Matthew Roberts, courtesy of WWE Home Video, takes a look at the latest WWE DVD release, Night Of Champions 2023.
The Saudi shows are part of the landscape now and whatever you may think of the WWE they are not alone in that respect. As ever this was another supershow that had a good-looking line-up on paper so fans were certainly not being short-changed.
We kicked off with the World Heavyweight Championship Tournament finals between AJ Styles and Seth Rollins. Any questions about the “new” title are now largely redundant. Most casual observers (i.e. TV watchers who don’t trawl the internet) simply accept that it’s a title defended on Raw. The two have had previous bangers (see Money in the Bank 2019) and whilst this perhaps didn’t quite reach those heights it was still very good. It was AJ’s best showing in a while and Rollins was at his usual standard too.
Seth’s better half Becky Lynch was up next in a clash of era’s as she took on Trish Stratus. Trish was never quite the worker that the best of those who would follow her in the “Women’s Revolution” were but even in 2023 she can hang with the top names in big match scenarios. The two got fifteen minutes or so and made the most of them and introduced another spoke to the wheel in the form of Zoe Stark.
Gunther’s IC title defence against Ali was very effective storytelling even if the ending was predictable. Despite a good match at WrestleMania, the feud between Bianca Belair and Asuka had been a little too stop-start to really get going. This match didn’t really hit the heights either though it was a decent enough effort and had a result that I applauded. Rhea Ripley destroying Natalya was good for a laugh too.
Brock Lesnar and Cody Rhodes followed that with a good ten minute match that did what it had to do; i.e. continue their feud without making Rhodes look inferior. We finished with the main event pitting Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn against Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa. It was another gripping instalment in the ongoing Bloodline story.
Night of Champions 2023; All in all this was a very good show. Nothing was offensive and most of the matches were good-to-great. The WWE is on a roll as far as Premium Live Events are concerned and this was another winner.
9 out of 10
Photographs courtesy of Fetch and WWE. Thank you to WWE Home Video for our review copy of WWE Day 1 which is out NOW on DVD. You can buy your copy from WWEDVD.co.uk by clicking here.