The actual content of the last few WWE shows has been overshadowed by the rather more pressing question of how the WWE Network is doing.  For those joining us late, or who are simply blog readers who don’t follow this wrestling stuff between monthly posts, let’s recap.

Since the 1990s the basic model of major wrestling promotions in the US has been monthly PPV promoted by weekly TV shows.  The WWE Network attempts to break that model, offering the same “PPV” shows on a Netflix-style streaming service, along with a substantial on-demand back catalogue and some genuinely desirable new material such as NXT, at a monthly price that vastly undercuts the PPV providers.  This makes the WWE an early adopter, in terms of being a reasonably substantial content provider trying to cut out the distributors entirely and sell directly to audiences.  Hence, the performance of the Network is – or ought to be – of interest beyond the wrestling bubble.

But Network prices are so much lower than PPV that in order to break even on the exercise, you have to get vastly more subscribers than you had in terms of PPV buyers.  (Yes, they’re saving on the cable companies’ cut – but it’s not quite that simple, because of the cut charged by digital intermediaries like Apple TV, and the costs that they’re now incurring on maintaining a streaming service.)

Now, if you cut the price, demand should rise.  This is elementary.  But – and this is also elementary – it doesn’t follow that the increase will be large enough to make up the difference.  The WWE is currently learning this the hard way, having apparently vastly overestimated the number of subscribers they were going to get.  Certainly the projections they gave to the markets have proved horrendously over-optimistic.

The official line is that everything is fine now because they’ve done a raft of cost-cutting and fired a bunch of people, so that now the break-even point is much, much lower.  Another way of putting this is that they’re losing so much money on the exercise that they’ve had to do a round of drastic cuts.  Even more terrifying is the fact that a substantial number of customers – we’re talking over 10% here – actually cancelled within the minimum subscription period of six months.  There are ways to do this – which essentially involve not paying and getting cut off – but the fact that so many people were willing to do this indicates that many Network subscribers are either unusually keen to find ways out of their contracts, or simply alarmingly short of money.

In short, the Network is – right now – a massive failure, but having set new expectations about the value of the product, and having alienated the PPV providers, the company can’t go back.  The international roll-out is in progress, and will reach the UK in October – though with the WWE having only just signed a new multi-year deal with Sky at an increased price, one wonders what the service  will actually contain.

For my money, there are two big errors in the WWE’s assumptions.  One is that, psychologically, a six-month subscription is not the same thing as a one-off purchase, and people simply don’t compare the prices in the way that pure logic would suggest that they should.  A six month commitment feels bigger even though it isn’t.  Offering a monthly subscription at a slightly higher price – which they’ve just started doing – may solve that problem.

The other is that Raw and Smackdown alone already account for five hours of free television on wrestling per week – and very few people have both the time and the inclination to watch all of that.  So the WWE is asking people to pay for a product that they’re already not watching for free.  (And this feeds back to the first point – why would you subscribe for a whole channel of WWE when you’re well aware that you don’t even watch all the material available for free?)  The answer to this point has to lie in making the monthly shows particularly attractive, whether that be through particularly compelling matches, or through particularly compelling storylines.  It’s difficult to see what other answer there can be.

Summerslam does not particularly tick those boxes, being largely a set of rematches from last month’s show, which in turn was widely regarded as underachieving.  But while in theory this is one of the big shows of the year, in practice next month is more important, because that’s when the people who signed up for Wrestlemania will come due for renewal.

1.  WWE World Heavyweight Title: John Cena © v Brock Lesnar.  Brock Lesnar is on a part-time contract which only allows for a certain number of dates per year – hence him being largely absent from regular television and appearing principally on PPV.  Broadly, the story here is that Lesnar is the latest opponent being thrown at Cena by the Authority in an attempt to get the title off him, but that’s largely secondary to trying to position this as a straightforward big match between major stars.

These two last fought at Extreme Rules 2012 when, inconveniently, Cena won.  In fact, because he’s not part of the core roster, Lesnar loses an awful lot; the company seemed for a long while to see his role as primarily to put over new talent who would be of greater importance in the long run.  Um, and John Cena.

In theory this is all quite sensible.  In practice… I don’t really care about Brock Lesnar.  I never really have, since his return.  Interestingly, his appearances on PPV (pre-Network) apparently made a difference to US buys, but not so much internationally.  It may well be that Lesnar’s continued aura in the US is tied to his successful stint in the UFC, which Americans care about rather more than international audiences.

Regardless… Lesnar beat the Undertaker at Wrestlemania, ending his winning streak.  And that pretty much demands that he has to go on to a major role.  Plus, they need a big match for next month’s show, in which case they’ll probably want him in the main event again.  And it’s not as if John Cena is dependent on the title for his position; if anything, his periodic reigns as champion serve mainly to re-establish the importance of the title, which is generally rather secondary to the importance of John Cena.  So all this points towards Lesnar winning the title to enjoy a short reign.  The match should be perfectly fine.

2.  Brie Bella v Stephanie McMahon.  Yes, really.  A women’s match in the semi-main event slot, and not even one for the title.  This stems from the company having to extricate itself from a storyline originally set up after Daniel Bryan was injured.  The idea was that Bryan, who had only just become champion after a lengthy chase, would resist the (evil) company’s attempts to strip him of the title.  Part of that involved his wife Brie getting herself fired rather than see Bryan stripped of the title.

Unfortunately, Bryan then turned out to be rather more seriously injured than had been allowed for, so that he wasn’t able to come back any time soon after all.  Oops.  That left Brie under contract but in limbo, leading to a storyline in which Stephanie McMahon (as one of the principal evil owner figures right now) continues to vindictively persecute Brie’s sister Nikki, building to the old “I’ll drop the charges if you give me the match” schtick to result in Brie versus Stephanie.

This is at least the pay off for a major storyline, and it makes a pleasant change for the women to actually have a major storyline.  But in terms of the actual match quality, who knows?  Stephanie did wrestle occasionally in the Attitude Era, and she was the women’s champion for much of 2000 – but the angle there was that she had stolen the title, hardly ever defended it, and her few title defences were abortive screwjobs.  I remember her having a good match with Trish Stratus at No Way Out in 2001… but that’s over a decade ago.  Common sense says there’s going to have to be a heck of a lot of smoke and mirrors on this one, and Brie presumably has to win.

3.  Roman Reigns v Randy Orton.  These two were part of the four-way title match last month.  Reigns didn’t win, but he’s plainly being groomed for stardom, so by all appearances this is him being paired off with a strong heel (and a more experienced one who can usually be relied on for good matches) to give him a major win on a big show.  From Reigns’ standpoint, he’s working his way up the ranks on his way to another title match.  For Orton, he’s grudgingly acting as a hired gun so he can get another shot at the title himself.  Fairly straightforward stuff.  Reigns almost certainly has to win.

4.  Lumberjack match: Dean Ambrose v Seth Rollins.  A rematch of a match advertised for last month which didn’t actually happen – they did a backstage brawl leading to Ambrose being thrown out of the building, followed by two further brawl segments later in the show.  This is, of course, false advertising – though the WWE could reasonably argue that nobody would have been able to make that complaint if they had simply started the match and done a quick DQ, and that what they did was still more satisfying than that.  Nonetheless, it’s a remarkably dimwitted approach for a company that really needs to convince people about the desirability of their shows.

In theory this builds anticipation for the rematch (assuming you trust that it’ll take place).  In practice… they’ve made it a lumberjack match, which involves surrounding the ring with other wrestlers, ostensibly to ensure that nobody leaves.  Lumberjack matches are almost invariably worse than regular matches because in order to make use of the gimmick you have to do tons of outside brawling with the lumberjacks, while at the same time the actual match has to be confined strictly to the ring.  Congratulations, WWE – you’ve managed to take a match I actually was looking forward to last month, and turned it into one I have no interest in any more.

Ambrose probably needs the win more, but it could go either way without making a huge difference to the long run.

5.  WWE Divas Title: AJ Lee © v Paige.  Rematch from last month, when it was a bit of a mess.  Paige is being turned heel, which certainly seems like a more fruitful role for her, and closer to what worked for her in developmental.  The angle here is a bit confused, largely because the writing and acting aren’t really up to conveying the concept. The idea seems to be that Paige is in denial about her own heel turn, insists on acting as if AJ was her best friend in the world, and has occasional bouts of heel behaviour which she completely downplays afterwards.  To pull this off, you really need a more successful babyface character (or a more emphatically rejected babyface character) than Paige has ever had as a main roster wrestler.  So it isn’t working.  At any rate, I assume AJ wins again, since it doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense to trade the belt back to Paige so quickly.

6. Flag match: Rusev v Jack Swagger.  Another rematch from last month, where they idiotically decided to name check the Ukraine in Lana’s opening promo, and then deny that that was what they were referring to at all.  (What she actually said was something along the lines of “recent current events”, but come on.)  It was an okay match last month, where the formerly villainous patriot Swagger made more headway against the evil Russian Rusev than anyone else has, before losing anyway by count-out.  So now we’re doing it as a flag match.  Exactly what that means hasn’t been clearly explained, probably because nobody’s defined it yet.  It usually means either “loser waves the winner’s flag”, or “win by capturing your opponent’s flag”.  The latter seems more likely here, since that allows Swagger to win without pinning Rusev, thus setting up a rubber match in September without having to pin Rusev.  But it’s not a gimmick that desperately interests me.

7.  Chris Jericho v Bray Wyatt.  And another rematch.  It wasn’t very good last month – in fact, the crowd was pretty much dead for it.  So I have no great interest in seeing it again.  Logically, I suppose it’s probably going to be better this time, since both are good wrestlers and on paper it ought to work.  But we’ve seen it, and it didn’t.  Jericho won last time, so Wyatt presumably wins here to set up the rubber.

8.  WWE Intercontinental Title: The Miz © v Dolph Ziggler.  Miz is back for another run, this time doing the “thinks he’s a Hollywood star and doesn’t like getting hit in the face” schtick.  This is fine as a mid card act.  He’s only just won the IC title, so presumably he’s being given Ziggler – seemingly forever in the company doghouse – as a semi-credible opponent.  The match is actually likely to be quite good, since both will want to prove that they deserve to be higher up the card.

Worth getting?  Meh.  Depends on how keen you are on Brock Lesnar, really.  The rest is pretty underwhelming and a lot of it we already saw last month.