Night of Champions is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by professional wrestling promotion World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The event was promoted as Vengeance until the 2008 edition.1 The event was created in 2001, with its inaugural event taking place on December 9, 2001 at the San Diego Sports Arena in San Diego, California, replacing Armageddon for that year due to the possible insensitivity of the latter's name with respect to the September 11 attacks.2 The 2002 event featured the Raw and SmackDown! brands. The event was made exclusive to the SmackDown! brand in 2003 and in 2004 was made exclusive to the Raw brand. In 2007, following WrestleMania, all PPV events became tri-branded. Vengeance took over Fully Loaded's pay-per-view spot during 2002 and in 2005 was moved once again, this time switching positions with The Great American Bash. The 2007 event was named Vengeance: Night of Champions, as all nine WWE championships were defended that night. In 2008, the event dropped the Vengeance name and kept the name 3. In 2009, the event was moved back to July. The event will move again to September in 2010.
History
Night of Champions is a pay-per-view (PPV) event consisting of a main event and undercard that feature championship matches and other various matches. Night of Champions was originally known as Vengeance from 2001 until 2006 and Vengeance: Night of Champions in 2007. The first Vengeance was produced as a pay-per-view event for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), the former name of WWE. The inaugural event took place on December 9, 2001 at the San Diego Sports Arena in San Diego, California and aired live on PPV. In 2002, WWF was court ordered to change their name, which resulted in the promotion changing its name to WWE.4 Earlier in the year, WWE held a draft that split its roster into two distinctive brands of wrestling, Raw and SmackDown,5 and the ECW brand was added in 2006.6 Before the draft, matches featured wrestlers from the roster without any limitations; after the draft, matches only consisted of wrestlers from their distinctive brands. The first Vengeance event to be produced under the WWE banner and with roster limitations was Vengeance (2002), which took place on July 21, 2002. The following year, WWE announced that PPV events, excluding WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble, would be made exclusive to each brand; Vengeance was made exclusive to the Smackdown! brand in 2003 and in 2004 was made exclusive to the Raw brand. After three years of being produced as a brand exclusive event, Vengeance (2006) was the final Vengeance event that was brand exclusive, as WWE announced that PPV events from April 2007 onwards would feature all three brands of WWE.7 Each Vengeance/Night of Champions event has been held in an indoor arena, with all nine events taking place in the United States.
