It’s been a while since the WWE put on a pay-per-view that seemed like quite such an afterthought. But a number of injuries to top names have derailed the build for this show, and the whole thing has rather been overtaken by a storyline that, in theory at least, doesn’t feature on the show at all.

Fatal 4-Way continues the WWE’s big idea of giving each show its own gimmick.  But there’s a limit to how many gimmick matches you can do.  We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, with a show notionally built around 4-way matches.  (The “fatal” bit is, presumably, because the WWE rules make these matches sudden death – first pinfall or submission wins the title, regardless of who gets pinned.  Also, it’s alliterative.)

Four-way matches have never been renowned as a major draw, so it’s fair to assume that this is the gimmick that scraped onto the bottom of the list when they were drawing up the 2010 schedule.  They should be on firmer ground in July with Money in the Bank, a gimmick which promises (a) a chaotic ladder match, and (b) a major storyline event.  Tonight?  Not so much.

A show based on four-way title defences requires eight main eventers.  It’s unfortunate, then, that Randy Orton chose this month to hurt his shoulder.  The Undertaker suffered a serious injury to his orbital bone while wrestling Rey Mysterio.  Both were supposed to be wrestling tonight.  Orton is apparently going to be there – I suppose the thinking is that they can bury him in the crowd and work around him necessary.  Undertaker is just plain out of action, which has prompted a ludicrous storyline on Smackdown where he’s supposedly been found comatose, and his brother Kane is looking for the man responsible.  (Kane not being the sharpest tool in the box, this mainly involves growling accusations at people and then stomping off to sulk.)

At the same time, and quite unrelated to any match on the show, we have the NXT storyline.  I haven’t talked much about NXT, the WWE’s C-show, because it doesn’t generate pay-per-view matches.  But they’re now building a major story around the NXT wrestlers, and the backstage goings-on are simply bizarre on any view.  So…

The WWE’s C-show used to be ECW.  Unofficially, ECW was being used as a starting place for wrestlers from the company’s developmental promotion, Florida Championship Wrestling.  But since that wasn’t officially the concept, ECW was just a third WWE show with much weaker star power.

The solution, supposedly, was NXT.  ECW was shut down, and the wrestlers reassigned to Raw and Smackdown.  NXT, rushed onto the air without being properly thought out, was conceived as a sort of reality show, where eight “rookies” from the developmental territory would be mentored by eight established wrestlers.  Then, through some vaguely defined mechanism, they’d be whittled down to one wrestler who win a spot on the main roster.  And then they’d start all over again.

There are all manner of problems with this concept.  Firstly, to do it properly would require an outright faux reality-show, which the WWE has neither the writing time nor the acting talent to produce.  In effect it’s ended up as a weird little tournament which is real to the characters, but not to the viewers.

Secondly, for this to work, you can’t just give all of the NXT wrestlers spots on the main roster at the end of their run.  Some of them have to go.  That means you have to include some wrestlers as cannon fodder.  But if they’re that bad, why are you putting them on TV in the first place?

Thirdly, it means that all eight new wrestlers get immediately pigeonholed as ineffectual rookies.  Which makes it very hard to then promote them to the main roster as credible wrestlers.

And on top of all this, the writing was abysmal.  The workhorse of the first NXT group was supposed to be Bryan Danielson, an indie wrestler who’s been around for years and is generally regarded as a major talent who simply doesn’t look like a WWE wrestler.  In a fit of sheer stupidity, the company decided to rename him “Daniel Bryan” (thus allowing them to own the rights to the name), while simultaneously playing up his background as a legendary indie wrestler.  And then they gave him a losing streak gimmick.  The mind boggles.  Bryan was eventually written out of the show when his character more or less resigned.

The eventual winner was Wade Barrett, an English wrestler.  He’s got potential.  He’s not bad as a wrestler, he carries himself like a star, and he can talk.  The big storyline is that Barrett has now shown up on Raw leading the seven other NXT wrestlers as an invading heel faction, who think they’ve been mistreated by the company, and who are trying to force their way onto the main roster.  The starting point for this was an admittedly remarkable angle where the group stormed the ring during the main event of Raw, beat up (or drove away) everyone at ringside, and for ten commentary-free minutes proceeded to demolish the ring and the set and annihilate WWE champion John Cena.  This was generally considered a huge success.

A week later, the company announced that they had fired Daniel Bryan, ostensibly for using a tie to choke the ring announcer Justin Roberts during the invasion.  This has provoked general confusion.  The NXT attack certainly did seem to violate the WWE’s PG rating, and might well have alarmed some of their sponsors.  And the WWE does apparently have a “no choking with foreign objects” policy, introduced after the Chris Benoit incident – though whether anybody bothered to tell the NXT rookies about it is unclear.  On the other hand, the timing of the firing sounds suspiciously like a storyline, and at worst it would seem like a suspension offence.  Then again, if it is meant to be a storyline, it makes no sense – because in storyline terms, Bryan had been eliminated from NXT and didn’t have a contract to be fired from.  As it stands, the most likely explanation is that Bryan has been fired as a scapegoat to appease a sponsor, and that he’ll be quietly hired back when the fuss dies down. In the meantime, viewers have been told that he was kicked out of the NXT group for showing remorse after their attack.

This leaves the company in the awkward position of running a major angle with a stable composed entirely of rookies, having lost the use of the best and most experienced wrestler of the bunch.  Some of the NXT guys were presumably intended to be cannon fodder in the first place.  This leaves a huge burden on Wade Barrett, the only one who really has a star aura about him.  Of the rest, Justin Gabriel is a good wrestler, but can’t talk to save his life.  Heath Slater’s a promising all-rounder.  And the rest… well, they’re fine to make up the numbers in gang attacks, but you don’t really want the likes of Michael Tarver or David Otunga wrestling proper matches on Raw.  At best, they’re still too inexperienced.

The NXT guys are still trying to bully their way onto the main roster and presumably there will be something about their storyline on tonight’s show.  But nobody knows what.

In the meantime, here’s the matches they actually announced… none of which is really setting the world on fire.

1.  WWE Championship: John Cena v. Randy Orton v. Edge v. Sheamus. Raw’s version of the world title.  Orton’s injury has overshadowed the rather weak build for this match.  Broadly speaking, Edge and Orton are supposed to be feuding with one another, and that’ll probably continue.  That aside, it’s basically an exercise in rounding up the Raw main eventers (other than Chris Jericho – they’re worried that he’s not going to renew his contract when it comes up in the autumn, and they’re moving him down the card for now).  It’ll probably be fine, and I’d guess that Cena probably retains, if only because there’s no point doing a title change which will be overshadowed by a major storyline on Raw.

Another possibility is that the NXT guys do indeed force their way onto the roster in the course of the show, and that Wade Barrett claims his title shot by replacing Orton.  If that happens, he really has to win.  Putting the title on Barrett is a huge risk, and I’d be surprised, but it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility.  Conceivably the NXT guys could just run in and beat up everyone for a non-finish, but that seems a bit weak for pay-per-view.

2.  World Heavyweight Title: Jack Swagger v. CM Punk v. The Big Show v. Rey Mysterio. Swagger is still the defending champion here.  Mysterio has been hauled back from a long-promised holiday to replace the injured Undertaker.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a title change here.  Mysterio’s a possibility, but his own health is dubious and it would have to be a short run if he’s ever going to get that holiday of his.  Big Show, as a giant, would be a dodgy choice of babyface champion.  But there’s a strong case to be made for CM Punk, who’s clearly a stronger heel character than Swagger right now, and whose Straight Edge Society faction would be at home on the top of the card.  Four-ways are, if nothing else, a good opportunity to move a title from one heel to another (heel/heel matches rarely work).

I can’t imagine this being a classic, but between them these four ought to have a reasonably entertaining match.

3.  WWE Intercontinental Title: Kofi Kingston v. Drew McIntyre. Smackdown’s secondary title – and the saga of Drew McIntyre continues.  McIntyre has been doing the dreaded “chosen one” gimmick for months, where the idea is that the ever-unreliable WWE higher-ups continue to push him whatever happens.  The problem is that he’s never really got the reaction his push deserves.  In fairness, the WWE has a track record of giving up on storylines too quickly when they don’t immediately catch on.  So in a sense it’s a refreshing change to see them stick with something for far too long instead.  Even so, they now seem to be looking for a way out of this, and McIntyre has started to rack up the losses.  He dropped the IC title to Kofi Kingston a few weeks back, and I suspect this rematch is mainly there to draw a line under the story.  McIntyre’s solid enough, but his matches tend to be rather banal – he’s fallen into the “slow and methodical” style of heel wrestling, which can work, but only with the right character.  In theory, pairing him with a relative high-flyer like Kingston should be the way to go, but I’m not holding my breath.

4.  US Title: The Miz v. R-Truth. Raw’s secondary title has been bouncing around like a ping-pong ball lately.  This might be something to do with the last-minute rewriting of the NXT angle.  Mike Mizanin was Daniel Bryan’s storyline mentor, and they’d been feuding.  Somewhere along the line, Miz lost his United States title to midcard babyface R-Truth – the mechanics involve an aborted storyline with Bret Hart, but that doesn’t matter.  Perhaps the idea was to free up the Miz to continue his feud with Bryan, without the US Title having to be on the line.  (The feud certainly didn’t need it.)  Then they spent a couple of weeks telling us that the other wrestlers figured R-Truth for a weak champion who’d be easy pickings, at the same time as giving him clean wins over the likes of Chris Jericho.  And then, out of nowhere, they switched the title back to Miz on Raw on Monday night.  Cue automatic rematch.

I have no idea what’s going on here, but it looks like they’ve changed their minds and are trying to get the title back on Miz.  Now, I’d say Miz is doing well enough right now that it’s time to elevate him to the main event as a challenger for the likes of John Cena… but then again, if they’re going with the NXT gang in that slot, maybe he’s better off resuming his extended run with the secondary title.  Either way, I’d expect Miz to retain here – there’s no sense in flip-flopping the title even more.  The match should be okay.

5.  WWE Divas Title: Eve Torres v. Gail Kim v. Maryse v. Alicia Fox. Raw’s version of the women’s title.  Eve is the recently crowned babyface champion, and they seem to be trying to push her as a semi-serious wrestler, so I’d expect her to retain here.  Of these four, only Gail Kim is a particularly good wrestler, and even she’s patchy, so I wouldn’t expect wonders.

Worth buying? Well, this one’s airing on Sky Sports 2 in the UK, so the question doesn’t arise for me.  Only five matches announced means they’ll either be running a ton of angles or last-minute filler matches, neither of which is particularly encouraging.  The matches generally look solid but not brilliant, and as for the stories, the only real selling point is the hope of something or other involving the NXT angle.  It feels very much like a show that the company have already quietly written off.  One for the completists, I’d say.