WWE Night of Champions

On June 24, 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) held its annual Vengeance pay-per-view (PPV) under the title Vengeance: Night of Champions. As per its subtitle, all of WWE's championships at the time were contested at the event.[1] The following June, Vengeance was dropped in favor of Night of Champions, which subsequently became an annual PPV and continued the championship theme.[2] The event was then moved to July in 2009[3] before becoming the annual September PPV beginning in 2010.[4] To coincide with the WWE brand extension, the events from 2007 to 2009 featured wrestlers from the Raw, SmackDown, and ECW brands.[1][2][3] ECW was disbanded in early 2010, thus the 2010 event just featured Raw and SmackDown[4] before the first brand split was dissolved in August 2011.[5]

In April 2011, the "WWE" acronym became an orphaned initialism.[6] In February 2014, WWE launched its online streaming service, the WWE Network, with Night of Champions becoming available on the service in addition to traditional PPV.[7] In 2016, after the reintroduction of the brand split between Raw and SmackDown, Night of Champions was replaced on the PPV schedule by the similarly themed Clash of Champions.[8][9]

In March 2023, WWE announced that they would be reviving the King of the Ring event, but rebranded as "King and Queen of the Ring", which would also replace the Hell in a Cell event. However, on April 13, it was revealed that WWE decided to scrap that revival and would instead hold Night of Champions, thus reviving the Night of Champions event. According to Mike Johnson of PWInsider, this was a creative choice to revive and bring Night of Champions to an international market.[10] It was also reported that the change was to please business partners in Saudi Arabia and add intrigue to the show with the crowning of a new world champion.[11] The event is scheduled for Saturday, May 27, 2023, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and will be the ninth event WWE will hold in Saudi Arabia in support of Saudi Vision 2030 under a partnership that began in 2018. This will also be the first Night of Champions to livestream on Peacock in the United States due to the American version of the WWE Network merging under Peacock in March 2021. This will subsequently be the first Night of Champions to be held in Saudi Arabia, the first held on a Saturday, and the first held in May.[12]

The original concept of Night of Champions was that every championship promoted on WWE's main roster was defended.[8] This distinction of main roster championships came in 2012 after the establishment of NXT that year as the promotion's developmental territory, which introduced its own set of championships.[13][14][7][15] In 2010,[4] non-title matches began to be included on the card as less championships became available due to WWE unifying several titles that eventually led to the dissolution of the first brand extension in August 2011;[5] after the final title unification in December 2013, WWE had just five titles on the main roster through the 2015 event.[7][15] With the reintroduction of the brand split in 2016, Raw and SmackDown each have four championships with one other title that is shared between the brands. With the scheduling of the 2023 event, however, not all of the main roster championships will be defended, as SmackDown's world champion will instead be challenging for a tag team championship.

As of the 2015 event, 10 different WWE championships have been defended at Night of Champions.

All WWE championships that have been defended at Night of Champions (as of the 2015 event)

Year	WWE	World Heavyweight	ECW	Intercontinental	United States	World Tag Team	WWE Tag Team	Women's	Divas	Cruiserweight
2007[1]	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	Y
2008[2]	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	N
2009[3]	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N
2010[4]	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	N
2011[5]	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N
2012[13]	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N
2013[14]	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N
2014[7]	Y	N	N	Y	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N
2015[15]	Y	N	N	Y	Y	N	Y	N	Y	N

Notes

• The 2007 event, which was titled Vengeance: Night of Champions, was the only Night of Champions event to feature the original WWE Cruiserweight Championship, as the title was deactivated in September that same year.[1]
• The WWE Divas Championship was established shortly after the 2008 event.[3] At the 2010 event, the original WWE Women's Championship was unified into the Divas Championship, thus retiring the Women's Championship in favor of continuing the Divas Championship, which very briefly became known as the Unified WWE Divas Championship.[4] The Divas Championship was then retired in 2016 and replaced by a new WWE Women's Championship, which was renamed to Raw Women's Championship with the reintroduction of the brand split that year.
• In 2009, the World Tag Team Championship and WWE Tag Team Championship were unified as the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship, but remained independently active until the World Tag Team Championship was decommissioned just before the 2010 event in favor of continuing the WWE Tag Team Championship, which dropped the "unified" moniker.[4] With the reintroduction of the brand split in 2016, the WWE Tag Team Championship was assigned to Raw and renamed to Raw Tag Team Championship.
• In February 2010, the ECW brand was disbanded, deactivating the ECW Championship along with it.[4]
• In December 2013, the World Heavyweight Championship was unified into the WWE Championship, retiring the World Heavyweight Championship while the WWE Championship became known as the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.[7] With the reintroduction of the brand split in 2016, the title reverted to being called the WWE Championship.

• List of current champions in WWE
• List of former championships in WWE

• Night of Champions Official Website