If\u00a0the television is anything to go by, the WWE’s prime motivation in naming one of its\u00a0minor annual shows “Payback” was to\u00a0let people do promos claiming that Payback will be a bitch. \u00a0With this card,\u00a0that may be closer to the truth than usual. \u00a0Payback 2014 looks like a dog.<\/p>\n
This is basically a water-treading exercise while we wait for the rather more important “Money in the Bank” show next month. \u00a0The card is a mixture of rematches and\u00a0blatant filler – many of which ought to be fine as matches, but don’t seem particularly inspiring in any wider sense. \u00a0Consequently, this preview is not going to take long. \u00a0You might want to just look at the live show post immediately below.<\/p>\n
The big story in the WWE at the moment is actually the collapse of the company’s share price following the\u00a0combined effect of disappointing subscriber numbers for the WWE Network streaming service and\u00a0a disappointing result in the renegotiation of their US TV deal for the next few years. \u00a0It should be noted here that “disappointing” means “disappointing\u00a0to Wall Street”, where\u00a0many analysts bought in to the company’s own projections (and one suspects many more didn’t but figured\u00a0it was a smart move to buy while the price was rising and sell at the peak, which indeed it was). \u00a0It was not particularly disappointing to those who actually follow wrestling, where the projections were always recognised as being wildly optimistic.<\/p>\n
This is not to say that the company itself didn’t believe them; in fact, much of their business strategy only seems to make sense if they had\u00a0convinced themselves that the Network was indeed a goldmine (despite\u00a0needing to convert pretty much every\u00a0Wrestlemania<\/em> buyer into a subscriber and then some,\u00a0just in order to cancel out the lost PPV revenue); and that their TV deal this time round would be comparable to\u00a0Nascar’s (even though it never has before, largely because wrestling viewers are, rightly or wrongly, considered unattractive by\u00a0advertisers – and yes, that’s even in comparison to Nascar).<\/p>\n The fact that so many professional analysts\u00a0bought into an analysis that always seemed a bit dodgy to wrestling journalists\u00a0might be viewed as evidence of how much understanding the average stock analyst really has of the industries they claim to advise on. \u00a0It might, alternatively, be seen as evidence of how reasonable the WWE’s thinking was, even if it turned out to be wrong with hindsight.<\/p>\n But the company now has at least a short term problem. \u00a0They have tanked their pay-per-view business by undercutting it with a bargain priced product; but they need to attract way more\u00a0subscribers to that product in order to\u00a0equal the revenue they had before. \u00a0They may well get there in the end, but it seems unlikely that they will have any good news to give the markets any time soon.<\/p>\n A further problem for this show is that the world champion Daniel Bryan is currently out of action, recuperating from minor neck surgery. \u00a0He will be on this show for a non-wrestling segment in which he will be asked (again) to surrender the title,\u00a0something that he will no doubt refuse (again) to do. \u00a0The company has written itself into a corner here, since after an insanely protracted chase to have Bryan win the title, they don’t\u00a0really want to strip him of the title if it’s realistic (as it apparently is) to expect him back within a few weeks. \u00a0But since that chase involved authority figures repeatedly obstructing him and overturning his wins on dubious grounds, it’s very hard to explain why they aren’t simply stripping him of the title now that they actually have a legitimate excuse to do so.<\/p>\n Even if Bryan was on this show, though, he would have been defending in a rematch against Kane, whom he already beat last month. \u00a0This would not have been a match anyone would have been going out of their way to see.<\/p>\n All of the above is more interesting than anything that can be said about the matches that are actually taking place, which, combined with the time available to me to actually write this post, explain the brevity of what follows.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0No Holds Barred Elimination Match: The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns) v Evolution (Triple H, Randy Orton &\u00a0Batista).<\/strong>\u00a0 A rematch from last month, with the stipulation added. \u00a0Since the Shield already won last time, there’s significantly less heat this time around, and this looks to be simply a holding pattern match. \u00a0Batista is about to take a leave of absence to promote\u00a0Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em>, so\u00a0it’s unlikely that Evolution will be winning here, as that would logically lead to a further rematch. \u00a0So the options are that the Shield simply win again (in which case it’ll probably be done so as to push Reigns as the big star who overcomes the odds), or they do the break-up angle where Ambrose and Rollins turn on him (which would make some sense, as\u00a0it’s clearly been in the works for a while, and the Shield have no other obvious opponents lined up). \u00a0The match should be fine but we’ve seen it before.<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0Last Man Standing Match: John Cena v Bray Wyatt.<\/strong>\u00a0 A rematch from the last\u00a0two<\/em> shows,\u00a0hampered by the fact that the writing of this feud has been little short of diabolical. \u00a0Cena has already beaten Wyatt twice, yet the writing continues to portray Wyatt as having the psychological upper hand. \u00a0So what is supposed to be at stake in this match? \u00a0Having established\u00a0firmly that beating Wyatt doesn’t seem to change anything, why is anyone meant to care? \u00a0This feud has droned on too long already, and the match last month was poorly received; at this stage I would just have Wyatt beat the guy to bring the results into line with the story, and then\u00a0use the Money in the Bank match to ease both guys into new stories for next month.<\/p>\n 3. \u00a0WWE Intercontinental Title: Bad News\u00a0Barrett\u00a0\u00a9 v Rob Van Dam.<\/strong>\u00a0 The parade of filler begins. \u00a0Barrett only just won the title and is getting a push, so he obviously isn’t losing to\u00a0Rob Van Dam, a guy who was in the main event a decade ago but is now doing\u00a0a sort of comeback tour as a mid carder. \u00a0This is a perfectly sensible match, feeding Barrett a credible opponent, and it might well be fine, but\u00a0there’s not much to it beyond that, and the outcome can’t seriously be in much doubt.<\/p>\n 4. \u00a0WWE United States\u00a0Title: Sheamus\u00a0\u00a9 v Cesaro.<\/strong> \u00a0This is perhaps a little more interesting. \u00a0Sheamus won the US Title\u00a0at the start of May in a battle royal which was supposed to be a deliberately unfair way of getting the title off Dean Ambrose. \u00a0This was apparently intended to double as a heel turn for Sheamus, but that seems to have gone on hold following\u00a0Bryan’s injury. \u00a0Besides, they already did a rematch with Ambrose on Smackdown, which Sheamus won clean, thus purging\u00a0the supposed unfairness of his title win.<\/p>\n The abandonment of the planned heel turn seems to leave Sheamus as a\u00a0likely candidate for a transitional champion,\u00a0and Cesaro – who plainly\u00a0is<\/em> getting pushed as a\u00a0singles act – ought in theory to be a\u00a0better choice to hold the belt. \u00a0That’s subject to the possibility that they want to get him into their depleted main event picture, in which case they might decide that giving him a mid card title is a bad idea. \u00a0(A big part of the company’s problem is that they’ve devalued the mid card titles to such an extent\u00a0that they are no longer remotely effective at building future main eventers. \u00a0Fixing this ought to be a priority.)<\/p>\n This could be a decent enough match, and\u00a0my guess is that Cesaro wins in order that\u00a0something<\/em> can happen on the show.<\/p>\n 5. \u00a0WWE Divas Title: Paige\u00a0\u00a9 v Alicia Fox.<\/strong> \u00a0Fox is getting a renewed push with the gimmick of throwing a big tantrum whenever she loses. \u00a0Of course, this requires her to lose most of her matches, which makes her positioning as number one contender at bit weird. \u00a0I assume she loses here; it favours her gimmick anyway, and taking the title off Paige so quickly would be\u00a0wildly ill-advised. \u00a0It’ll be short.<\/p>\n 6. \u00a0Alexander Rusev v Big E.<\/strong> \u00a0Rusev\u00a0is still working his way through the familiar\u00a0starting pattern for new monster heels: destroying people and\u00a0starting to come up against\u00a0stronger opposition. \u00a0Big E is notionally his biggest test to date, but since\u00a0the company is plainly going cold on him, I assume Rusev is winning, though possibly with a bit more competition than usual. \u00a0 They really need to start giving Rusev more experience\u00a0in competitive matches to prepare him for moving onto the next phase of his character, but the place to do that is house shows, not television.<\/p>\n 7. \u00a0Pre-show match – Mask versus Hair:\u00a0El Torito v Hornswoggle.<\/strong> \u00a0A rematch of the midget comedy\u00a0feud from last month, of which the less said the better. \u00a0Reportedly the actual\u00a0match<\/em> last month was pretty good, but who wants to sit through yet more midget jokes? \u00a0It’s very telling that the WWE still doesn’t seem to grasp\u00a0the connection between this sort of nonsense and the perception that their viewers aren’t worth advertising to.<\/p>\n Worth getting?<\/strong> \u00a0Not really. \u00a0There are several matches here which could be good in theory, but\u00a0you can see plenty of good matches for free on Raw and Smackdown. \u00a0There’s no wider context here to change the position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If\u00a0the television is anything to go by, the WWE’s prime motivation in naming one of its\u00a0minor annual shows “Payback” was to\u00a0let people do promos claiming that Payback will be a bitch. \u00a0With this card,\u00a0that may be closer to the truth than usual. \u00a0Payback 2014 looks like a dog. This is basically a water-treading exercise while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2561,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}