Cover artwork is in for WWE Night of Champions 2023 on DVD!
It spotlights the three matches that dubbed the card a “triple main event”: Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins vs. AJ Styles to crown the inaugural World Heavyweight Champion, plus the final match of the night which saw Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa of The Bloodline take on Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships.
The artwork comes to us from WWEDVD.co.uk. It’s possible a few adjustments are still to be made (right now it doesn’t reference “2023”, for example, which PLE covers usually do) but we’re expecting this design probably will stick.
The Saudi Arabia-hosted Night of Champions 2023 event is scheduled to hit DVD in the United Kingdom first on Monday July 10th.
It will follow the very next day, Tuesday July 11th, to fans across the United States.
Backlash 2023 from Puerto Rico is the next WWE DVD that’s incoming for the US market (June 13th) and it’s one of the next in the UK (WrestleMania just hit UK stores this week, and a “Best of Money in the Bank” DVD will come in between).
The Backlash cover artwork we revealed exclusively on the site recently is the final design. Before that last update, though, there was cover art published that featured the original Bad Bunny event poster, which as a reminder looked like this:
For a very short time, we heard the cover had been updated to the below, which made use of a new poster design for Backlash featuring Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar:
Ultimately, that new poster would be tweaked again, with WWE adding Bad Bunny and Damian Priest alongside Cody and Brock for the final artwork.
You could say similar happened with WrestleMania 39 this year too, but the first version of the ‘Mania artwork felt like a placeholder from the start (for one, it referenced “The Most Stupendous Two-Night WrestleMania In History” tagline, which fit the previous year’s event, not the latest).
Last-minute cover changes had us thinking back to 2015/16 when the Owen Hart and Eric Bischoff DVDs had ‘confirmed’ cover artwork released, but would both later end up being changed.
On the left of the images here is the original artwork, versus the new artwork on the right.
Bizarrely, the Owen DVD with its original cover artwork (the left) actually made it to stores several months after the release of the DVD (whereby the “new” cover had already come out, so both of them physically existed, if you are still following us)!
Over the years running WrestlingDVDNetwork.com, sometimes we’ve been able to see WWE DVD and Blu-ray covers that were created and considered but ultimately not used, beat-out by the designs that made it into stores and all of our collections.
Let’s take a look at some of them… all never before seen, until now!
It’s interesting to look back on what could have been and debate which cover is best — the contender or the final design, so let us know your thoughts in the comments.
| Greatest Rivalries: Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart (2011) |
| The Attitude Era (2012) |
| Our Nation’s Pride: The Best of Canadian Superstars (2016) |
| The Shield: Justice for All (2018) |
personally, I very much prefer those ppv covers/posters that only focus on *one* match (the biggest and/or most important one).
regarding the previously released sets, imo the only one for which I’d have prefered the alternative is the “Rivalries” dvd. yes, the sitdown interview was pretty friendly and easygoing and Hart and Michaels had settled their differences by then, but that wasn’t what the release was focussed on though.
I want to see a sequel to WWE Unreleased Never Before Seen Matches 1986-1995 and an Unreleased set on the Undertaker.
As with album covers during the golden age of arena rock — the artwork is a fantastic marketing device.
Nice NOC cover I really like it
IMO, the planned artwork for Eric Bischoff’s was better than what they went with as the faux newspaper headline suited the title. I would’ve also stuck with the original artwork for HBK/Bret Hart but maybe use something other than Bret’s grimacing demeanor. Attitude Era one would’ve worked as it was simple but effective, but I liked the Beatles tribute they went with instead. The Shield Justice for all, I would’ve stuck with the original as well, but I passed on that set as it didn’t interest me anyway. Planned Canadian Superstars cover was better than what they went with, but
that was also another pass for me. The planned cover for Owen’s was better, but the one they went with was doable since he was front and center.
”THE NIGHT OF THE CHAMPIONS” was great. The Usos truly deserve both an Emmy AND Academy Award for their performance.