Not surprisingly, another missed opportunity....

I'm not going to give away the spoilers for this coming week's edition of Raw, but as you can see, Randy Orton is going to face either Triple H or John Cena at Night of Champions, a unique Pay-Per-View that I'd argue is sold on its premise (every single championship is defended at the show) and not any match in particular. With that in mind, I think WWE missed an excellent opportunity to show us something -- gasp! -- new, instead of a variation of matches we've seen countless times over the past couple of years.

Instead, I would have added an extra round to the #1 contender's tournament. How about John Cena vs. Miz (which Cena wins), Triple H vs. Big Show (which Triple H wins), MVP vs. Cody Rhodes (which MVP wins) and Ted DiBiase vs. say, Santino (which either can win). In the semi finals, Triple H and Cena are screwed over, so as a consolation the night's host awards them a shot at the Unified Tag Team Champions. MVP then wins the tournament to face Orton at Night of Champions.

What does this accomplish? We get a fresh main event, Orton's role as champion is legitimized (after looking weak for much of his last two reigns) by beating a "top" name, and MVP is viewed as an actual main eventer with a one-on-one WWE Championship match. On top of that, you also manage to put four top Superstars -- Cena, Triple H, Edge, and Jericho -- into a championship match. Instead, we're seeing the same old, same old on an already bland show.

In other news, apparently Edge suffered a major injury this past weekend, which could keep him out of the ring up to a year. I certainly hope this isn't true. First off, he's been my favorite wrestler since before his Brood days (imagine that). He's also, in my eyes, the TRUE MVP of WWE at the moment. And while I do think it would be wise to keep him out of the World Title picture for a little while (since he's been such a dominant fixture there for so long), his absence would really hurt the Smackdown roster. So let's cross our fingers and hope for the best.