WWE No Mercy PPV Review
October 10, 2007
Chicago, Ill.
Report by Ryan Schwimmer, PWTorch.com contributor

Hello all and welcome to "Schwimmer's Take" on WWE's No Mercy Pay-Per-View. Again I am writing this after watching the PPV at a friend's house, and overall I was very impressed, as you'll see.

We started out with a re-cap of what's happened between Randy Orton and John Cena over the past few weeks. Once that video package is over, I have to double-take as I feel like I'm just watching Raw. Mr. McMahon comes out with William Regal and says almost exactly what he said on ECW: John Cena blah blah debilitating blah blah stripped of title blah blah. Vince states that he is in this business to give the crowd what they want, and they start chanting "Y2J! Y2J!" Vince says "Well, I'm not going to give you that!" Funny stuff. Vince introduces us to our NEW WWE Champion, Randy Orton. Randy gets to choose his opponent for tonight. He cuts a promo saying that he won't be wrestling John Cena, which surprised the heck out of me seeing as how he's injured. He says no one else deserves the title more than him, and Triple H comes out to prove him wrong or something. Long-winded promos here, WWE Championship match starts right now, Triple H vs. Orton.

(1) WWE Championship: Triple H vs. Randy Orton (c)

Pretty good match. Randy pulled off a nice reverse-type neckbreaker pretty early in the match, making me and most other people (I'm sure) think it was going to be a very short match. It actually turned out to be pretty long for what it was. We get an RKO reversed and then we get a Pedigree reversed after a while. Match ends when Trips runs moves out of the way and Randy dives into the ring post. Trips nearly de-pants Randy as he gets the quick roll-up for the win and his 11th WWE Championship.

MATCH WINNER: Triple H, new WWE Champion.

MATCH ANALYSIS: A decent quick match. Very interesting to see a WWE Championship match that was hyped so much over the past week start the show. I really did not want to see Triple H win the belt, but I guess it's better than Mr. McMahon winning it. Again this feels very much like an episode of Raw.

In the back, Randy looks very distraught and runs into Vince, who says nothing to him and walks away. Lillian Garcia does not sing, but instead tells us we get a "BONUS" 6-man tag team match.

(2) "Bonus six-man tag team match:" Jeff Hardy, London & Kendrick vs. Mr. Kennedy, Cade & Murdoch.

I was worried we were going to see an exact repeat of what we saw Monday night, but Cade & Murdoch announced they have a new tag team partner, and Mr. Kennedy comes out. Funny comment while introducing himself to the Chicago crowd as being from Green Bay (mentioning the Packers would be 5-0 after they beat the Bears tonight, which as we now know didn't happen). Very entertaining matchup but there were a few missed spots throughout the match. Lots of tags bringing in fresh bodies. High-flying match with a lot of entertaining spots, but again some of them were missed and it was a little scary. Murdoch nearly got dropped on his head, Cade was completely out of place when Jeff was supposed to come flying off the barrier. Finish comes when Kennedy hits the Green Bay Plunge off the second rope on Kendrick.

MATCH WINNERS: Mr. Kennedy, Cade & Murdoch.

MATCH ANALYSIS: It was entertaining while it lasted, but the sloppiness of most of the match was very out of character for at least four of the five competitors (I know I'll get blasted for saying this, but Cade & Murdoch are not impressive to me at all). I'm glad they brought Mr. Kennedy in this, as I'm sure it will continue the Jeff vs. Kennedy feud that was going on before Jeff's suspension, which was before Kennedy's suspension.

A re-cap of ECW's Elimination Chase is shown.

(3) ECW World Heavyweight Championship: Big Daddy V w/Matt Striker vs. CM Punk (c).

Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of stomachs turn as they see Big Daddy V coming out for the next match. CM Punk comes out to a humongous ovation from his hometown crowd. The match is slow and boring for the first couple of minutes before Matt Striker comes in and hits Punk to get V disqualified. Beat-down ensues and Punk is bleeding from the mouth.

MATCH WINNER: CM Punk, who retains the ECW World Heavyweight Championship.

MATCH ANALYSIS: Awfully boring, short, and pointless match. Can someone explain to me why CM Punk's blood from his mouth was very minimal and thick while Rey Mysterio's was plentiful and runny a few weeks ago?

Next up was Matt Hardy vs. MVP in a Chicago deep-dish pizza eating contest. Maria, who is also from Chicago, and Melina are the score keepers. Matt chows down about 3 big slices of pizza to MVP's zero, and proceeds to spit it all over MVP's white jacket afer they were done. Decently funny spot, although it made the brownie I was eating a little less desirable.

I apologize, but sometime before this Vince went up to Triple H and told him that the advertised match was Trips vs. Uma(n)ga, and that's still going to happen tonight, but it'll be for the WWE Championship. That's what we're treated to now.

(4) WWE Chamiponship: Uma(n)ga vs. Triple H (c).

This is pretty much a mixture of what we've seen from these two the past two times they've seen each other. There was a DDT on Umaga and he got right up. A Pedigree was reversed. Umaga focused on Trips' midsection throughout the match and Trips sold it fairly well. Match ends when Umaga goes for the butt-to-the-face-train-crash thing and Trips moves and hits the Pedigree for the pin.

MATCH WINNER: Triple H, who retains the WWE Championship.

MATCH ANALYSIS: Nothing special here, probably the exact same match that would have happened if it weren't for the title.

We get a small video package of The Great Khali squishing peoples' faces. Then his translator tells us all to be quiet because Khali is meditating. What he doesn't realize is that Khali can't hear us through our TVs even though we're all groaning. It was obvious to me at this point that we were going to see another WWE Championship match later on. The next match, though, was Finlay vs. Rey-Rey.

(5) Rey Mysterio vs. Finlay.

This was a nice, quick-paced match. Rey had a lot of good spots and Finlay was very sound as always. Nothing too noteworthy other than Finlay reversing a 619 and the finish. Rey hit a diving leg drop onto Finlay, who then fell to the outside. He was faking that he was out cold, being carried away on a stretcher, when he attacked Rey from behind. Cole yelled at him a lot and no one cared.

MATCH WINNER: No Contest. I guess Rey by count-out if you really want to put it in the record books.

MATCH ANALYSIS: Matches should almost always have a clear finish. This really didn't serve much of a purpose except to show how much of a fighting Irish bastard Finlay really is. No Hornswoggle appearance, by the way.

In the back, we find out that even though Triple H might have broken ribs or something, Randy Orton has exercised his Rematch clause for later tonight, and it will be Last Man Standing. Excellent! Next we have the women.

(6) WWE Women's Championship: Beth Phoenix vs. Candice Michelle (c).\

Candice gets in a small amount of offense in the beginning of the match, then looks like total dead weight the entire rest of the match. There was a spot where Beth was supposed to pick her up off the ground, and everyone could tell that Candice was not helping out with the spot at all, so that was botched. Then later on when Beth hit her finisher, it looks like Candice was just there, again not helping out in the slightest. Seemed to me she was bitter she was losing the belt.

MATCH WINNER: Beth Phoenix, new WWE Women's Champion.

MATCH ANALYSIS: Pretty much what I said before. Candice is awful and she needs to go to China and be on Survivor now. Or, better yet, put her in that reality show where they actually kill each other. Wait, that was just a movie? I thought Stone Cold really was that much of a bad-***.

We get a new Jericho video. The only things I could make out in real-time were "REV_22:12" and "2ND_COMING." Oh yeah, it's so Jericho. Not tonight, though.

(7) WWE World Heavyweight Championship Punjabi Prison OMG The Most Amazing Match Concept Anyone's Ever Thought Of: The Great Khali vs. Batista (c).

That's all sarcasm, by the way. I still don't quite understand the rules of this stupid match. Khali had the claw on Teester at one point and it took everyone this long to realize that you can probably just hit Khali in the marbles and he'll stop squishing your head. Khali choked Teester out and climbed over the first cage and was nearly all the way up the outer cage when Teester finally got up. He climed to the outside of the first cage and jumped to the top of the other cage to beat Khali to the floor and retain the belt.

MATCH WINNER: Batista, who retains the World Heavyweight Championship.

MATCH ANALYSIS: The only good part was when Batista jumped from one of the cages to the other. Very boring otherwise.

(8) WWE Championship Last Man Standing Match: Randy Orton vs. Triple H (c).

This was a long, back-and-forth matchup. Each man had the upper hand a few different times. There were some really good spots with the ring steps, the ECW table and a chair. Randy took a nice shot from Trips with the steps. When Randy went for the RKO on the Raw table, Trips threw him through the ECW table. And Randy hit the sick RKO onto the set-up chair that he did on Cena during Saturday Night Main Event, though it didn't look as cool. Several nine-counts throughout. The finish comes when Trips goes for a Pedigree on the Raw table, and Randy reverses it into an RKO. The table doesn't break, and Trips doesn't quite make it back up during the ten count.

MATCH WINNER: Randy Orton, the new WWE Champion.

MATCH ANALYSIS: Very good back-and-forth match. I am not a John Cena fan, but I am a believer that this would have been a little better had it been Cena/Orton. I was really looking forward to that match, but they did a good job making up for it.

PAY-PER-VIEW RATING (8.0): I really liked how this show had a main focus throughout, even though it did cheapen the other matches quite a bit. They weren't anything special though, so that didn't bother me too much. I was really hoping to see Jericho at the show, but I'm not going to take away from the rating because of it. The show lasted almost the entire three hours, which is something WWE almost never does. They barely gave us three hours when Wrestlemania was supposed to be four hours. Like I said at the beginning it definitely had a regular TV show feel to it, but a very special one. The main event was great, and the other matches (for the most part) were good.

REPLAY? Probably not. The main thing that made this show so good was the unknown regarding the WWE Championship. How everything panned out was the best part of the show.

Again thank you for reading MY take of WWE No Mercy. Send all feedback to Xenorye@cox.net, and I love feedback so send it! See you all next week for TNA Bound For Glory!

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