WWE Night of Champions 2011: Grading the Top Stars From Sunday's Event

The 2011 Night of Champions pay-per-view has come to a conclusion. New champions were crowned and controversy appears to be reigning supreme following the annual event.

Some Superstars excelled while others faltered. Here, each of the company's top stars will be graded on their performances. Which men and women performed admirably and which have room for improvement? Find out inside.

Randy Orton

The World Heavyweight Champion continued his streak of high-quality pay-per-view performances in a loss to Mark Henry at Night of Champions. And it was in that loss that Orton proved why he has surpassed John Cena as the company's most elite performer. Unlike his counterpart, who has become so ungodly stale thanks to his endless streak of meaningless victories, Randy went down in defeat, cleanly, to Henry in the night's biggest shocker.

There really was no bright, shining moments for Orton in the title match shocker. He was not the featured performer in the contest and, when one goes back and watches the match a second or third time, Orton was as beaten and as dominated as he has been in any match since ascending to the main event in WWE. At some point, he and the creative team realized that he could afford a loss, that he could be beaten clean and not lose an ounce of momentum.

Randy is undoubtedly the star of Smackdown and on one night, he made Mark Henry a bona-fide, championship-worthy star.

No one doubts that Orton will get the World Championship back. It's a given. But Orton did more to make an unproven main-event commodity a Superstar champion than John Cena has done since winning the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania 21.

Grade: A

Mark Henry

Mark Henry's road to the World Heavyweight Championship throughout the summer of 2011 has been nothing short of extraordinary. Booked in the same fashion of late-'70s and '80s villains, who posed as threats to the babyface champions due to their size and strength, Henry brought an old-school feel to the Smackdown program. At Night of Champions, he capped off a 15-year journey by finally realizing his potential and capturing the World Heavyweight Championship.

Henry has never been as motivated to perform at a high level as he has been since returning to the Smackdown brand earlier this spring. Tears running from his eyes, Mark promised in a post-draft interview that he would be a champion on Smackdown. He detailed his weight loss and re-found dedication to his craft. His words proved prophetic.

Despite his place as the top heel on Smackdown, there was definitely a sense among wrestling fans that they wanted to see Henry win the championship. Wrestling fans, if nothing else, are fiercely loyal. And no matter how many ups and downs Mark has had in his career, the die-hard fanbase enjoys seeing those that have worked hard for an extended period of time succeed. The great booking of "the World's Strongest Man" only added icing to an already magnificent cake.

Mark Henry's performance at Night of Champions was the best of his career. He did not seem phased or overtaken by the moment, something many feared he would be. He was calm, composed and wrestled a smart and clean match. He and Orton were very solid in their story-telling and the emotion of the moment had even the most innocent of marks invested in what they had just seen.

Grade: A+

John Cena

There is nothing anyone can say in the space that has not already been said about John Cena before. As hard as he worked in 2010, that same work ethic appears to have disappeared this year.

His matches have become tedious and boring, with little mixing up of his normal move set and, more than usual, he seems to be racking up championships he no longer needs. The act is old, the rinse-and-repeat nature of his storylines is old and he needs to either freshen up his character or go away for a while.

John needed a great match Sunday. He needed to help elevate Alberto Del Rio to his level and instead, he essentially destroyed any credibility Del Rio had left, winning his 10th WWE Championship. In six years.

Grade: C- (And I am a self-described "Cena guy.")

Alberto Del Rio

Alberto Del Rio failed to impress, again.

When he arrived in WWE, Alberto was celebrated. He was something different. He was a larger-than-life character in the same vein as JBL and the "Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase, who was also a highly-skilled in-ring worker. He is a talented interview and has a way of getting under the fans' skin. Unfortunately, once the bell rings, Del Rio has little or no personality.

Couple a lack of in-ring charisma and piss-poor booking since arriving on Raw in April, and you can expect the sort of silent reaction for Del Rio that the Buffalo crowd gave him at Night of Champions. The fans did not care about him or the fact that he was WWE Champion. It may have had something to do with him ultimately being fed to Cena, but one cannot discount the consistently stale character Del Rio has portrayed since his debut.

Alberto's performance, from a wrestling standpoint, was solid, as usual. He is a technician and was able to get at least something out of the unmotivated Cena. But it was not enough. It was not the type of performance a WWE Championship should be proud of. He failed to exhibit any real character throughout the match and, when he realized the lack of reaction from the crowd, did nothing to try and elicit a reaction.

Grade: C, if only for his consistently solid ring work.

Triple H and CM Punk (Yes, It's a 2-for-1 Special!)

Triple H is the smartest man in wrestling. In the span of two months, he returned as an on-screen character and immediately interjected himself in the hottest angle the company had had in years. He became a part of the "Summer of Punk 2011" angle that had made CM Punk a major star and had rejuvenated a stale product.

But that is not why "The Game" is the smartest man in the business. You see, not only did he interject himself in the program, he also became the centerpiece of the angle. Suddenly, the focus was taken off of Punk and put solely on Triple H. He became the piece around which everything revolved, something he has been criticized of being before. "It's all about The Game" proved to be more than just a song lyric.

The match at Night of Champions, this writer believes, was the worst major match of the year. That includes many of TNA's main events featuring Sting. While many are applauding the match as a return to the Attitude era-type main events, most are missing a glaring weakness of the contest: it was nearly a carbon copy of the type of main events TNA features on a monthly basis. It was riddled with overbooking and far too many run-ins. Sure, Punk was booked to look strong, taking three Pedigrees and a jackknife power bomb before finally losing. But that does not excuse the fact that there was simply too much going on, with little or no match story to hold it all together. Punk and Triple H stumbled around the arena, hitting each other with weapons before the idiotic finish.

Unlike his performances at Money in the Bank and SummerSlam, CM Punk could not save the porous match, nor could he carry Triple H to the same quality contest that he did John Cena. There was nothing wrong with anything Punk did but, when compared to what he did earlier this summer, and all of the hype and excitement surrounding him and his excellent work for the last three months, the latest developments between him and Triple H Sunday night were less than exciting.

Triple H was fine, from a wrestling standpoint, in his first match since WrestleMania. He was not great, but he did not appear to display too much rust.

Grade: C-, for both. An off-night, with poor story-telling, middling action and a terrible and horribly-overbooked finish. When you have one guy who doesn't like to do the job, and one guy who you have built for the entire summer and who cannot afford a loss, you are left with contrived and pathetic excuses for finishes like the one Sunday night.