WWE Night of Champions 2011 Results: What We Learned from Mark Henry's Win

At WWE's Night of Champions PPV, challenger Mark Henry managed to best Randy Orton for the World Heavyweight Championship.

The monstrous Henry dominated most of the match and won clean after delivering the World's Strongest Slam to a severely weakened Orton, who, per the story in the match, suffered injured ribs earlier in the match, leaving him more vulnerable to Henry's brutal and vicious attacks.

Brave babyface Orton valiantly fought back as best he could throughout, but ultimately fell to his foe after sustaining too much damage.

After the gripping conclusion of the match, WWE announcer Michael Cole boldly announced this as “the end of Henry's fifteen year odyssey” as the imposing and fearsome challenger finally silenced his critics and won a world title.

And, as an emotional Henry talked about in his powerful post-match promo, he has had plenty of critics.

As noted in the recent Cutting Edge segment on SmackDown,the former weightlifter has had a decidedly patchy fifteen years in WWE and his time there is usually regarded by many in and outside of WWE as a bitter disappointment. Some of the verbal attacks are undoubtedly due to his own short comings as a performer: the clumsy, lethargic and uncoordinated Henry has always struggled greatly with the in-ring aspect of things and, while he has slowly improved over the years, he still isn't an above average wrestler or even a good one.

Indeed, this match with Orton was fine, and got over decently with the Buffalo crowd, but certainly not anything close to the level of Orton's magnificent series of matches with Christian throughout the summer. Not that anyone expected it to be.

But his failures have not always been his fault. In recent years, Henry has also suffered from frustrating stop-start booking by the fickle WWE booking team. Seriously, how many times have we seen Henry become embroiled in a heated main event feud with a big name performer, then afterwards quickly demoted back down to the mid-card with his main event stint swept under the rug and completely forgotten about? For all his own flaws, he has not been aided at all by the wildly inconsistent booking.

And that's not even including his absolutely dire and cringe-inducing romance angle with the decrepit Mae Young in 1999 and 2000, which, by rights, should have destroyed Henry's credibility and career for good. Hey, Henry should be praised for managing to preserve and overcome that dreadful storyline alone.

So this triumph is surely a sign of WWE's growing faith in Henry. As mentioned, while he still has gaping flaws as a performer, he has nonetheless firmly established himself as a fearsome, out-of-control monster who is viciously running through the entire SmackDown roster on a mission to acquire the championship. Granted, getting the title isn't the huge deal it used to be (even Dolph Ziggler was world champion once) but it's still a good sign of Henry's standing with management, after years of inconsistent booking they're finally willing to strap the rocket to his back and push him to the win.

The win was even more interesting because the usually invincible Orton has generally been super-protected. Indeed, while his feud with Christian churned out some terrific matches, most noted how woefully one-sided the entire thing was, with Christian frequently falling to his perennial foe and never gaining a clean win. 

For Orton to lose clean here, even if it was established and reinforced by the announcers that he had debilitating rib injuries, was startling considering how strongly built up Orton is (along with his Raw counterpart, John Cena). That he did lose in such a manner, strongly suggests that the booking team are far more willing than they have been before to let their established main eventers lose to upper-mid carders and even appear vulnerable at points.

Additionally, this may be a very good sign for Sheamus, Cody Rhodes and the other mid-carders on the blue brand who are eager to break through the thick glass ceiling. If the WWE booking team are willing to give the green Henry an impressive win and a title run, perhaps they'll be willing to pull the trigger on another unproven mid-carder in the future.

We can also expect a rematch between Orton and Henry. Which is likely to take place at WWE's Hell in a Cell PPV in October. While the match may not be spectacular, the dynamic between the two wrestlers is still intriguing. Indeed, the end of last week's Smackdown, with Orton and Henry brawling all over the place while most of the locker room tried unsuccessfully to separate them was incredibly gripping. Fans can look forward to superb segments and promos like this in the future.

Henry may not be everyone's idea of a perfect main eventer and it's highly doubtful his matches as champion will be stellar, but his title reign may be something refreshing in an increasingly stale SmackDown main event scene. It seems WWE may have recognized that a change was needed, and decided to make the switch, too.