This is what you might call a post dictated by the blog format. \u00a0I’ve not been closely following the build-up to this show (as you might imagine,\u00a0there have been other things to occupy my attention over the last couple of weeks), nor do I have the faintest\u00a0intention of watching it (since Chikara’s King of Trios shows are this weekend, and as Night 1 is already on VOD, I\u00a0know that my wrestling-viewing hours for the week ahead are pretty much accounted for).<\/p>\n
But let’s run down the card anyway. \u00a0Night of Champions<\/em>\u00a0notionally has the gimmick of every title being defended, which isn’t much of a gimmick, really –\u00a0plenty of WWE shows have all the titles being defended. \u00a0Still, it’s something to say. \u00a0Of more interest this year is the fact\u00a0that the WWE’s “WWE Network” streaming service launched around six months ago, so that the first batch of subscribers will be coming up for renewal around now. \u00a0In theory, that makes this an unusually important show, because it has to persuade people to re-sign.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0WWE World Heavyweight Title: Brock Lesnar\u00a0\u00a9 v John Cena.<\/strong> \u00a0There was a time when it was unthinkable to put the WWE Title on a part-timer, but\u00a0the Rock set a precedent last year. \u00a0So here we have Brock Lesnar as champion, who wrestles only on PPV (or Network special, if you’re American), and who never appears on the regular TV except in pre-taped segments. \u00a0There is a case to be made that this makes the title more special. \u00a0The champion is no longer just one of the regular cast, but somebody who descends periodically from heaven to take on the challenger.<\/p>\n Lesnar won the title\u00a0last month in a match which was\u00a0reportedly among the most one-sided beatings ever seen in a main event; a protracted annihilation of John Cena from start to finish. \u00a0But the company has rather balked at the implications of following through with that line, and instead started rebuilding Cena back to his\u00a0normal character rather more quickly than would have been wise. \u00a0Presumably we get a more competitive match this time, but for all that, it would make zero sense to go through all of that just for Cena to win the title straight back the next month. \u00a0My guess is that Lesnar wins here, less emphatically but still decisively.<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0Roman Reigns v Seth Rollins.<\/strong> \u00a0Reigns is obviously being groomed by the company as the Next Big Thing, coming out of the break-up of the Shield. \u00a0They might be jumping the gun there, but it’s too early to tell; people said much the same thing when Reigns was brought up from developmental in the first place, and he did\u00a0just fine as a member of the Shield. \u00a0Seth Rollins was the Shield member who turned heel and broke up the group,\u00a0and so this is the inevitable\u00a0match where Reigns tries to get his revenge. \u00a0The third Shield member, Dean Ambrose, is currently\u00a0out injured at Rollins’ hands. \u00a0Which is to say, he’s actually filming a movie, but ssshhh…<\/p>\n (Rollins also currently holds the Money in the Bank title shot, which allows him to challenge for the World Heavyweight Title whenever he wants – but I can’t see him cashing in on fellow heel Brock Lesnar, so that’s kind of in abeyance for now.)<\/p>\n Again,\u00a0it doesn’t make sense for Reigns to lose given\u00a0his direction, and Rollins has been kept fairly strong by having him emphatically win his feud against\u00a0Ambrose. \u00a0So a Reigns win seems likely, unless they go with a DQ to drag things out a bit. \u00a0On paper this seems like a good match, but for some unfathomable reason they already wrestled on Raw on Monday, and the reports on that one were a bit muted.<\/p>\n 3. \u00a0Chris Jericho v Randy Orton.<\/strong> \u00a0A product of\u00a0matching up random\u00a0stars who\u00a0had nothing else to do, basically. \u00a0Jericho is semi-retired and on a short term contract, while Orton is coming off a\u00a0loss to Roman Reigns last month, so common sense says that we’re just filling the days on Jericho’s calendar, and Orton gets the win in order to rebuild him. \u00a0Again,\u00a0though, it’s a very good match on paper – but Jericho’s current run has under delivered somewhat.<\/p>\n 4. \u00a0WWE Intercontinental Title: Dolph Ziggler\u00a0\u00a9 v The Miz.<\/strong> \u00a0At least they’re doing\u00a0something<\/em> with Dolph Ziggler at last, but the WWE’s secondary singles title is still some way down the pecking order for both these guys. \u00a0It’s not that long since Miz was headlining Wrestlemania. \u00a0Admittedly that was the year when the real draw was a guest appearance by the Rock, but still. \u00a0It wouldn’t be him in that slot now.<\/p>\n Miz’s gimmick these days is that he’s unfathomably convinced that he’s a major Hollywood star (this being something of a joke at the expense of the WWE’s own, relentlessly unsuccessful movies division), and this feud has largely been used for low-quality comedy skits. \u00a0There was a time when the WWE was actually quite good at comedy, but that time has long since passed, and it is rare indeed for the WWE to attempt comedy without making the sensible viewer reach frantically for the fast-forward button.<\/p>\n It’s an okay match on paper, but given the history of the feud, I don’t expect much from it. \u00a0A Miz win wouldn’t shock me, to be honest; I still get the sense he’s a higher priority than Ziggler.<\/p>\n 5. \u00a0WWE Tag Team Titles: Jey Uso & Jimmy Uso\u00a0\u00a9 v Goldust & Stardust.<\/strong> \u00a0Stardust is a repackaged Cody Rhodes, now a sort of Goldust II. \u00a0The two brothers now share Goldust’s lunatic gimmick, and ramble about “the cosmic key”,\u00a0by which they apparently mean the tag titles. \u00a0They turned heel in the build-up to this match. \u00a0And even the WWE’s own preview page – which can normally be relied upon to fill like a trooper – struggles to find much more to say about the match than that. \u00a0Still, again, it’s a good match on paper. \u00a0The Usos have had the titles since March, so it\u00a0could well be time for a change.<\/p>\n 6. \u00a0Mark Henry v Rusev.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0The evil Russian (well, Bulgarian, but shhh) continues to work his way through ever stiffer competition. \u00a0Henry is theoretically the\u00a0toughest opponent to date –\u00a0his gimmick is that he’s the world’s strongest man, after all – but in practice he’s still a mid carder. \u00a0So my guess would be a more competitive match than usual for Rusev, but still ultimately a win. \u00a0I struggle to imagine this being any good – both of these guys\u00a0can have solid matches with the right opponent, but this seems an unpropitious match.<\/p>\n 7. \u00a0WWE United States Title: Sheamus\u00a0\u00a9\u00a0v Cesaro.<\/strong>\u00a0 Another largely generic build – and again, the fact that\u00a0so little is being done to build\u00a0effective stories for the secondary titles ought to be\u00a0much more of a concern for the company than it apparently is. \u00a0Sheamus\u00a0has had the title since May – did you notice? – and already beat Cesaro back in June. \u00a0So far as I can see, there hasn’t even been a televised defence of the title since early July. \u00a0Cesaro probably needs the title more, given that there’s evidently no intention of moving him to the main event any time soon; and\u00a0once again, on paper at least, it ought to be a good\u00a0in-ring match.<\/p>\n 8. \u00a0WWE Divas Title: Paige\u00a0\u00a9 v Nikki Bella v AJ Lee.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0With eight matches on the card, I’d normally guess that this wouldn’t get much time, but the\u00a0Bella Twins’ angle has been given a hopelessly disproportionate amount of time of late, presumably because it ties in with what they’re doing over on the\u00a0Total Divas<\/em> reality show. \u00a0(Also, they had to do something big to get Brie Bella back into circulation once it became apparent that\u00a0her husband Daniel Bryan wasn’t making his triumphant return any time soon.)<\/p>\n Nikki is effectively aligned with the heel Authority, hence being\u00a0plonked into this match between Paige and AJ, who have been engaged in a feud of their own for ages. \u00a0That rather odd story largely revolves around them\u00a0making increasingly incredible claims to be one another’s friend. \u00a0At any rate,\u00a0my guess is that\u00a0this match ends up being all about Nikki, and she doesn’t win thanks to something\u00a0Brie does. \u00a0That advances her story and leaves Paige and AJ free to go back to their own story next month. \u00a0AJ beating Paige\u00a0in the confusion is a possibility, since that would set up a rematch.<\/p>\n Worth getting?<\/strong> \u00a0It’s a strong card purely in terms of the likely match quality, and a barely existent one in terms of the storylines going in. \u00a0It’s not making a compelling case\u00a0for my time, but if I had the WWE Network I’d watch it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is what you might call a post dictated by the blog format. \u00a0I’ve not been closely following the build-up to this show (as you might imagine,\u00a0there have been other things to occupy my attention over the last couple of weeks), nor do I have the faintest\u00a0intention of watching it (since Chikara’s King of Trios […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}