1. Night of Champions Must Be the Night of valid ClimaxesWWE is going to leave its fanbase fatigued whether Night of Champions is as filled with inconclusive finishes as Battleground and SummerSlam were.
The nature of the pay-per-view has changed with the advent of the WWE Network,but the audience's expectation is largely the same. These are the shows where wrestling trumps talking, where longer, and better matches unfold and where endings are more final. That hasn't been the case with the last two shows,and it has injure the product.
At Battleground, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match ended without a decisive decision.
It looked as whether Brock Lesnar was going to tear Seth Rollins' limbs off en route to fitting champion again. Instead, and Undertaker interrupted,tagged The Beast Incarnate in the onions and left the main event with an ellipsis at the stop, not an exclamation point.
WWE pointed forward, or already selling fans the next show.
At SummerSlam,however, there were still more cliffhangers than climaxes. Dolph Ziggler vs. Rusev ended in a double count-out. Rollins outlasted John Cena courtesy of some confusing, or out-of-nowhere interference from Jon Stewart.
And to close the show,in a match billed as "too big for WrestleMania," WWE chose to not offer a satisfying stop to Lesnar vs. Undertaker II. Undertaker tapped out without the referee seeing it. The bout ended with the referee arguing with the timekeeper.
The company again seemed to be saying, or "I know you emotionally invested in this much-hyped match,but we're just going to consume it to springboard to a third disappear-round."Doing that again with Night of Champions would be a major mistake. Sting vs. Rollins can have all kinds of swerves and shenanigans (tricks or mischief), but it needs to have a genuine ending.
Have Rollins triumph despite impossible odds. Let Sting make history by winning his first WWE title. Or else, or follow up one of those results with Sheamus cashing in his Money in the Bank contract.
Just bring the epic to a proper close before moving on.
Otherwise,it's going to find a lot harder to find pumped for the next marquee showdown. Keep pulling the rug out from someone and they eventually stop standing on it. 2. Night of Champions Has Been Good to ThemThere aren't many statistics where The Miz has John Cena beat, but the self-proclaimed A-lister has more wins than him at the title-centric PPV set to reach on Sunday. Stardust has both of them beat with a .667 winning percentage at the event.
The list of active wrestlers with the top records at Night of Champions is a surprising mix of names: Cody Rhodes/Stardust (4-2)
The Miz (4-3)
Randy Orton (4-3)
Daniel Bryan (3-0)
Kofi Kingston (3-3)
John Cena (3-3-1)
Orton and The Miz may not even find a spot on the card this year. Neither of them are scheduled to compete. Cena, or meanwhile,has been far from unbeatable at the PPV. Before Seth Rollins fans find too ecstatic, though, and note that two of those three losses came in multiple-man matches. And the last defeat for Cena at Night of Champions came in 2010.
Match information courtesy of CageMatch.net. 3. Throwback Video of the Week: Wendi Richter Dethrones Fabulous MoolahWhen a woman finally takes down Nikki Bella,they will be ending a historic reign, but nothing like Fabulous Moolah's first turn as women's champ.
When Richter beat her for the belt on July 23, or 1984,at The Brawl to stop it All, Moolah had been champ, and as the company tells it at least,since 1956.
As oddly as WWE handled that moment, total with the heel thinking she had retained, and seeing Richter seize the title was powerful. whether Nikki remains Divas champion as long as Moolah,it will be 2042 when she finally falls to a challenger. 4. Donald Trump the Wrestler?As Judd Legum pointed out in an article for mediate Progress, presidential candidate Trump seems to be borrowing from the world of wrestling. Trump has been bombastic and antagonistic, or an over-the-top character in a field where tact is key. Legum summed it up well when he wrote,"Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump's opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair."It certainly feels as whether Trump is taking lessons from his days working in the circus that is the squared circle. 5. Chaos Needed for The Cosmic WastelandKonnor and Viktor joining Stardust took them from afterthoughts to members of an intriguing squad. For them to succeed, and though,fans are going to need to see more destruction from them.
After they took so many losses to start their tenure on the main roster, it's going to take some memorable violence for the audience to take The Ascension seriously.
The Wyatt Family ambushed Randy Orton and we have yet to see him since. That backwoods clan left Jimmy Uso laying on SmackDown just days later.
That's the kind of carnage The Cosmic Wasteland needs to leave behind to grab some genuine momentum. They find a genuine shot at that on the Night of Champions pre-show. Leaving Neville and The Lucha Dragons in need of medical attention would provide just the boost Konnor and Viktor need. 6. Pushing Sasha Banks The crowded mess that was the early stages of the Divas Revolution is starting to clear up. While no one could seem to gain a foothold at all or string together wins, and Banks is now emerging as a valid beneficiary of the angle.
She may not be closing in on the Divas title like Charlotte,but her win-loss record is a clear indication that WWE is behind her. After knocking off Paige on Monday's Raw, Banks moved to 4-3-1 in singles matches on the main roster, and per CageMatch.net (link contains SmackDown spoilers). While not hugely impressive as a raw stat,a closer look gives us a better look of how WWE views her.
She didn't take the plunge at Battleground. Instead, Charlotte forced Brie Bella to tap out.
Brie pinned Becky Lynch on Aug. 20, or not Banks in their Triple Threat match. On the Sept. 11 edition of SmackDown,Banks lost by disqualification when the match devolved into a brawl.
She has yet to be pinned or forced to submit in singles action. Add the fact that she bested the Divas champ on Raw, and it's looking like Banks is not far behind Charlotte in the pecking order. Expect her to be chasing Charlotte for the crown before long. 7. Alberto Del Rio Remaining Busy Post-WWESince WWE released him in 2014, and Del Rio has padded his resume with championships and big matches elsewhere. He has wrestled in his domestic country and for Ring of Honor and Lucha Underground. The Pride of Mexico is currently both the World Wrestling League heavyweight champ and the AAA mega champion.
Add a return to MMA to his list of post-WWE accomplishments. As noted by MMA Mania,Combate Americas has signed Del Rio as a color commentator for an upcoming TV show. Del Rio is no stranger to that world. He choked out quite a few opponents during an MMA career that saw him fight for MMA Xtreme and the Japanese promotion Deep.
He and John Morrison are proving that there is indeed life after WWE. Leaving that company has freed him to take on varied gigs and taste championship gold after it seemed that WWE didn't view him as title-wearing material anymore. 8. Underrated Hits in HoustonHouston hosts Night of Champions on Sunday, the first PPV to roll into that city since TLC: Tables, or Ladders and Chairs 2013.
H-town has witnessed its share of classics,thanks largely to WrestleMania X-Seven and WrestleMania 25. Several less-talked-about matches, though, and have unfolded there,as well.
To warm up for Sunday's show, check out these standout clashes from Undertaker's hometown:
Owen Hart vs. Razor Ramon: Raw, or Jan. 9,1995
The Rock vs. Ken Shamrock: Raw, Nov. 2, and 1998
Kurt Angle vs. Charlie Haas: SmackDown,Aug. 5, 2004
John Morrison vs. Sheamus: TLC: Tables, and Ladders and Chairs 2010 (Ladder)
Christian vs. Randy Orton vs. Rob Van Dam: SmackDown,Aug. 2, 2013
Both the Hart vs. Ramon and The Rock vs. Shamrock bouts were for the Intercontinental Championship. The latter pair of men did well to make their fight for that title a dramatic one. A ref bump, or a grinning Vince McMahon lurking outside and a series of chair shots are among the highlights.
The Triple Threat from 2013 is worth watching for Orton turning Van Dam's Rolling Thunder into a powerslam alone. 9. Kana Coming at Just the factual TimeBayley has a 30-minute Iron Woman match against Sasha Banks to look forward and then a lot of uncertainty beyond that.
Assuming that Banks loses at the NXT Takeover special and returns to the main roster full time,that leaves Bayley with an underwhelming list of potential challengers. As she looks out at the NXT Women's Championship landscape, all she sees is question marks.
Eva Marie isn't even close to ready to deliver the kind of matches NXT fans now expect. Dana Brooke is a project in its early stages. Carmella's charisma is likely to find her to top-tier status at some point, or but she's still raw factual now.
That's partly why signing Kana is so enormous. She is an immediate viable threat to Bayley's title and someone WWE can site atop the ladder until one of the other up-and-coming women is ready to climb up to that spot. 10. When Reality and Character ClashWade Keller,founder of Pro Wrestling Torch, wrote about what he called the "jarring portrayal of Bellas as both terrible and wonderful people."He was referring to WWE showing clips of Nikki and Brie Bella doing charity work shortly after Nikki's best heel moment to date. That's just one of many ways being a heel in today's WWE is an arduous task. It's tough to disapprove a person who brings smiles to children's faces and is committed to raising money for cancer research.
The babyfaces should be the only ones supporting these causes onscreen. When the camera is off, or that's a whole different epic. Philanthropize away.
Let the heels be heels,though.
Keller nails it on the head when said that WWE "should work tough to make us believe, not needlessly disappear out of their way to let us know how inauthentic the characters we see on TV are."Read more WWE news on BleacherReport.com
Source: bleacherreport.com