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.

Actually, this might not be so coincidental.  There is something of a gap at the top of the card right now.  Shawn Michaels has gone into retirement.  Undertaker is working such a limited schedule that he might as well be semi-retired.  Batista is strongly rumoured to be leaving when his contract expires.  And Triple H is off filming a movie.  So there’s a gap out there.  The situation is particularly chronic on Smackdown, which has a real dearth of established headline talent.  Obviously, this is good news for the wrestlers slightly below that level, who have every reason to think that promotion awaits.

1.  WWE Championship, “I Quit” match: John Cena v. Batista. A rematch from Wrestlemania, this is being billed as the last match of the feud.  By all accounts, that’s partly because Batista is leaving, if not now then very soon, to try and get into acting.

Batista won the title from John Cena in what was more or less an ambush “match” at the Elimination Chamber show in February, but lost it straight back at the obligatory rematch a month later.  Logically, you might think they’d do the “loser leaves town” stipulation, but for whatever reason, we’re getting the “I Quit” match – which is basically a match that continues until somebody quits.  Logically you could win one of these things by submission, but in practice wrestlers generally seem to prefer beating their opponent into surrender.

Inconveniently for the WWE – and a sure sign that they’re slipping back into making things up as they go along – Batista already submitted to Cena at the end of their Wrestlemania match.  Something tells me he’ll be doing it again on Sunday.  These two work pretty well together, and Batista’s an effective heel, so I expect they’ll have a solid match.  Cena is practically guaranteed to win, barring the remote possibility that Batista belatedly decides to stick with the company and they opt to make him a long-term heel champion defending against rising-star babyfaces.  From a booking standpoint, this wouldn’t be such a bad idea, but Batista’s 41, and if he really does want a significant career after wrestling, it’s time to move on.

2.  World Heavyweight Title: Jack Swagger v. The Big Show. Now this is a new pairing, if nothing else.  Jack Swagger – real name Jake Hager – was the surprise winner of this year’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match at Wrestlemania, earning the usual right to challenge for one of the world titles whenever he wanted.  Being a typical heel, he chose to ambush Smackdown’s champion Chris Jericho, and thus immediately catapulted himself from the lower midcard to the main event.  Before this, Swagger had been ignored by the writers on Raw for months, surfacing occasionally to feud with comedy act Santino Marella.

And so the Smackdown writers have had to embark on some desperate rehabilitation for the character.  As usual with newly-elevated champions, there’s an evident reluctance to make him truly dominant, but he has defended the title successfully against Jericho, Edge and Randy Orton.  They’re also playing up his amateur background with a new schtick, reminiscent of early Kurt Angle, where he lectures the crowd about his many, many accomplishments at Kaufmanesque length.  It’s actually getting a decent reaction live.

The Big Show, the company’s primary giant, was moved over to Smackdown in the recent draft and immediately turned babyface for no terribly clear reason.  The story here is good old fashioned stuff: will Swagger’s amateur wrestling work on his huge opponent?  The inexperienced heel champion is implicitly the underdog here.

In reality, I expect him to retain.  His new act seems to be working.  His matches are generally solid.  Dreadful stage name notwithstanding, there’s a realistic prospect of elevating this guy to the main event, and to solidify that status, he really needs the win here.  Giants make for problematic babyface champions, and there are better ways to use the Big Show – who’s well enough established that he doesn’t really need the title.

As for whether it’ll be a good match… well, that’s a tougher one.  Lumbering giants don’t really play to Swagger’s strengths as a wrestler, so the question is whether they can lay out a match that tells a strong story.  It could be decent, it could be dreary.  I suspect it’s more likely to be the former, but I can’t be confident.

3.  WWE Intercontinental Title: Drew McIntyre v. Kofi Kingston. The IC title is Smackdown’s secondary title, for midcarders.  Frankly, given the brand’s dearth of main eventers, you can question whether they really need two titles right now, but so it goes.

Drew McIntyre is doing the “chosen one” gimmick.  The idea is that the WWE’s ever-unreliable management have seized on him as the future of the company, and keep protecting him against the consequences of his actions.  He’s been around for months now, and frankly, he’s getting a rather anaemic reaction given the amount of airtime he has.  The company’s response has been to try and turn that to their advantage with the high-risk strategy of shoving him down our throats.  It’s kind of working – in that at least he now has a storyline of sorts.  Even so, there’s a more fundamental problem – McIntyre looks good, and talks well, but wrestles rather blandly.  He’s got something, but I’m not sure he’s there yet.

This match is the result of a choppy, stop-start storyline from the last couple of episodes of Smackdown, which saw the show’s beleaguered middle-manager Teddy Long fire McIntyre, strip him of the title, and award it to Kofi Kingston as the winner of a tournament – only for McIntyre to show up with a letter from the boss demanding his reinstatement and the return of his title belt.  So, Drew is the champion again, and Kofi has been awarded a title shot by way of consolation.

This looks suspiciously like an aborted storyline, so my guess would be that McIntyre retains the title by heel cheating.  He’s been feuding with Matt Hardy of late – presently on the shelf with a storyline injury – and that story has never really been resolved.  Come to think of it, a possible finish is for Matt to cost Drew the match, thus allowing them to continue their feud while Kofi goes off to defend against other bad guys.  But if they’re going to put the title on Kofi, I think there’s a need for more build-up than this – and besides, Drew’s whole gimmick right now is that he uses political pull to “win” matches that he actually lost.

I don’t have high hopes for the match quality.  It won’t be awful – both guys are too solid for that – but there’s a definite risk of it being dreary.

4.  Rey Mysterio v. CM Punk. This is their third consecutive pay-per-view match.  At Wrestlemania, Mysterio promised that if he lost, he’d join Punk’s cultish Straight Edge Society.  He won.  At the next show, Punk promised to have his head shaved if he lost.  He won.  This is the rubber match, and both stipulations are in effect, so one of them is bound to happen this time.

My feeling is that there’s more mileage in this story, and therefore it’s too early for an outright win by Mysterio.  That means he ought to lose and become a reluctant member of the SES – which, to be honest, could be perfectly entertaining.  The Straight Edge Society have a pretty good act at the moment, with Punk as the cult leader, Luke Gallows and Serena as his henchmen, and a mysterious masked guy running in to help out from time to time.  (The usual sources say it’s Joey Mercury, although of course there’s nothing to stop the company swapping somebody else into the role before he gets unmasked.)  I like a nice faction, as long as they don’t get out of hand, and Punk is excellent in the leader role.

Their previous matches have been strong, and as long as they’re given time – which they should be, since it’s a major storyline event whatever the outcome – this should be a good one.

5.  Randy Orton v. Edge. Orton recently turned babyface after many years as a heel; Edge, his former tag team partner, recently turned heel after returning from injury and spending a few obligatory months as a babyface.  Edge is better in the heel role.  Orton… well, Orton is not a natural babyface.  He had a clearly defined character as a heel – a psychopath, but a clearly defined one – and he’s still finding his feet in his new role.  Orton has presence, but he’s not the sort of guy who’s comfortable playing to the crowd.

Broadly speaking, they seem to be trying to make him into a Steve Austin-style lone-wolf antihero.  That’s fine in theory.  In practice it means that you need strong heels for him to kick against.  Edge might well be the sort of character who would work as an Orton opponent.  They’re certainly both very good wrestlers, even if Orton is cast against type in this match, and so I’d expect it to be good.

Who wins?  That’s a tricky one.  Orton lost to Swagger last month, a wrestler further down the card – so he could use the win.  But Edge has only recently turned heel, and could use the win too.  And there ought to be more than one match in these two, which would normally point to a heel win leading to a rematch.  My instinct would be for Edge to win with a ton of cheating, giving Orton a reason to chase after him for revenge.  But there are a lot of ways this could go and still make sense – usually a good thing.

6.  WWE Tag Team Titles: The Hart Dynasty v. Chris Jericho & The Miz. You’ll recall the unique significance of the tag titles: the champions get to appear on both Raw and Smackdown.  And that means the champions ought to be wrestlers who would be a useful presence on both shows.

The current champions are the Hart Dynasty – Tyson Kidd and David Hart Smith – who are both connected with the legendary Hart family of Canadian wrestlers.  Smith is the son of the British Bulldog, who married into the Harts; Kidd was one of their last trainees.  Kidd’s very good, Smith’s a bit bland for my tastes.  But they now have the actual, genuine Bret Hart hanging around in their corner, to give them a bit of star power.

The Hart Dynasty were floating around the card as a minor heel tag team for months until Bret Hart returned to face Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania, prompting them to switch sides and join up with Bret.  Then they went after Miz and the Big Show for the tag team titles, picking them up a couple of weeks ago.  Big Show then promptly turned babyface and decamped for Smackdown.

So, the latest challengers for the tag titles are Miz and Chris Jericho – both of whom were previously co-champions with the Big Show.  Their stated objective here is to get the tag titles so that they can go to Smackdown and take revenge on the Big Show.  Which at least makes sense, though it makes the Harts a bit peripheral.  On top of this, Bret Hart – who effectively can’t wrestle any more due to chronic injuries – inexplicably won the United States Title from Miz on Monday.  Heaven only knows where that’s going.

My guess would be that the titles are changing hands, leading to Jericho/Miz versus Big Show/??? on Smackdown, if only because Smackdown really needs their star power.  Again, on paper this ought to be a solid match.

7.  WWE Divas Title: Eve v. Maryse. Raw’s version of the women’s title.  Eve is the current babyface champion, and they’re trying to push her as some sort of martial artist.  Hmm.  As for Maryse, well, she’s got undeniably heel charisma, but there’s a strong argument that she’d be better off as a manager than a wrestler.  This will be short and, technically, it won’t be very good.  Since they’re trying to push Eve as a new star in the women’s division, she really has to retain.

8.  Ted DiBiase v. R-Truth. From the midcard of Raw comes this card-filler.  DiBiase was one of Randy Orton’s flunkies in the second-generation heel group Legacy.  He is, obviously, the son of 1980s wrestler Ted DiBiase, the Million Dollar Man.  With Legacy defunct, DiBiase is being repositioned with his father’s gimmick – which essentially involved being incredibly rich and obnoxious, abusing the poor, and bribing his way to fame and fortune.

Plainly the risk here is that DiBiase comes off as a second rate version of his father, and I’m not convinced that he has the charisma to make the gimmick his own.  But we are where we are.  The original Million Dollar Man had a bodyguard, Virgil, and DiBiase has been trying to recruit one of his own – inexplicably starting by trying to pay off midcard babyface R-Truth, who does a rapper gimmick.  Needless to say, that one didn’t work out very well.  So this is R-Truth versus DiBiase, who will have the actual, original Virgil in his corner.  (We saw Virgil on Monday.  Time hasn’t been kind to him.)

This is an undercard match which is unlikely to get much time, but it’ll probably be fine.  DiBiase is being pushed with a new gimmick, so I expect him to win.

Worth getting? It’s quite a strong card, actually.  The women’s match won’t be much, and the IC title match could be tedious if they give it too much time, but otherwise it’s quite a promising selection.