3 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Night Of Champions 2026 (Results & Review)
1. A General Statement About Matches
By now, it’s fairly clear that WWE is not the wrestling company that primarily values match quality above all else. That’s AEW’s shtick.
But even as a company that focuses more on storytelling and entertainment, WWE has to realize that its angles will eventually end up in the ring. (There’s also something to be said about the poor storytelling and lack of actually entertaining programming lately, but that’s an issue for another day.)
WWE has some of the best in-ring performers on the planet under its umbrella, and yet the product has felt milquetoast at best during the past few months, with a few exceptions. Wrestlers who were delivering blistering performances have seemingly throttled down and turned in merely passable matches that are almost immediately forgotten. Fans have caught onto this and sit on their hands for three-quarters of most matches, only coming up for the false finishes and ending sequences.
Night of Champions, on paper, had six matches that should have trended overall toward “good,” “really good,” or “excellent.” Instead, we got one excellent main event (that exceeded even lofty expectations) and a couple of passable tournament finals (one of which – the Queen of the Ring – was a disappointment). The rest of the card was utterly skippable.
Under WWE’s current PLE model, they’re throwing free matches on ESPN to try to entice American fans to plunk down $30 a month for the sports network’s app so they can watch the remainder of the card of each PLE. But when the action is this bland and underwhelming, why would you continue to do so? You’d cancel your subscription and maybe renew it for Royal Rumble/WrestleMania season.
One would think WWE, sitting on an extremely talented roster of performers, would be doing everything in its power to put on highly entertaining, action-packed shows to lock fans into EPSN app subscriptions. Otherwise, the sports network is going to have a serious case of buyer’s remorse.
That’s part of what makes these beige, dull matches that play out to the hum of a hair dryer even more confusing. If they’re not going to deliver in the ring, they certainly need to put a more entertaining product out regularly.