WWE Night of Champions: Best story that came out of it

Daniel Bryan

If all the RAW and SmackDown episodes were a build up for Night of Champions, all the matches in the pay per view were a build up to the night’s main event.

No championships changed hands. The night also saw Alex Riley in his lengthiest appearance on WWE television, and that too on a pay per view, in a long, long while.

This was also a night where the commentators apparently forgot that Natalya had applied the double sharpshooter in her WWE career before. The Sting reference was followed by further elation when he won the poll for the “Greatest United States Champion”. And Hulk Hogan won the poll for “Greatest WWE Champion”. Okay, moving on.

The main event may have shocked many as according to WWE formula, whoever’s the last man standing in a go home show, does not usually come out as the champion. But Daniel Bryan did.

It did not settle in for a few seconds till the image pixelated and vanished eventually from the screen. Daniel Bryan ended the night as WWE champion. I will explain my disbelief in some time.

It was a bit of a task comparing CM Punk’s match against Paul Heyman with the main event. But only Heyman’s expressions carried the entire feud. His reaction when Axel was hit by the SOS was a cliffhanger moment. Well done, to the cameraman!

Heyman’s escapades and his quotes like, “I believed in you” to Axel, “Oh My God, that hurt! Are you crazy?” to CM Punk hitting him with a kendo stick. “I am tapping”, when CM Punk handcuffed him added logic and his dumbfound expressions sold the build up to when CM Punk finally got his hands on him.

But it was getting easily noticeable and apparent that once CM Punk ‘breaks’ Heyman’s face, he has nothing to look forward to except a victory over a non-athlete. This was not Bischoff versus Stone Cold. And just when we thought something’s gotta give, along came Ryback and now it seems that’s CM Punk’s next assignment.

I am not too convinced with this twist, but I’m not exactly writing it off either.

Fast Forward. The main event is here. Triple H, earlier in the night, made it a no disqualification match to see if he was right in choosing Randy Orton as the face of the company. Quite perplexing.

The promo for the match clearly sets Triple H up as the evil, corporate dictator. And unlike other regimes, there are no top secrets. He makes his actions have crystal clear explanations.

Daniel Bryan comes out gloriously as the underdog, and it riles up one’s spirits if one believe in underdog stories, and then we swiftly move to the arena and Daniel Bryan’s music sparkles up and riles up the entire arena to stand up and say ‘YES’.

Dim the lights. The main Event has begun. Daniel Bryan is the pace of the match. Randy Orton slows the pace of the match. Daniel Bryan is on a suicide dive marathon. Randy Orton refuses to take the baton and stops the force with all his fury.

The referee (poor referees, the most exciting thing they can do is get knocked by a feathery touch of a superstar) gets knocked down and just when you believe that Daniel Bryan will make Orton tap out in the absence of the referee, think again.

No Yes lock. No tap out. Enter Referee Number 2.

There’s a backbreaker, kicks to the head, to the shoulders, to the cheek, a DDT on the outside and then a referee switch, Scott Armstrong is back alive and kicking. What’s cooking WWE?

Then there’s a knee to the face, and then, in a split second you think, “If John Cena couldn’t kick out, how could Randy Orton.”

The referee counts. A tad too fast. Fast enough to get noticed. And then there was one new champion. Was his pursuit cut too short? Will Scott Armstrong be notified for his action? Were his actions of a disgruntled blue collar worker?

Anyway, the authority will be in damage control mode tomorrow.

Let’s look forward to it.