Night of Champions Review

Night of Champions was last night and as I previewed it I figured I should go all the way and also give my opinion on the PPV itself!  If you haven’t figured it out, this will contain spoilers, so don’t read on unless you’ve seen it or don’t care and if you don’t care I presume you don’t like wrestling so probably shouldn’t read it anyway.

Gold and Stardust pin The Usos to win the Tag Team Titles

These two teams are always great fun to watch and this match was no different.  I may not like the character change for Stardust, but he can still go in the ring and it felt like they were making an effort to go out and steal the show.  The title change makes sense, the Usos have held the belts for a long time and if the Rhodes brothers failed to win them here everything they’d done recently would have been a bit pointless.  It will be interesting to see where they go next, particularly with the rumoured call up to the main roster for the heel team The Ascension.  Do they hold off on that?  Or have them come in and work their way up to a tag title shot?

Sheamus pins Cesaro to retain the US Title

Wow, these two just beat the crap out of each other.  You knew going into it that this match was going to be hard hitting, but these two gave it their all.  They are often not given the credit for just how good they are when it comes to actually wrestling and they looked like they were trying to make that point at the start of the match.  However, that didn’t stop them also throwing everything they have at each other.  The finishing sequence was particularly entertaining and in one match they managed to make the US title seem more important than anything WWE has done for it recently.

As a non American the backstage bit with Big Show and Mark Henry did little for me.  I know Americans like the whole patriotic thing, but to a Brit it is just a bit embarrassing.

Miz pins Ziggler to win the IC title

It shows how far the IC title has fallen that it’s now the match where they pull out random celebrity commentators who obviously have very little to contribute to proceedings.  I love Ziggler, but he is being wasted right now.  Even more annoying is that if you ignore all the outside pissing about, Ziggler and Miz actually had quite a fun, fast paced match, but the commentators were more interested in talking about pretty much anything else.  The fact we had a near fall and then the cameras were back focused on the announce table rather than the action, is just a bit embarrassing.  Hopefully Miz winning means Ziggler is set for something else, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Seth Rollins defeats Roman Reigns by forfeit

Does anyone in WWE do beat downs better than Dean Ambrose?  If that man had been in ECW back in the day, you imagine he would have been world champion.  In WWE, I wouldn’t put it past him to pull it off anyway.  The guy is just good and the crowd’s reaction to this suggests they are on board with him as well.  I think staying away from an actual match is a good thing at this time.  The longer they can keep Ambrose and Rollins apart, the bigger it will be when they collide again and as we saw with their lumberjack match they could very well put on a classic in a Hell in a Cell.

Rusev defeats Mark Henry by submission

This was a slow cumbersome match, which wasn’t a surprise, but in my opinion it went a bit too long.  The crowd seemed to lose a lot of enthusiasm as it went on and neither of these men are exciting enough to truly get them up on their feet.  I’m kind of surprised they put Rusev over clean considering how much they built up the whole America thing at the start, but I’m sure Super Cena shall see us right eventually.

Randy Orton pins Chris Jericho

It’s no surprise that this was a very good match, however it is also one I feel like we have seen a million times and therefore it’s hard to get too enthused by it.  Even Orton hitting the RKO on someone coming off the top rope feels stale these days.  I’m surprised we didn’t get more of an injury angle for Jericho as to the best of my knowledge this is his last booked date, maybe that will come tonight on Raw.  All in all a solid match, with the expected outcome, but I hope Jericho’s next return is better than this one.

I liked the pre-match promo featuring Paige, that girl could be a great heel if you left all the weird sexual tension crap at the door.

AJ Lee beats Paige and Nikki Bella by submission

I’m surprised they moved the title to AJ.  It feels like they can’t decide whether to give it to AJ or Paige so are just having the two of them trade it between themselves for a while.  The match was alright, it had too much of the weird Paige, AJ stuff but, was clever enough to have Brie spend most of her time outside the ring.  To give her, her due, that bump she took at the end looked nasty.  Paige and AJ are both good at what they do, but I wish they could hit restart on this feud and have it be a feud about two talented wrestlers competing over being the best.  That’s a feud I want to see.

The statistics for the the main event were really cool.  Wrestling doesn’t do that kind of thing a lot and I’d like to see more of it, gives things a big fight feel.

John Cena beat Brock Lesnar by DQ

Lesnar having to sell Cena’s weak ass STF makes me kind of sad.  I said I wanted Lesnar to win this match in under a minute, I didn’t expect that to happen, but I also did not expect Cena to get this kind of offense.  I don’t know if this will damage Lesnar in the long run, I think not, Lesnar still walked out and Cena didn’t, plus Lesnar has Heyman, but I really wish they’d just let him win the old fashioned way.  I assume it means we continue this feud inside Hell in a Cell which in all honesty I’m okay with.  These two work in a way that fits being inside the Cell and the match would actually feel worthy of a HIAC, which so few of them do now a days.

Overall

Overall this was a strong PPV, but felt a bit like filler.  Which is really depressing because three titles changed hands.  It really served to show just how weak the undercard titles are at this time and I think that is something WWE needs to take notice of.  Cena not winning the belt is 100% the right decision and there weren’t any matches where I was totally shocked by the outcome.  The only one that really surprised me was AJ winning the Divas title.  All in all this was a PPV that made up for a poor build by being strong in the ring, which is becoming a theme in WWE.  They have a fantastic roster but they need to start using it right.