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How you feel about No Mercy probably has a lot to do with how you feel about Triple H and Randy Orton. If you're a big fan of "The Game" and "The Legend Killer", chances are you really enjoyed the show, since they had two really strong matches that book ended the PPV, not to mention an extra dose of HHH in the middle. If you don't like them, you probably hated the show, since there really wasn't much else on the program to sink your teeth into. In fact, most of the non-HHH action came off more like angles you'd expect to see on the weekly television shows, not what you expect to see on a PPV you slapped down $40 for.
As for the Chris Jericho factor, while you might be disappointed that he didn't appear, it isn't WWE's fault. They have never mentioned Chris Jericho once on television or on their website. They never promised us a resolution to "Save Us" either. Any speculation or fantasy booking based off the video clip was done outside of the WWE bubble. Is Chris Jericho coming in? Yes, I believe he is, and as we reported last week, he informed TNA he was doing so. However, no one ever said he was going to return at No Mercy. Was I hoping he would? Sure, I would have loved to seen it happen. But WWE never promised it, or really even directly hinted it, so you can't hold them at fault for it not happening.
Was the show worth $40? No, but as we have often pointed out in the past, a PPV rarely is. I will say that this was better than some of WWE's recent offerings, with a very good opener and what I thought was a fantastic main event. Of course, those of you that were hoping for a "new direction" instead of the continued push of the same top stars, well, you're probably wishing you had saved your money.
Onto my thoughts on the show:
The opening segment really felt more like an episode of Raw than it did a PPV, just because we started off with a long Vince McMahon promo. However, given the situation, it was understandable that they would have to do a segment like this to set up the rest of the show. The fans chanting "Y2J" once again shows the power of the Internet, and I thought it was interesting that Vince acknowledged the chant and shot it down. When they awarded the title to Randy Orton, two thoughts entered my mind. One, was that there is no way Orton is going to keep the title and leave the PPV as a champion that had a belt handed to him. The second was why did WWE tease during the opening video package that other members of the Raw roster might have a shot at the belt? Anyway, Orton had the title and Triple H came out to claim a title shot. At this point, Randy Orton got to become a background character as the spotlight (surprise, surprise) was once again on Triple H and Vince McMahon. Again, this felt like a Raw segment, not something you see on PPV.
This led into our first Triple H match of the night, and I have to say that the Chicago crowd was really alive and into the bout. In fact, they were a great crowd all night, except for the Divas match. Orton went on offense first, then Triple H took over, and it was a solid match. They threw some nice spots in there, like Triple H using the figure four after Orton had missed the kneedrop. I also liked the way each man blocked the other from using his finisher. The rollup flash pin was a nice way to have Triple H go over without him totally dominating Randy, although I'm sure more than a few fans were making jokes about him being "Orton'd". That said, the crowd went nuts for the finish and the title change, and you knew that there was going to be more to this story before the show was over, especially after the way they followed Orton all the way to the back where Vince McMahon stared at him.
The "bonus" six-man tag team match came across like WWE assembling six of their better workers and saying "go out there and just do as many highspots as you can in eight minutes". With Kennedy pinning London, the match was essentially meaningless, but it was a wild eight minutes that managed to keep the crowd energy despite following up the WWE Title change. Nothing wrong with squeezing in a little highspot fest on the show. In fact, given what followed it, I wish they had squeezed in more matches like this.
CM Punk vs. Big Daddy V had the kind of finish I expected. I just didn't expect it after 90 seconds of action. This should have been on an edition of ECW on SciFi, not on a PPV event in Punk's hometown of Chicago. It was a total angle. Big Daddy V gets knocked down once and Striker is running in and getting his man blatantly disqualified? Then Big Daddy V did the big beatdown, and now we're left wondering if the "injured" Punk will recover and be able to successfully defend his title in the future. As I said, I expected the finish, but I thought we would have a slightly longer bout first, with the hometown crowd rallying behind Punk to battle back against the monstrous BDV. A definite disappointment.
The pizza eating segment should have never happened. No Mercy ran until 10:55pm, the first WWE PPV to do that in a long time. They really should have dropped this segment and tacked some time onto Punk vs. BDV, or the six-man tag, or even Umaga-HHH. I'm a huge supporter of the MVP-Hardy feud, but this wasn't nearly as entertaining as their other segments. Hardy ate two slices of pizza in two minutes, then spit it up all over MVP's white jumpsuit. Yeah, that was great. Glad I paid $40 to see that. Even getting to see Maria and Melina (and boy, Melina had a lot to do, didn't she?) didn't make this bit worth paying attention to. Again, this felt like a TV segment, and I'm sure a few people were annoyed that they paid to see pizza eating, and will get MVP & Hardy vs. Undertaker & Kane for free on Friday.
Triple H vs. Umaga was pretty weak. Umaga has a hard head, but a kick to the face, a shot to the ringpost, and a Pedigree will finish him off. I know the story of the match was Umaga weakening Triple H's ribs for what was going to happen later, but why did they have to put Trips over Umaga clean in just seven minutes? Couldn't the vicious Umaga have been disqualified for brutalizing him, thus keeping Umaga strong while still setting up Triple H for his match with Orton (and who didn't see the "rematch clause" coming into play?) later? I know, I usually complain about not having clean finishes on PPV, but in this case, Umaga was made to look totally inferior to Triple H, and this is a brand that needs some strong characters.
At this point, I was really hoping for Rey Mysterio and Fit Finlay to deliver a strong match, and for ten minutes, they did. Rey looked great hitting his highspots, and Finlay had some good counters and they were on their way to giving us the best bout on the show. When Finlay took his big bump to the floor, and made it obvious he was playing possum, I loved it. I expected Finlay to jump off the stretcher, ambush Rey, and continued the match. Instead, he ambushed Rey and ... the referee sent him away? Huh? I didn't hear a bell. The announcers said it best when JBL claimed Finlay had "made an impact", while Michael Cole pointed out that he hadn't won the match. After a good start, this felt like another segment that should have been on free TV, not pay-per-view.
Candice Michelle and Beth Phoenix was horrible. After showing some promise a few months ago, Candice has regressed to an almost embarrassing level. She's even having trouble doing basic moves that she seemed to have mastered a year ago. Phoenix had her least impressive televised showing to date. It's almost like, on the biggest night of her career, she choked and was unable to make anything work with Candice. WWE's best bet at this point is to match up Phoenix with Mickie James, who can help smooth out her rough edges and lead her through a good match. This was the only time all night that the crowd really died down. The post-match promo did nothing for me.
The Punjabi Prison match was what you would expect, which means it wasn't very good. All of the doors ended up being locked, so they had to climb the cage. Batista hit his spear and spinebuster to get pops, and they teased the powerbomb but didn't deliver it. Batista sold for Khali's comically bad offense. Khali climbed out (and was I the only one who thought Khali was going to take a fall and break his leg or something trying to scale the cage?), and despite having a huge lead, Batista scaled one cage, jumped to the other (which was a very cool spot, and easily the highlight of the bout), and beat Khali in the race to the floor. Honestly, for all the hype about how "brutal" this match would be, it really was just your typical Khali-Batista bout (which isn't pleasant) followed by a race up and down a cage that looks like it was stolen from the set of Gilligan's Island. Sadly, this feud still isn't over.
That led to the main event. I wondered if they would be short on time, but WWE actually pushed the PPV all the way to the limit, rather than ending early (which they've done a lot lately, to the point of it being annoying). This bout really had to deliver to salvage the show at this point, and in all honesty, it did. There was blood, plunder, exciting near falls, great crowd heat, and Jim Ross tying it all together by convincing you that you were seeing a titanic struggle between two amazing performers. Easily the best Triple H match since his return, and Orton was right in there with him. The crowd was counting along with everything, and Orton won clean (as clean as you can get in this type of match), thus "earning" the title. Of course, Triple H stays strong by putting in a "valiant performance" despite having to wrestle Umaga earlier, but you didn't really expect the "Game" to be booked as inferior to anyone, did you? This was a great match, and was a nice way to end a PPV that had a lot more filler than killer to it.
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