Night of Champions is the one event of the year where every title in the WWE must be defended. However, even with all of this the gold up for grab, the main event of this show was for something even more important. Triple H's job as COO was on the line in a match against CM Punk.
What I Said Then: For the third straight show, the WWE has delivered on PPV. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was the Divas match which was shockingly good and featured a very loud crowd.
One of the biggest questions going into this show for me was whether Alberto Del Rio could perform in a main event caliber match. Despite losing his match, his performance tonight was worthy of the spot in the card. I hope to see him in many more main event title bouts in the future.
I feel awkward to say this because I never wish harm on anyone, but I would be remiss if I didn't take note of the commentary for this show. For quite sometime, I have been complaining about the state of the announcing at these events. The commentary for this show got much better when Michael Cole lost his voice. That allowed Lawler and Booker T to focus on the action in the ring instead of trading stupid barbs with Cole that takes away from the action.
If you bought this show, I think you made the right decision and got your money's worth.
Has My Opinion Changed? Yes. One of the problems with the WWE schedule in the fall is that there are so many PPV events jammed together in just a few weeks that unless something amazing happens, they all seem to blend together.
After just three months, I forgot most of what happened on this show.
While I really enjoyed this show when I was watching it live, for some reason I didn't get nearly the same enjoyment watching it again. I was actually quite shocked when I began writing this review and saw what I had written a few months ago.
I think there are two reasons for this. One of them is that some of the storylines from this show played out so quickly or poorly that I just couldn't muster up the same enthusiasm I had for them just a few months ago. The other reason is that the show lost its specialness when over the next few weeks there were two other PPV events that each featured five of the six championships on the line and every champion competing on the card.
Overall Recommendation:
This is worth a rental but I think you should spend your DVD money elsewhere unless you are a huge Mark Henry or John Cena fan and need to have their title victories in your DVD collection.
Chapters on this DVD (matches are in bold):
- DVD Extra: Smackdown 8/30/11 - Triple H & CM Punk Contract Signing
- WWE Tag Team Champions Air Boom (Kofi Kingston & Evan Bourne) vs. The Miz & R-Truth
- Matt Striker Interviews The Miz & R-Truth
- Intercontinental Champion Cody Rhodes vs. Ted DiBiase
- Christian Deserves One More Championship Match
- Fatal 4-Way Match: United States Champion Dolph Ziggler vs. Alex Riley vs. Jack Swagger vs. John Morrison
- Josh Mathews Interviews Mark Henry
- Matt Striker Interviews Vickie Guerrero
- World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton vs. Mark Henry
- Alberto Del Rio Talks with John Laurinaitis
- Divas Champion Kelly Kelly vs. Beth Phoenix
- WWE Champion Alberto Del Rio vs. John Cena
- No DQ Match with Triple H's Job as COO on the Line: CM Punk vs. Triple H
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.