PARKS’ TAKE: Top talking point from No Mercy is match order, which isn’t a good sign for overall quality of event

When the major discussion point coming out of a show is the match order, it’s not necessarily a good sign for the overall quality. The main event masquerading as an opening match was tremendous, as was Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz. The highs were high on this show, but the lows were pretty low.

Once again, the show clocked in at under three hours, but unlike Backlash it felt like there was much more padding done with this show to even reach that point. The Triple Threat title match was excellent with some nice innovations. The double submission on A.J. Styles brought things down for a bit, especially when it wasn’t clearly explained by the announcers that Styles wasn’t, in fact, eliminated.

Carmella and Nikki Bella certainly tried, and Nikki did a commendable job carrying Carmella, but the crowd just wasn’t into it. Even Heath Slater and Rhyno seem to have lost a little luster, with WWE not really knowing how to capitalize on their popularity now that they’re tag champions. Their bout against The Usos was just a match.

Jack Swagger vs. Baron Corbin was another match for which the crowd had no time. I understand what WWE was going for here, a hard-hitting match, but Swagger has been defined down so much and Corbin’s style doesn’t lend itself to getting the crowd into him as a heel act from bell-to-bell. The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler was another excellent match, and it should’ve been in the main event slot.

Like the Triple Threat, it could be argued that there was too much nonsense going on at the finish, but the story was Ziggler finally overcoming the deck stacked against him. WWE and The Miz have spent the last few months talking about what a loser Ziggler is – has the damage now been done, or can they capitalize on his IC Title win to make him into something more?

The crowd desperately wanted Becky Lynch and didn’t seem all that interested in Naomi vs. Alexa Bliss. The match wasn’t all that good, either. Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton was a usual Orton-paced match. That’s not a compliment. Wyatt finally gets a big win and now Luke Harper is back in the fold. The match didn’t feature a lot of gimmickry we’ve come to expect from big Wyatt matches, which most figured was the reason it was going on last.