JOHN CENA'S victory over Big Show at No Way Out saw John Laurinaitis lose his position as Raw's general manager.
Several babyface wrestlers who have fallen foul of Big Show’s rage helped Cena claim the win, including a chair-wielding Brodus Clay.
Post-match, Cena plunged Laurinaitis through an announce table, seconds after Vince McMahon uttered the immortal words: “You’re fired”.
No belts changed hands and the best bout of the night was the opening encounter in which Sheamus retained his world title against Dolph Ziggler.
Ziggler, a late replacement for the concussed Alberto Del Rio, was in stunning form, and the two men played out a classic David v Goliath battle in which the burly Irishman prevailed.
The WWE title match, positioned as a semi-main event, was a decent if formulaic three-way match involving Kane, Daniel Bryan and CM Punk.
The (very tiny) elephant in the ring was AJ, who remained in the back until the very end of the match, when she dashed out and hopped onto the apron.
Kane knocked her off, sold concern, and was then summarily beaten by Punk. As Kane carried a seemingly stricken AJ to the back, she looked towards the ring, beaming, as if to say it was a tactic to help Punk retain.
There are no complaints about this matter not being totally resolved, as AJ’s character is one of the most compelling in wrestling right now.
A very credible Christian v Cody Rhodes IC title match, in which Christian kept his belt, followed a childish and pointless tuxedo between Santino and Ricardo Rodriguez in which Santino won and the audience lost.
Darren Young and Titus O’Neal won a four-way tag match for number one contendership after Abraham Washington unceremoniously dropped Primo and Epico and sided with Young and O’Neal.
Other matches included Sin Cara beating Hunico for the eighty-sixth time, and Ryback squashing two jobbers. Yes, this was a pay-per-view, not an episode of Smackdown. Not that you would notice.
The other news coming out of the show was that Triple H cut a promo challenging Brock Lesnar to a match at Summerslam, which is two months away.
We award the No Way Out PPV an adequate 6 out of 10.