WWE No Way Out 2007

Date: 02/18/2007

Location: Los Angeles, CA 

Announcers: Michael Cole and JBL

The Setup 

This PPV was before WWE started doing Elimination Chamber before Mania, and we got some lame cards over the years. This one featured the Raw Mania main event (Shawn vs. Cena) vs. the Smackdown Mania main event in a weird tag match. This was SmackDown only, otherwise when it was clearly the B show, and honestly, the rest of the show looked pretty bad and mostly meaningless on paper. The bad number wasn’t unexpected.

The Business

According to Wrestlenomics, the show had 205,000 buys worldwide and 135,000 domestic. That ranked third worst for the entire year, only ahead of the first non-ECW One Night Stand in June (Cena vs. Khali) and Cyber Sunday (Batista vs. Undertaker). To speak to the often coldness of this event before Mania, the worldwide buys were only down six percent from No Way Out 2006 (Angle vs. Undertaker). The Elimination Chamber and tying the winner into a Mania title match were necessary in the future. 

The show did 14,000 in attendance according to prowrestlinghistory, which was good for a $750,000 gate.

Results/Ratings

Chris Benoit & The Hardys def. MNM & MVP in 14:19 ***1/4 

Cruiserweight Title Match: Chavo Guerrero def. Scotty 2 Hotty, Daivari, Gregory Helms (C), Funaki, Shannon Moore, Jimmy Yang, and Jamie Noble in 14:11 **1/2 

Finlay & Hornswoggle def. Boogeyman & Little Boogeyman in 6:44 1/2*

Kane def. King Booker in 12:38 *

World Tag Team Title Match: Brian Kendrick & Paul London def. Deuce & Domino in 8:17 *1/2 

ECW Title Match: Mr. Kennedy def. Lashley by DQ in 15:27 1/4 *

John Cena & Shawn Michaels def. Undertaker & Batista in 22:09 ***3/4

Snap Bumps: 

-The main event, with the top four babyfaces, all in the big title matches at Wrestlemania, had some problems with flow, with all four men being babyfaces, but turned out to be a very good main event. After watching the first few PPVs, Shawn was on a roll here in early 2007. While far from ‘97 dropping his pants to expose his junk or ass, he had a much sharper edge than when he was playing the more of the super white meat “making a comeback Shawn” or the merch whore DX version of Shawn. 

-Batista turning on Taker probably wasn’t the choice I would have made then, but a certain predator obviously had no interest in turning Cena heel. 

-The cruiserweight gauntlet match had good action, but it meant nothing to the crowd because they had SEVEN pinfalls in under fifteen minutes—your typical horrible handling of the smaller guys for the era. I don’t recall Chavo’s surprise win kicking off any renaissance period.  

-This whole Kane-Booker T program was so fucking lame. On TV, Booker had a key to the city presentation in Houston that Kane interrupted. Hard to believe Booker took off for TNA later in the year. 

-Deuce and Domino were abysmally performed, terrible gimmicks. The worst part is that it looked that way on paper. What a horrible waste of London and Kendrick. 

-Another good Hardys/MNM match, this time adding Benoit and MVP. Also, another loss for MNM. I’m not sure why they were still pushing the Hardys this hard as a team in 2007. 

-Always nice to see a talented wrestler like Finaly involved with the Boogey Man and little people. They were still doing this in 2007? And on a PPV? 

The Verdict: Thumbs Down 

This show fucking sucked outside of the main event and opener. There was too much busllshit and a dead ass crowd for either match to rescue this one. People were wise not to buy this one.