobody gains from the reverse result.  This will be short and uninteresting in itself; the point of putting it on PPV is to send a message about Rusev mattering, not to actually take up much time on the show itself.

Rusev is genuinely Bulgarian, as billed.  His “social ambassador” Lana is not genuinely Russian but deserves marks for committing to the role.  (She did live in Latvia as a child, which might explain why her Russian at least sounds passably convincing to the non-speaker.)

7.  Triple Threat Elimination Match: Rob Van Dam v Jack Swagger v Cesaro.  This appears to be the final resolution of the Real Americans’ break-up angle, with RVD added to get a babyface into the match (and to lend it a bit of bonus credibility).  Cesaro is in an odd position right now, having broken from the heel Real Americans’ faction in a way that appeared to set him up for a babyface turn.  But instead he allied with heel manager Paul Heyman, yet continued to feud with his ex-partner.  He’s sending mixed signals, in other words, and it’s not clear at this stage whether he’s merely halfway through an extended turn, or stuck in tweener limbo.  It has the potential to be a decent undercard match.  I’d guess Cesaro wins, since he seems to be the top priority right now.

8.  Pre-show – Wee LC Match: El Torito v Hornswoggle.  Oh god.  Midget comedy.  A Wee LC match is (presumably) a TLC match with miniature weapons.  I find this stuff virtually unwatchable, and not through any lack of talent on Torito’s part, either.  Obviously he knew what he was in for when he signed on for a company employing one other midget who’s been playing a leprechaun for years, but still, what a waste.  Fortunately, this is airing on the pre-show, which isn’t available in the UK, so I can pretend it isn’t happening.

Worth buying?  It’s actually a pretty decent card now that I run it down.  I don’t see any obvious classics here but everything on the main roster has the potential to be at least decent (except for the handicap match, which will be five minutes at a push).