WWE Night of Champions goes live on pay-per-view (PPV) tonight (Sun., Sept. 16, 2012) at 8 p.m. ET from the TD Garden Arena in Boston, Massachusetts, but the promotion is also offering a free live stream of its pre-show starting at 7:30 p.m. ET.

In what would have been the dark match of the evening, fans can now tune in to see a battle royal featuring a bunch of unnamed participants competing for a chance to move on to the PPV portion of the evening, in order to take on Antonio Cesaro for his United States championship.

If that sounds silly to you, they acknowledged as much by having Cesaro talk openly about how silly it will be. But the reality is that it's a far better method of getting fans invested in the pay portion of the show. Just throwing a random match here is fine but having it actually affect the PPV should (theoretically) pay more dividends than if it didn't have any affect.

Plus, it's a battle royal -- those are always fun.

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. ET, so remember to come back and join us here.

See you tonight, Cagesiders.