WWE No Mercy 2007
October 7, 2007
Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois
Announcers: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole, John “Bradshaw” Layfield, Joey Styles, Tazz, Lilian Garcia, Tony Chimel, and Justin Roberts
The Setup
After an unexpected John Cena injury, the company went into this show promising a new champion. The show also featured Batista vs. Kahli one more time, this time in the Punjabi Prison.
The Business
The show did 271,000 PPV buys, the best B show number of 2007. Just knowing that the show would produce a new champ did business. The event also sold out the All State at 12,500 fans for a $700,000 gate.
The Results
WWE Championship: Triple H def. Randy Orton (C) in 11:15 ***1/4
Six-Man Tag Team Match: Mr. Kennedy, Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch def. Jeff Hardy, Brian Kendrick & Paul London in 8:05 **1/4
ECW Championship: CM Punk (C) def. Big Daddy V in 1:37 NR
WWE Championship: Triple H (C) def. Umaga in 6:45 **
Finlay vs. Rey Mysterio ended in a no contest in 9:00 **1/4
WWE Women’s Championship: Beth Phoenix def. Candice Michelle (C) in 4:32 *1/4
World Heavyweight Championship Punjabi Prison Match: Batista (C) def. The Great Khali in 14:47 *
WWE Championship Last Man Standing Match: Randy Orton def. Triple H (C) in 22:00 ***3/4
Notable Happenings
Orton was awarded the title to start the night, lost it to Hunter, and then won it back from Hunter in the final match of the night. The idea was that Vince McMahon was stacking the deck for Hunter because they had been doing some variation of heel authority figure vs. babyface for the vast majority of the last decade by this point.
Notice that Hunter’s old rival, Kurt Angle, worked three matches in TNA at No Surrender the month before this. That sure is interesting timing; I’m sure it’s unrelated.
Hunter vs. Umaga was fine at best, but still better than Angle’s tag with Pacman Jones.
The Punjabi Prison was the shits. Hopefully, we’ve wrapped up any incarnation of a Batista vs. Kahli match, but I can’t remember for certain.
Candace Michelle worked really hard, but she was obviously not the right opponent for Beth to have a good match.
Matt Hardy and MVP had a pizza-eating contest to make this show feel like even more bullshit. The guys were fine, but the concept and execution were the same lame shit they always gave us in this era. All of this and the long promo crowning Orton with Hunter, Vince, and Orton made this feel way too much like TV.
The six-man started well, but fell apart a bit.
Finlay and Rey were having a good match, but they staged a whole production in which Finlay got stretchered to feign an injury, then attacked Rey. I didn’t like the angle for multiple reasons, but I’ll take another match because it started really strong.
The Punk vs. Vis match had barely started when Matt Striker interfered, with Vis leaving Punk a mess at the end.
The Rating: 4.0/10.0
As mentioned, there was too much bullshit on the show, which made the event feel less special and more like TV. The main event was great, but some of those counts were also exceedingly long in the LMS, even by WWE standards. The whole show was fairly disappointing as a reboot.
The Video
