WWE Night Of Champions 2013... A Look Back

For anyone who cares, I had already discussed this on the DTM-Cast program last year. So this is essentially a posting of the notes/script that was used in that show. If I have similar postings for the other PPV events, I'll be sure to post them soon enough.

Now the one thing I did kinda sorta mention I was gonna do was talk about the PPV. I took down some notes while watching the show (primarily during the sketches which I did not pay attention to) and then went back and added a couple notes. So the tense in which the following is told alternates bewtween past and present, so it might be baffling on a grammatical or phonetic level, but should be clear enough for you to get the point.

Show opens with a Triple H promo... dude, it's eight o'clock. I don't need to go to sleep yet... fuckin' hell. And then we have Paul Heyman show up with Curtis Joe McGuillAxel... Paul Heyman tried his best, but could not kill the stench of a boring Triple H promo... I've literally had to mute the TV and edit a video or two just to stay awake. The video in question, by the way, is a recut of an old review I did a couple years ago for a game called Legend of Kunoichi for PSP. It's the same review, but I swapped the camcorder stuff for proper in-game footage. I figure, why not?

Curtis Axel says some words and we get an IC title match between Axel (champion) and Kofi Kingston. Match was fine. Kofi does his usual stuff. Axel does his usual stuff. Axel retains the title. Fun little opener... not much to say in that regard. I thought the match was fine. No real complaints or anything.

Next up, AJ Lee defending the Divas title against three other women whose names escape. They don't matter because AJ retains...

Alberto Del Rio defending the World Title against RVD... match was alright. Can't complain all that much. I always had that nagging feeling that they were going to take the obvious route and have Rodriguez screw RVD out of the match or just turn on him somewhere along the way, but that didn't happen. Instead, RVD won via DQ when RVD was in the ropes, ADR wouldn't let go of the armbar and he was DQ'ed for his efforts... still keeps the title, though. Smart move, smart ending. Makes sense; guys a heel, he's the champ, can only lose the title via pinfall or submission. So what if he's DQed? He still keeps the title through chickenshit means. And RVD doesn't look like a chump. In fact, he gets the last laugh in with Van Terminator. Not a bad match, actually. Slow at points, but not bad.

Miz versus Fandango... jesus, you're shitting me, right? Fucking hell, what title are these losers competiting for? Piss Break championship> Yeah, I just ignore and do other things until I turn back and see Fandango tap out to Miz's figure four leglock... This is what I find stupid; how many times has Flair beat anybody with that move? Not a whole lot and now all of a sudden, Miz is beating people left and right with it and it just looks bad. It looks a figure four that my cousins would slap on each other for fuck sake. Actually, no, my cousin could pull off a better figure four than Miz... don't try this at home, huh? You might do a better job of it than our so-called professionals.

CM Punk beats Curtis Axel... then Ryback shows up and beats on CM Punk... I guess Ryback's a Paul Heyman guy... wow, maybe he should have been an Eric Bischoff guy instead. He's already got the chants going for him... as far as the match goes, it was a decent hardcore bout... Punk looks like he's been cut badly on his back... but other than that, 

Dean Ambrose defeats Dolph Ziggler to retain the U.S. title. Wasn't really paying attention because I was distracted playing Lords of Shadow. Had trouble with the Ice Titan but getting there.

Rollins and Reigns defeat the Prime Time players to retain the tag titles... still playing Lords of Shadow at this point. Even watching the recording, it was a meh match that I blanked out on. Funny, because the Shield are a talented group of wrestlers... but I guess it's because I knew that the title wasn't changing hands that I just didn't care. Fortunately, I finished my round of Lords of Shadow just in time to watch the main event.

Daniel Bryan defeats Randy Orton with a Knee To The Face to win the WWE Title for a second time. This was a fun match. Nice clean match between two guys. That last three-count felt a bit quick and I knew they were going to exploit the next night on RAW... where the title was eventually vacated and all the goodwill of that feelgood moment was eventually killed off. I mean, if they stuck with the title win instead of going for a Dusty Finish kind of thing, it would have been a good end to what was otherwise a mediocre show. But as it is... it's just a good match that meant nothing the next day. The show overall was mediocre at best... I liked a couple matches, don't get me wrong, but on a whole... it was a throwaway show that cost too much... especially with the reversal the next night.

On a whole though, despite the lackluster PPV, I'm actually enjoying the current storyline that's going on. Even though it's mainly centering around the conflict between Daniel bryan Danielson and Randy Orton as HHH's hand-picked champion, there's also a fair share of supporting characters that are given a rub and things to do, it gives the Shield a direction and purpose after a couple months of just being there and holding all the secondary titles outside of the IC title, and on top of that, it's actually fun to watch now that we've gotten past the first couple weeks... Could this story get any better? sure it can, but then again it can get much worse... who knows? I'm actually looking forward to what comes next and I haven't felt that way about a wrestling storyline since the Summer of Punk two years ago. Should be interesting...