Sting in the main event is a breath of fresh air

56-year-old Sting is going to main event Night of Champions against Seth Rollins for the WWE Championship.  That's a thing that is really happening.

Some folks aren't too happy with this decision, as it is once again a case where WWE is going with a part-timer over the every day workhorses like Cesaro, Owens, Ziggler, and Neville, who are breaking their bodies every single night for our entertainment.

However I think people are fooling themselves if they thought guys like Cesaro, Owens, Ziggler, and Neville ever had a chance of main eventing Night of Champions.  WWE's main event picture simply doesn't include those guys just yet.

It's no secret that over the course of the last few months WWE blew a pretty easy opportunity to create a fresh main event performer in Kevin Owens.  After Owens came in and beat John Cena clean at Elimination Chamber, I think WWE should have gone all-in on KO and geared him right towards a major match with Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam.

Of course that didn't happen though because CenaWinsLOL and FatOwensFat.

Now look at Cesaro.  With CM Punk and Daniel Bryan out of the picture, Cesaro has easily become my favorite performer in the company.  WWE blew a great opportunity last summer to turn him into a main event attraction, and while things looked bleak for Cesaro over the last 6 months of 2014, he now finds himself once again rising on the card and with WWE seemingly on board this time with his organic momentum as a babyface.

However he still needs to win some important matches before he is thrust into a WWE Championship match on PPV.

So while I would love for those two guys to be given the major push and main eventing PPVs by the end of the year, they just haven't been presented as big enough stars just yet.  Rushing them into a defeat in the main event of Night of Champions probably won't work out so well.

Other guys like Ziggler, Neville, Rusev, and Wyatt all fall into a similar category.  These guys all need to be built up as major stars with killer angles on television for a while before it makes sense to headline major shows with them.

Therefore I think any complaints about Sting coming in and taking a spot away from those guys is misguided.  Sting isn't taking their spot because those guys were never potential main event candidates for Night Of Champions in the first place.

So whose spot is Sting really taking?  If Sting wasn't around, what would the main event of Night Of Champions be?  Here are the potential match-ups that I could see, based on WWE's history of booking main events:

• Rollins versus Cena
• Rollins versus Kane
• Rollins versus Reigns
• Rollins versus Orton
• Triple Threat or Fatal 4-Way with any of the aforementioned wrestlers

Does anybody really want Kane main eventing a PPV in 2010 2015?

For most of the post-WrestleMania season, I have been dreading Fall 2015 because it seemed that WWE was dead set on running multiple PPVs with Kane challenging Rollins for the championship.  I'll gladly take Sting versus Rollins over that garbage, even if it is just delaying the inevitable Kane feud for a month.

What about Cena versus Rollins?

Did you know that John Cena has not main evented a PPV since Survivor Series 2014?  Putting John Cena back in the main event slot, even for just one month, could start a potential snowball effect that scares the hell out of me.  And as we've seen in Cena's feuds with Rusev, Owens, and Wyatt, heels generally don't go over Cena more than once if they face him on multiple PPVs in a row.  Rollins has already beaten Cena at SummerSlam 2015.  Would Cena really lose twice in a row to him?  We might find out anyway, as there are rumors that Rollins will pull double duty at Night of Champions by defending his US Championship against Cena on the undercard before facing off with Sting in the main event.  And that's fine with me; I definitely enjoy mid-card US Champion John Cena much more than same old shit main eventer John Cena.

How about Rollins versus Randy Orton?

I'm not sure that I even need to waste time explaining why Sting is a much more interesting opponent for Rollins than Randy Orton would be.  I haven't bought Randy Orton as a main event attraction since 2009, despite WWE's efforts to go overboard with pushing him as the ideal sports entertainer.  The fact that the Apex Predator has yet to fight Brock Lesnar since the Beast Incarnate returned 3 and a half years should tell you quite a bit about how WWE really feels about Randy Orton's star power.  But even if you disregard my personal skepticism of Randy Orton's appeal as a top star, the bottom line is that he has been feuding with Rollins on and off for way too long now, and it's a very stale match up without any compelling elements to it.  It's the same reason why I am not even considering Rollins versus Ambrose as a potential main event for Night of Champions.

That leaves Roman Reigns, who could have been yanked from the Wyatt feud to headline Night of Champions against Rollins.

While I would prefer that to Orton or Kane, it is going to be hard to make both Rollins and Reigns look strong coming out of it.  And here's where Sting has an advantage over all of these guys.  A win over Sting could mean a great deal to Seth Rollins going forward.  Rollins and Reigns will probably fight on a bunch of PPVs over the next few years and exchange wins with each other.  But not too many more guys are going to defeat Sting.  Rollins can become one of those guys, and then he can brag about it for a long long time.  Yes, it would have helped if WWE actually cared about long-term booking and didn't have Sting lose to Triple H's ego at WrestleMania 31.  But a win over Sting is still meaningful, and this is a chance for Seth to capitalize on Sting's star power to increase his own in a way that he has desperately needed for most of his reign as champ.

But then there's the "what if" scenario.

What if Sting actually wins and dethrones Rollins as champ?  Would that mean that main eventing Night of Champions with Sting was an awful idea?

That's not at all what it would mean.

I know a lot of commenters weren't happy about it, but Brock Lesnar versus Undertaker was the obvious main event for SummerSlam 2015 because those two guys are huge stars.  That match on paper is what gave the event a big show feel.  It certainly wasn't Cesaro versus Kevin Owens or the Ambreigns tag team match.  That card needed a match with the kind of star power that Undertaker and Lesnar possessed, even if some of us feared how the finish would be booked.

Sting presents a similarly obvious call here at Night Of Champions, regardless of whether he wins the match or not.

Why the heck would WWE headline with Rollins versus Kane or Rollins versus Cena or Rollins versus Orton when they have Sting available?  Sting is a huge star who has never main evented a WWE PPV or challenged for the WWE Championship.  You can probably ignore everything I wrote prior to this paragraph and just read this paragraph over and over again until the point sinks in.  Sting versus Rollins at Night of Champions for the WWE Championship is a unique attraction that WWE would be dumb to skip over in order to give us Rollins versus Kane or Rollins versus Orton.

Sting has the star power to headline a WWE PPV and also help Seth Rollins going forward.  Unlike most of the guys listed above, Sting's act is not stale.  That's the benefit of being a part-timer who isn't dragged down by the monotony of 3 hour episodes of Raw each week.  The bottom line is that 56-year-old Sting is a fresh face in a WWE main event picture that desperately needs somebody not named Cena, Orton, or Kane.

WWE definitely needs to figure out a way to turn a few guys like Cesaro, Owens, Rusev, and Wyatt into main event attractions.  But until they do piece that puzzle together, Sting is a more compelling opponent for Rollins than all of the other current main eventers on the roster.