OK, Night of Champions is all done. Like I said earlier, Night of Champions is largely a placeholder show that switches around a couple of titleholders to justify it's existence, and does a little bit of storyline advancement. They pretty much stuck to that formula. We had two title changes, and some movement on Seth Rollins-Dean Ambrose front. The show was somewhat overshadowed by the Roman Reigns injury news. Reigns had emergency surgery for an incarcerated hernia (whatever that is), and missed the show as a result. His match with Seth Rollins was obviously scrapped, with Rollins getting another forfeit win over one of his Shield brethren. He was promptly jumped by Ambrose, thought to still be out with an injury. With Reigns and Daniel Bryan sidelined, the WWE will be missing both the guy who had risen to be the hottest face (Bryan) and the guy who is supposed to be given the next big chance at the top in Reigns. Whether these absences matter more in the short or long run remain to be seen, but they definitely are hurting right now. As far as what happened on the big show, here we go:
- Brock Lesnar retains the title - This went down mostly like I figured; John Cena had a better accounting this time and looked like he could be on the road to victory when Rollins interfered in the match and caused a disqualification. The aborted cash-in attempt by Rollins on Lesnar was a nice twist; Rollins biggest issue as the Money in the Bank briefcase holder is that he just doesn't look the part of somebody who could take down Lesnar. But catching Lesnar in a rare moment of being down and out and daring to go at him does raise his stature by nothing but association. Lesnar probably won't be back for a while so Cena will have to attend to other business while Rollins tangles with Dean Ambrose some more. The match itself was a good one, though obviously not as shocking as the one at Summerslam. Brock and Cena work well together, probably better than anyone he's had a straight up match with since coming back in 2012.
- New Tag Champs - The Dust Brothers got the win, which was not a big surprise since that's what they were teasing the past few weeks. Another good match to open the show with a good surprise clean finish. Gold and Stardust are a good team so you can have rematches with the Usos for a while until the inevitable split comes. The only question is which way will Cody go when that happens. Does Goldust turn on him for some reason, or vice versa? We'll see.
- New I-C Champ - I'm 50/50 on this. A sustained winning run would be nice for Ziggler but there's no sense in having the Miz job repeatedly after coming back with a revamped character. And anything that keeps Damien Sandow around is good. Ziggler always delivers and Miz working as a heel is far better than anyone seems to give him credit for.
- New Divas Champ - Yawn. AJ got the title back, which is for the best. She's the most charismatic Diva and is also good in the ring. Paige is a good wrestler but doesn't resonate in any other way if she's not playing off of AJ. Nikki Bella did better than I thought she would, for what that's worth. I would really like to see Natalya get a real program to challenge for the title. She's very good in the ring and good enough on the mic to help get the match over. She's more than due at this point.
- The rest of the show - Sheamus, Rusev, and Randy Orton all got the wins I predicted. Orton vs Chris Jericho was paint by numbers but well executed from both guys so no complaints here. I really like the Sheamus-Cesaro US Title match. Both guys beat the hell out of each other but good, and the finish worked for me. The Rusev match........yawn again. It's time to either put a title on him or do something else to convey something other than a foregone conclusion to his programs.
So that's how I saw the show. Good, but not great. A perfect WWE Network big event, but not worth plopping down $50 for pay per view. We get Hell in a Cell next month. Until then...
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