8 WWE Night Of Champions Opening Matches - From Worst To Best

2. Curtis Axel Vs. Kofi Kingston - 2013

Sin Cara Cody Rhodes Miz Night of Champions 2012
WWE.com

Poor Curtis Axel. If anyone can claim to be truly cursed in modern WWE, Axel might just be that guy. He was saddled with the worst NXT name in memory, when everyone and their dog knew of his family heritage and just wanted him to be plain old Joe Hennig.

He was then repackaged (with awesome music) as Curtis Axel and branded a 'Paul Heyman Guy', a status that has been something of a death knell for anyone not called CM Punk or Brock Lesnar. To make matters worse he quickly won the Intercontinental title, without doubt the most cursed of all wrestling titles.

It gets worse. He gained some steam this year with the whole Axel-Mania thing, but then Hulk Hogan was removed from history due to the whole being a massive racist thing. Poor Curtis Axel.

Anyway, he had a pretty good match opening up the show against Kofi Kingston in 2013, working a quick speed in order to get the job done quickly as he was pulling double duty that night, teaming up with Paul Heyman to take on CM Punk later in the night. 

Axel wins, Axel retains, but my heart bleeds for Michael McGillicutty.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.