Night of Champions 2013 begins with a bit of table-setting as the WWE's COO, Triple H, comes out and announces that tonight's WWE Championship match between Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan will be held with no interference. I've never seen this show before but I'm guessing that, yes, in fact, there will be some sort of bullshit interference. Before Triple H leaves, Paul Heyman and Curtis Axel show up. Heyman begs to be taken out of tonight's handicap match against CM Punk, but Triple H refuses, noting that Heyman doesn't even need to tag in, that he can let Curtis Axel do all the work...if he trusts Curtis Axel can take care of CM Punk. Heyman doesn't look so sure but accepts that answer only for Axel to jump in and bring up how he, on the first night he became a "Paul Heyman Guy," actually beat Triple H (by countout, I believe). Taking umbrage with that fact, Triple H announces that Curtis Axel will now defend his Intercontinental Championship against the first guy he comes across backstage...
And that guy is Kofi Kingston! These two get plenty of time to put on a good match and it is a good enough opener...but after the initial pop for Kofi, the match definitely loses the crowd's interest. At this point, Kofi was a wrestler on a hamster wheel, incapable of moving up the card, not "new and exciting" or a truly beloved wrestler. Axel, meanwhile, was a solid worker and showed moments of character but strikes me as a guy who came through the business at the wrong time for the wrong company. Because this match had no build, the audience doesn't get behind Kofi much even on the nearfalls. When Axel finally does hit his finisher to get the win, it only gets a mild reaction. This is one of those things where putting Axel with Heyman actually ended up doing more damage to his character than it helped. Yes, he got to have a good manager (arguably the best of the past 20 years), but he was also booked as a guy who didn't really pose a threat to anyone and had to go close to 15 minutes just to defeat Kofi Kingston, who was, at the time, considered a lifetime midcarder. So, is Axel actually a credible, talented 3rd Generation star or is just a tomato can that Heyman uses to stave off his own enemies? (2/5)
A forgettable Fatal Fourway Followed - AJ Lee defending the Divas Championship against Brie Bella, Naomi, and Natalya. This was not good and the commentators made no attempt to make it seem good. At one point, Naomi laid on top of Brie Bella for upwards of 8 seconds, both women's shoulders on the mat, and the referee didn't even bother to make a count - which was noted repeatedly by Cole. This led to a Natalya "double Sharpshooter" that AJ Lee broke up to get the win in well under 5 minutes. This was the kind of match that makes you feel sorry for the women involved because there's no way they didn't know how much it sucked but went out and did their job anyway. (0/5)
The World Heavyweight Champion, Alberto Del Rio, defended his title against Rob Van Dam next. One would imagine that RVD would've been mega over considering he was wrestling in front of something like a hometown crowd, but he gets much bigger responses in places like Phillie and NYC than he did here. Kinda odd. Speaking of muted reactions, I'll continue to point to Del Rio as a guy that the WWE pushed into a spot that he just wasn't ready for as he doesn't come across as a main event heel here. They had plenty of time to deliver a good match and they obviously worked hard, but this match just never really hooked me or even the live crowd. The post-match action got a much bigger reaction than any of the nearfalls as I believe everyone and their mother knew that Del Rio wasn't dropping the belt. (2.5/5)
The Miz vs. Fandango is next and this match just dies an almost immediate death. The crowd is into Fandango's entrance music a little bit, but beyond that, it is crickets and the occasional chant for tables. I think this match could've won the crowd over if they had bothered to involve Summer Rae, who was the most over performer in the match it seemed. The Miz had zero support as a babyface and the figure four was an awful finisher for him. Why didn't he just keep the Skull Crushing Finale? A match that is worse than the sum of its parts. (0.5/5)
One of the more anticipated bouts of the evening - CM Punk vs. Curtis Axel and Paul Heyman in a No Disqualification Handicap Elimination match - follows. The crowd so clearly wants this to be a legendary ass-kicking but they can't get out of their own way, chanting "Boring" and "We Want Tables" to the point that both Punk and Axel look a bit thrown and perturbed. The match isn't actually boring, but it is undeniably hamstrung by having to be "PG" and Punk not being allowed to actually deliver the ass-kicking that he has promised. In hindsight, the pay-off should've been all about something that Punk could deliver, like promising to choke out Heyman or promising to embarrass him in some way, but by practically guaranteeing bloodshed, there was simply no way this was going to work. Plus, of all the guys who should be getting two spotlight matches a night, Curtis Axel is a weird choice and the crowd treats his minutes as perfunctory, clearly just eager to see him get taken out so that Punk can get Heyman alone. Punk wants to give these fans a story built around kendo sticks and a chair in the corner and Heyman being a coward, but this crowd just wants table destruction and blood and nothing else...and when they don't get it, they audibly complain. Eventually, Punk does Heyman alone and does beat down on him a bit but before he can deliver the coup de grace - a kendo stick to the face - Ryback shows up and spears him through a table (to a huge "Goldberg" chant). Again, you almost feel bad for Punk and Heyman and even Ryback here as this was intended to be a major angle but the crowd basically just mocked it. Then again, the WWE sorta walked into this as Ryback had been de-fanged over the prior 3 months, famously losing to Mark Henry at WrestleMania 29 for no apparent reason and then turning heel just to get squashed by John Cena at successive PPVs in the spring. A disappointment that is only salvaged by the performance of Punk and Heyman, who carry it into average range but no higher. (2.5/5)
Dolph Ziggler challenged Dean Ambrose for Ambrose's United States Championship next. This is another match that doesn't benefit at all from 8 years of hindsight. The crowd doesn't really get behind Ziggler all that much and Ambrose is milquetoast, not yet giving off even a fraction of the charisma and character he would in the ensuing years. At the time, there were rumors that Ziggler was basically being punished for getting cheered against Del Rio, who the company inexplicably believed could get over as a babyface. Whether that was true or not, Ziggler was now a babyface but had lost his feud with Del Rio, which cooled him considerably. Ambrose and The Shield, meanwhile, were dominating the midcard but weren't necessarily doing much more than that - and, in fact, wouldn't really be featured in a major way until after WrestleMania XXX. And so, this match just kinda happens. Ambrose gets the clean win, which does give him some credibility, but it still seems like a lost opportunity to actually tell a story and get Ambrose and the Shield more over as heels. A perfectly fine match, but nothing worth revisiting and the crowd is mostly indifferent. (2.5/5)
One might be surprised, but in front of this crowd, The Prime Time Players were one of the most over acts on this card. They challenged Ambrose's Shield buddies - Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns - for the WWE Tag Team Championships next. I'm not sure if the crowd was just eager for a tag team match or hopeful that the Players might somehow score the victory (again, at this point, The Shield had been cycled down the card a bit) and they would see a title change, but they're solidly behind Titus and Darren Young. Unfortunately, the match underwhelms and Rollins and Reigns don't show much of the star power or attention-grabbing charisma that would make them top-of-the-card talent just a little under 2 years later. In fact, the announcers mostly praise Titus O'Neill and, honestly, its not hard to see why. The guy had tremendous size, natural charisma, and was a great hot tag. Anyway, another so-so match, but nothing special. (2.5/5)
Main event time - Daniel Bryan challenging Randy Orton for the WWE Championship and the right to call himself "The Face of the WWE." I'm not going to waste too much time delving into the back story between these two, but its worth noting that - up till this point - one could argue that the WWE had done a good job of developing Bryan's role as the chasing babyface and Orton's role as The Corporate Champion. Unfortunately, instead of giving Bryan a series of obstacles to overcome on successive PPVs, they jumped right to a rematch with Orton - which made sense because of "rematch clause" bullshit or whatever, but also meant that the WWE was now stuck in the corner of having to devise a way to not bury their hottest babyface in at least a decade but also not necessarily end the storyline prematurely. In that sense, the match suffers a bit from the audience expecting something screwy all along (this is likely why Triple H made the announcement he did at the start of the show - to ensure the fans that they would, in fact, get a title match and not an overbooked schmoz). Would this have been better with a million run-ins? With Big Show making his way down the aisle and leaving fans wondering what role he would play? Or if Cody Rhodes, who had been fired, made a shocking appearance to screw over his former mentor? We get a Bryan/Orton match and because Bryan is so over and so good and Orton is so easy to loathe, the crowd is more engaged for it than anything on the show - even the Punk/Heyman beatdown - but it wouldn't even rank in the top 30 Daniel Bryan matches in the WWE or probably the top 100 of his career. Its just not a riveting, exciting match. Orton works slowly and methodically, but not interestingly. And then we get to the finish - a fast count by the referee Scott Armstrong straight out of the WCW/nWo playbook only this time its the referee helping the babyfaces. The intention was to give the crowd a feel-good win, but its unearned and while the live crowd is very enthusiastic for his victory, on re-watch, the commentary team not noting it and Bryan celebrating so righteously despite the obvious fast count is not a good look. (3/5)
With a Kwang Score of 1.94-out-of-5, Night of Champions 2013 is hard to recommend. No match lives up to its expectations, none outperform them, and some of them just have no place on a pay-per-view that, in 2013, would've cost you $40+ to purchase. Hell, even for $9.99 this show would've been a major disappointment and the crowd's general disinterest isn't undeserved. There's also a wee bit of false advertising too - from the relative nonexistence of real brutality in the CM Punk match/post-match to Triple H's guarantee of no shenanigans in the main event (only for there to *shocker* be shenanigans) to just the inherent promise of good, quality matches involving RVD, Del Rio, Ambrose, and Ziggler. I'm not sure if there was a stomach bug going around or the pacing of the show itself is too blame but even these otherwise typically solid performers seem "off" on this show, unable to muster the charisma and character to sell these mostly meaningless, inconsequential contests. There are shows with lower scores all over this blog, but are there any that feature the same number of really talented performers?
FINAL RATING - DUDleyville
No comments:
Post a Comment