Yes, after the usual Christmas break in the PPV calendar, the wrestling posts are back.  The majority of you may move on with your lives now.

Still here?  Okay, then.  Tonight’s show is the 2011 Royal Rumble, traditionally the second-biggest event in the WWE’s pay-per-view schedule.  For those of you who don’t follow wrestling (and yet are still inexplicably reading this), a brief recap.  The biggest show of the year is Wrestlemania, which is on April 3.  The Royal Rumble in January is headlined by a battle royal, and the winner goes on to challenge for the title at Wrestlemania.  Now, battle royals tend to be rather dull events because if you’ve got thirty guys in the ring at once, they can’t really do much of anything.  The great idea of the Royal Rumble is that the wrestlers draw numbers and enter in sequence every two minutes or so (and boy, there’s a lot of latitude in that “or so” – there’s a good reason why they don’t leave the clock on screen throughout).  This is, of course, a ridiculous way to choose a top contender for the biggest show of the year because, if it were real, the element of random luck would be enormous.  But it makes for a much better match, because the number of wrestlers in the ring can be kept under control, and because the regular entrances give the match structure and the fans plenty of opportunities to wonder who’s coming next.

In recent years, things have become a bit more complicated.  Since the WWE treats its two main shows, Raw and Smackdown, as mini-promotions in their own right, each has its own version of the world title – probably a bad idea, but that’s an argument for another day.  So the winner of the Royal Rumble gets to choose which champion he faces at Wrestlemania, and somebody else has to be lined up for the other title match (handy in a sense, because it gives them something to do at the February show).  Nonetheless, up to this point the WWE have been pretty good at sticking to the idea that the winner of the Royal Rumble advances to headline the biggest show of the year, with the build beginning now.  In some years, this has been the point where rising stars have broken from the pack.

That said, the WWE is going through one of its “making it up as they go along” phases, from the looks of things.  Aside from the Rumble itself, they haven’t announced a great deal for this show – the two world titles will be defended, and there’s a gimmicky match for the women’s title and, uh, that’s it.

The Rumble is really the headline match here, but who wins depends in part on what happens with the world title matches.  So let’s start with those.

1.  WWE Title: The Miz v. Randy Orton. It’s a sign of the WWE’s wonky booking these days that we’ve already had Mike Mizanin defend his title against Orton in a gimmick match on a previous show, and now they’re going to wrestle again in a regular match.  (Traditionally it’s the other way around, with the gimmick being used to keep the feud fresh or to play into storyline.)

Miz won the title in November by cashing in the “Money in the Bank” any-time-any-place title shot that he won earlier in the year, and ambushing Orton.  They did a first rematch in December, where Miz retained on a screwjob finish, and this is the second one.  In concept, Miz is meant to be the classic weak heel champion, who’s more or less stolen the title and therefore ought to be vulnerable to a strong babyface challenger.  The theory here is that you’re implicitly teasing a title change in every defence.  Orton is clearly treated as a top priority for the company, as they seem to be trying to turn him into a Steve Austin style antihero, with some degree of success.  Miz is suffering from a problem which often plagues WWE midcarders recently promoted to the main event – he may have the title belt, but he’s still booked like a midcarder.  The WWE is perennially slow to really commit to a new headliner.

So, what happens here?  The match itself should be perfectly good.  But who wins?  The company seem to have been building towards Miz versus Cena, which would tend to suggest that Miz retains.  On the other hand, do they have confidence to run with Miz as defending champion at the biggest show of the year?  They should, because while there are bigger stars in the company, most possible match-ups involving those stars have been done to death, and the value of a fresh combination in the main event shouldn’t be underestimated.  I can’t help suspecting, though, that somewhere along the line the company will bottle it and switch the title to a bigger star.  It’s just in their nature.

What are the options, then?  If Miz is going on to Wrestlemania to defend against Cena, then they really need to build him up a bit more, and he ought to defeat Orton cleanly, even if not decisively.  But that’s unlikely to happen.  More likely is the company finds itself caught on the dilemma of having Miz retain without beating Orton, and resorts to another screwjob finish involving interference from Miz’s acolyte Alex Riley.  If Miz actually loses and Orton gets the title two months out from Wrestlemania then that seems to signal a major change of direction and a degree of panic, because that’s just not the way things seem to have been heading.  So… I’m betting on Miz to retain, but unconvincingly.

2.  World Heavyweight Title: Edge v Dolph Ziggler. Over on Smackdown, Edge is the defending champion, having picked up the belt in a four-way match on the December show after the WWE finally conceded that Kane’s run as champion wasn’t quite working.  Edge is generally better as a heel than as a babyface – and he’s been so established as a heel that an undermotivated babyface turn is hard to sell to the crowd – but given the state of the Smackdown roster, they do kind of need him in that role right now.

Ziggler is a midcard wrestler who held the Intercontinental Title (Smackdown’s B-title) for a while, and is now getting his shot in the main event.  This seems to be a case of the company rewarding him for some good matches, on a show where everyone knows the Rumble itself is the real selling point, thus giving them a bit of flexibility to use a weaker challenger.  He’s a good if generic heel wrestler; he’s not so impressive when he’s speaking, a limitation which has rather been exposed in the build to this match.

In an attempt to build some uncertainty, the company is doing the old story where the corrupt authority figure has banned Edge’s finishing move, thus in theory giving Ziggler an advantage.  Realistically, though, nobody expects Ziggler to win, and the only question is how good a performance he puts on.  Technically, this should be another good match.  Anything other than a clean win for Edge (probably followed by his finishing move once the match is safely complete) would be astounding.

3.  Divas Title, handicap match: Natalya v. Lay-Cool (Layla El & Michelle McCool). Layla and Michelle had an extended run as “co-champions” last year, doing their “mean girls” double act.  (Technically, only one of them was the actual champion, but they claimed to be sharing the belt.  Because they’re best friends forever, you see.)  Natalya, one of the better actual wrestlers in the women’s division, won the title from them in November in another handicap match, which rather seemed to have drawn a line under things, particularly since she then moved on to defend the belt against Melina.  But suddenly, Lay-Cool have belatedly remembered their rematch clause and so they’re challenging in a handicap match.  Something tells me that the company has realised it has nowhere much to go with Melina, and may be planning to go back to an act which, as far as I can see, had rather run its course.  It’s also possible that this match will be used as a vehicle to debut Awesome Kong, an indie/TNA wrestler who’s been around for years.  She’s one of the better female wrestlers in America, and she’s certainly a change of pace from the horde of swimsuit models who populate the WWE’s women’s division, so her signing is likely to be good for the division (if not necessarily for her average match quality, given some of the bozos she’ll be working with).

Natalya, Michelle and Layla are decent enough by the standards of the women’s division, but this will be a short breather match to break up the show, so don’t expect much from it.  Ideally Natalya should retain and move forward to a fresh feud, but I’m not holding my breath there.

Chances are there’ll be another impromptu match on the card somewhere.  However, all the other title holders (US champ Daniel Bryan, Intercontinental champ Kofi Kingston and tag team champions Santino Marella & Vladimir Kozlov) have already been announced for the Rumble, so if there’s another title defence, somebody’s pulling double duty.  For a short match, the most likely candidates would be that tag champions, since Marella and Kozlov are an “odd couple” comedy act, and nobody’s sending them into the ring for a lengthy match.  Their most obvious challengers at the moment are Husky Harris and Michael McGillicutty from the Nexus faction, who did actually beat them on TV a couple of weeks ago and therefore have a reasonably sensible claim to a title shot.  If they do that match, expect the Nexus guys to win, to keep the faction’s momentum up.

And with that…

4.  The 2011 Royal Rumble. In an attempt to generate a promotional hook, this year’s match will have 40 entrants rather than the usual 30.  This makes no real difference, since the extra ten will be drawn from the ranks of undercard wrestlers who plainly aren’t going to headline Wrestlemania in a million years.  In practical terms, the impact is to provide the real stars with some more cannon fodder – which, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.

The WWE’s web page currently lists 34 entrants.  That leaves six mystery slots, to be filled by returning stars, nostalgia acts or low-end cannon fodder.  The usual sources are reporting that Kevin Nash and Booker T, both high-profile ex-WWE wrestlers who’ve been in the (distant) number two promotion TNA for a while, have been signed for some sort of deal and are likely to appear.  Triple H, who hasn’t been seen in months, is also supposed to be returning from injury around now, but they haven’t done anything to hype his return.  Wrestlers have made shock returns at the Rumble before, but it only really makes sense if they show up and win.  Which is a definite possibility; Triple H/Miz is as marketable as any other main event they have right now.  If he’s not winning, he won’t be in it – it would be a waste of his return.

So, who do we have?  Let’s start with the cannon fodder – the wrestlers who rarely win on TV, or are mainly confined to the C-show Superstars, and plainly have no chance of winning.  In this category, there’s Chris Masters, Darren Young, David Hart Smith, JTG, Primo Colon, Santino Marella, Vladimir Kozlov, Tyson Kidd, William Regal, Yoshi Tatsu and Zack Ryder.  None of these guys has any chance whatsoever.  (Yes, I know Marella and Kozlov are the tag champions, but in singles matches, they’re jobbers.)

Pretty much the same goes for most of the midcard wrestlers, who get plenty of exposure on Raw and Smackdown, but not in a way that suggests they’re going to be headlining the biggest show of the year any time soon.  This collection of B-level champions and stalled pushes includes Daniel Bryan, Drew McIntyre, Jack Swagger, John Morrison, Kofi Kingston, Mark Henry, R-Truth, Sheamus and Ted Dibiase.  Morrison, Sheamus and McIntyre aren’t utterly inconceivable as winners, but they’d be enormous surprises.  Special mention should go to Alberto Del Rio, a Smackdown midcarder who’s being widely tipped to win (so widely tipped that, knowing the company, they’ll probably spike any such plans just to avoid being predictable).  He’s a rookie but he’s been booked strongly against established main eventers.  Given a thin field of potential challengers, Del Rio/Edge has its attractions as a Wrestlemania match.

Next up, there are the two heel factions – the Nexus on Raw, and the Corre on Smackdown.  The Nexus was originally conceived as a group made up of the rookie wrestlers from Season 1 of the weird and largely botched reality/wrestling hybrid NXT, with the group later being replenished by some of the Season 2 guys.  They’ve been major players on Raw for the last few months, albeit as a group; only Nexus leader Wade Barrett was really treated seriously as a singles wrestler, with Justin Gabriel occasionally allowed a competitive match against main eventers.  More recently, the Nexus has been usurped by CM Punk, back doing his cult leader gimmick.  After getting rid of Barrett, he’s installed himself as the new leader and remade the Nexus as a group who exist to worship CM Punk.  The current members are Husky Harris, Michael McGillicutty, David Otunga and Mason Ryan (who’s making his in-ring debut at the Rumble).  Over on Smackdown, the Corre is a supposedly more democratic heel group comprising the Nexus’ exiled leader Wade Barrett, generic large bloke Ezekiel Jackson, and the two Nexus members who had enough common sense to walk away from CM Punk, namely Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel.

Of these faction members, only Punk and Barrett could win – but both are somewhat plausible winners.  Barrett is unlikely because he’s supposedly being set aside as a possible Wrestlemania opponent for the Undertaker, who may or may not be back from yet another injury by then.  If Punk wins, then presumably Cena wins the Raw title in February and defends it against Punk at the main show.  In theory the Rumble is meant to be every man for himself, but the Nexus members have made clear that their only goal is to defend CM Punk and make sure he wins.  As for the Corre, their group goal is to make sure Punk loses – and beyond that, they claim they’ll be wrestling as individuals.  We’ll see about that.  Regardless, since the Corre and the Nexus collectively account for 11 out of the 40 wrestlers in the match, this storyline is likely to be a big feature of story.  (Bear in mind, also, that both factions are detested by everyone else – including the other heels – so any poor underling who enters way before his cohorts is going to have a tough time of it.)

Finally, there’s the established main eventers.  Aside from Triple H (if he returns), and Punk and Barrett (see above), there’s Big Show, Kane, Rey Mysterio and John Cena.  Realistically, if they go with a safe established choice, it’s going to be Cena.  He’s almost certainly going to be in one of the main events at Wrestlemania – but he’s also so established that for my money it’s a waste of the Royal Rumble to have him win.  Give it to the other challenger, who almost certainly needs the exposure more.

So from all that, who wins?