10 Things You Didn’t Know About WWE Night Of Champions

2. Why It's Actually Called "Night Of Champions"

Eric Bischoff Night Of Champions
WWE.com

It took Triple H 16 years after the closure of WCW and total autonomy on his own passion project to feature WarGames onto a WWE broadcast.

Sneaking it on as the titular main event of an NXT TakeOver in November 2017, it was the end of one of Paul Levesque's man long games. 'The King Of Kings' had only managed to force a compromise out of Vince McMahon when he pitched - less than two years after WCW folded - to keep the double cage extravaganza alive at Survivor Series 2002. Elimination Chamber was the outcome, so allergic was McMahon to any of World Championship Wrestling's ideas, concepts and names.

That same bugbear of the boss perhaps explains why WWE has never fully committed to the TBS staple "Clash Of The Champions" as the name of this semi-regular supercard. 2007's Vengeance was subtitled "Night Of Champions", and even four iterations of the show between 2016 and 2020 were called "Clash Of Champions", as if removing the definite article was as important to McMahon as adding it before SummerSlam was to Bret Hart.

He was understandably too busy on March 26th 2001 to miss a certain subtitle...

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett