WWE No Mercy 2017 Review

No Mercy 2017

Los Angeles, CA

Staples Center

Brand: Raw

9/24/17

I never would have thought a few months ago that the Raw brand would be holding their own mini Wrestlemania in the month of September, but that is in fact what we're getting with this show or at least with the double main event. I have been enjoying Raw way more than Smackdown lately although that could be because I haven't been able to give Smackdown my full attention, but then I remember Jinder is the WWE champion & Natalya is the women's champion and I'm glad I haven't had to pay full attention to the blue brand. I'm really looking forward to this show, with two blockbuster main events and a solid undercard this could be the best brand specific show of the entire year.

I have enjoyed the war of words between John Cena and Roman Reigns, even though most of the things they have been saying about each other could very well be said about themselves. In this feud Cena has shown why he is one of the best to ever cut a promo as he has verbally tore Roman to shreds week after week. I had to lol at the line where Roman said that Cena has never had a great match for his entire career. I see Roman getting the win in this one as Cena really doesn't need it especially since he is leaving after this to go film another movie, the only way I do see Cena winning is if WWE know for sure that he will be back by Royal Rumble to do a rematch between the two of them. 

The feud over the WWE Universal Championship between Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman has been great, only for the fact that Braun Strowman is the greatest thing to ever happen to WWE in the last few years and in my eyes he can do no wrong. I unfortunately see Brock coming out of this still with the Universal Championship around his waist as Braun has dominated this feud getting the best of Brock every time they have been in segments together, but I will be happy if I'm wrong and they decide to put the title on Braun as he is the most over guy on Raw at this moment. If this isn't Braun's time to be the champ then I will say that sometime within the next year he will be the champion as it's pretty inevitable at this point. 

Once again we are getting a multi woman match for the Raw Women's Championship which is crazy as it seems like we can't get more than one month in a row without having a multi woman match on the PPV. This match was originally suppose to be a four way, but this past Monday we got the return of Bayley who would be added to the match. I feel that if Bayley had been healthy the entire time we would've never had Emma in this match which sucks because I'm tired of seeing the same four women face each other week after week. I was all for Emma getting a push into the title picture, but with the return of Bayley and the upcoming Raw debut of Asuka I feel she will get pushed right back down the card and most likely won't be seen as much on Raw. If WWE would realize that we can have more than one women's feud featured on a show then perhaps I could see better things happening for Emma in the future, I still would be down for an extended feud between Emma and Mickie James who is also hardly ever seen on Raw, it's amazing they have a talented vet like Mickie on the roster and they fail to utilize her like she deserves. I definitely see Alexa retaining here and setting it up for Asuka to beat her for the title and perhaps continue her undefeated streak she had in NXT on the red brand. 

I don't have much to say about the rest of the card as nothing too notable or exciting has happened with any of the other feuds. After the amazing promo The Miz cut on Enzo a few weeks ago I was hoping we would get Miz vs Enzo on the show, but instead we get Miz defending his Intercontinental Championship against Jason Jordan and Enzo challenging Neville for the Cruiserweight Championship. I predict that both of those championships will be retained at No Mercy. To round out the card we have Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose defending their Raw Tag Team Championship against former champions Cesaro & Sheamus as well as Finn Balor facing off against Bray Wyatt in a "Man vs Man match" I predict Ambrose & Rollins will retain their titles and Balor will defeat Bray Wyatt. 

Kick Off Match
Elias def Apollo Crews w/ Titus O'Neil
This match was just average at best and I wish I could say that was only because it was a kick off match, but it's more due to it being an Elias match. I have yet to see anything special about Elias once the bell rings as he is just average at best in my opinion, my only interest in him comes from his pre match song. Apollo picked things up toward the end of this match, but it wasn't enough to make this match anything special. The finish comes when Apollo misses a top rope dive and is sent face first into the corner before he is hit with the Drift Away to give the Drifter the win. After the match Elias stomps on Apollo until Titus runs in to make the save. Rating: **

Match #1

The Miz (c) w/ The Miztourage def Jason Jordan (WWE Intercontinental Championship)
The story of this match was JJ trying to overcome the numbers disadvantage he was up against, every time he would get in control of the match Miz would roll to the outside where he could get help from the Miztourage. JJ did a good job of fighting off the Miztourage until the end where he was caught unexpectedly with a shot by Axel and then hit with the Skull Crushing Finale.  After the match JJ is interviewed by Renee Young where he says that The Miz sucks and he wants a rematch. This was an ok match, but not as good as I expected it to be as it felt like a match you could see on any episode of Raw. Rating: **1/4

Match #2

Finn Balor def Bray Wyatt
Finn decided to debut some new grey gear tonight including the jacket that was a couple of shades lighter than usual. I really thought we were getting a bait and switch with this match when Bray attacked Finn before the bell, but thankfully we didn't. Finn did a really good job selling the ribs throughout the match. I liked that Finn pulled a page out of the Finlay playbook using the ring skirt to his advantage before hitting a nice looking PK kick. One thing I didn't really like was Finn's over exaggerated facial expression when Bray popped up in his spider pose while Finn was climbing up to the top as I felt it was a bit too much. It was pretty cool how Finn hit the Coup De Grace to the back of the head of Bray as he was getting to his feet and that may have been a better way to end the match rather than just the normal Coup De Grace to a prone Bray. I liked how Bray hit the turnbuckles with force when he was hit with the running shotgun dropkicks.This match was way better than I expected it to be considering I couldn't care less about the feud. This match could be both men's best match they have had this year and one of my all time favorite Finn matches he has ever had as these two surprisingly work really well together. Rating: **3/4

Match #3
Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose (c) def Cesaro & Sheamus (Raw Tag Team Championship)

This was my match of the night as these four put on a great hard hitting match. The match starts out with The Bar working over Ambrose which includes Cesaro sending him into the steps with a big swing, this led to referee John Cone being oddly over aggressive toward Cesaro telling him to back off so he can check on Ambrose which is funny because Ambrose has been through way worse than being swung into the steps. I believe the Hardyz asked Ambrose to get revenge on Cesaro/Sheamus for knocking Jeff's teeth out earlier this year as Ambrose catapulted Cesaro into the ring post where he hit mouth first and started bleeding from the mouth as we would later see that Cesaro is missing some teeth. 

There was a cool spot where we got a call back to the match at SummerSlam as Sheamus/Cesaro have Ambrose in position for their assisted White Noise and this time instead of Rollins hitting a hurricanrana sending Cesaro crashing into Sheamus, we get Sheamus hitting White Noise on Ambrose and then Cesaro hits a powerbomb on Rollins off the middle rope where he would land on top of a laid out Ambrose, surprisingly this only got a 2 count. The finish comes when Sheamus goes for a Brogue Kick on Ambrose as Cesaro holds Rollins, but as Sheamus runs at him Ambrose fakes passing out so that he can roll up Sheamus when he bends down to pick him up, but Sheamus kicks out. Sheamus goes for another Brogue on Ambrose, but he ducks so Sheamus hits Cesaro instead. Rollins hits his ripcord knee and then Ambrose hits Dirty Deeds to retain their titles. 

This match was so freaking great and adds to the list of great tag title matches in WWE this year. I absolutely can't wait until The Revival is back for good and is apart of this great tag division as I can already imagine the great matches they could have with either of these teams. I have no complaints about this match as it was great from start to finish and I have to imagine we are getting a ladder match with these two teams at TLC. Rating: ***3/4

Match #4

Alexa Bliss (c) def Sasha Banks, Bayley, Nia Jax, & Emma (Raw Women's Championship)

I thought Nia looked really good in this match as it took all four girls teaming up to take her down and even when they did that she didn't stay down for long. The powerbomb she took to the outside could have been much worse as she landed right on her neck. I liked that they didn't make Alexa look like the chicken shit scared heel in this match as she went right at Nia at times during this match instead of running away like she did during their match on Raw last week. I like how Nia used Alexa as a weapon to knock Sasha off the top rope before she hit a Samoan drop on both of them. I liked the callback they did with Bayley and Nia where Bayley gets Nia in the guillotine choke just like she did in their match way back in NXT and thankfully Cory Graves was on commentary to bring that up. We got a few minutes of Sasha vs Bayley as well as some more stiff shots between Alexa and Sasha. The finish was Nia coming in and running over everyone until she misses a charge into the corner and then Alexa shoves Bayley into Emma before hitting a DDT for the win. 

Multi person matches can either be really good or really bad and thankfully this was one falls in the really good column, in fact it was a bit surprising just how good this actually was. Most of the time in these matches there is one person who is left out and not involved in the match as much as they should be, but I can't say that for this match as it felt like all five women got equal time to shine and there were times in the match where you could buy any of the five coming out as the victor. This was a really fun match with some creative spots. It should be noted that during the kickoff show we found out that Asuka will be making her Raw debut at the next Raw PPV  TLC, so it looks like this may be the last big show where we see Alexa retaining her championship. Also during her Raw Talk segment Alexa did a lot of talking down to Mickie James, so I would expect that match to happen on Raw. Rating: ***

Match #5
Roman Reigns def John Cena
At the beginning of this match there was too much smiling for my liking and then on top of that we had Cena joking around acting like he was gonna walk out until Roman went after him showing that he wasn't in the mood for Cena's bull shit on this night and that part I did like. We then get the typical big time main event Cena match with both men hitting finishers and kicking out of them and then Roman kicks out of a super AA which leads to Cena clearing off the announce table and looking to AA Roman through it, but Roman counters and hits a nice spear off one announce table through another. We then get Roman kicking out of two more AAs and then hitting Cena with a Superman Punch and a Spear for the win.

I'm not sure what to think about this match as I feel like I should probably like it more than what I did, but it didn't give me the epic big fight feel that it needed to have. There wasn't anything that creative in the match that we haven't seen in all Cena matches, at this point Cena & Roman kicking out of multiple finishes isn't enough to really wow me,  It was a good match, but nowhere near what I felt it should have been. After the match Cena raises Roman's hand and whispers something to him. I will say Cena had a really good speech/promo on Raw Talk that for the first time felt real and genuine in my opinion so I recommend checking that out. Rating: ***1/2

Match #6
Enzo Amore def Neville (c) (WWE Cruiserweight Championship)

This was really great at the beginning as it consisted of Neville beating the crap out of Enzo for pretty much the entire time (except for when Neville got too cocky and decides to climb down from the top rope and hit a middle rope phoenix splash which Enzo moves out of the way of) and that is always a good thing. The finish was really bad as Enzo gets knocked out of the ring and sent over the barricade where he decides to grab the belt and bring it into the ring where he is chastised by the referee so he decides to give the belt to the referee and as the referee turns his back Enzo hits a low blow and rolls up Neville to become the new cruiserweight champion. 

Prior to this match the cruiserweight division was on life support, but I'm sad to report that after this match the cruiserweight division was pronounced dead as Enzo becoming champion caused the division to draw its very last breath. Seriously though I really hope that Neville or anyone else in the division wins the title on Raw or 205 Live this week as more than one night of Enzo as champ is too long. If I didn't hate Enzo enough after winning the title it got even worse when I watched Raw Talk where he was so damn annoying and rude as he constantly kept interrupting Renee and Jerry Lawler to make stupid jokes that only he found funny.  Rating: *1/4

Match #7
Brock Lesnar (c) w/ Paul Heyman def Braun Strowman (WWE Universal Championship)

This match started out really good and exactly what I was expecting out of a Braun vs Brock match as they were hitting big moves on each other and Braun was throwing Brock around the ring like he was a sack of potatoes. After we get a few minutes of them hitting big moves on each other they start to slow down a bit and that's when the match starts becoming disappointing. The finish of the match sees Brock lock on the kimura to try and weaken the monster. Braun tries to make a few comebacks even hitting his powerslam, but is unable to make the cover due to the exhaustion and the arm being worked over. Brock is finally able to kick out of a powerslam and then hits the F5 out of nowhere after many failed attempts earlier in the match to retain the Universal Championship.

This match should have been structured just like the Brock vs Goldberg match from WrestleMania as the longer this match went on the more disappointing it got and then it ends very anticlimactically. If I had known this match was going to go the way it did then I would have much rather preferred Roman vs John Cena to end this show as it was a much better match. I have to wonder where Braun goes after this due to being pinned clean as a sheet for the first time, I hope this loss fuels him to become even more crazy and out of control in the next several months. Rating: **3/4

This show started out decent and then got really good mid way through, but unfortunately after the Cena vs Roman match the show took a nose dive with the cruiserweight match and the Universal Championship match. Show Rating: C-

No Mercy 2017 Match Rankings
8.  WWE Cruiserweight Championship
7. Elias vs Apollo Crews
6. WWE Intercontinental Championship
5. WWE Universal Championship
4. Finn Balor vs Bray Wyatt
3. Raw Women's Championship
2. Roman Reigns vs John Cena
1. Raw Tag Team Championship

I hope you enjoy this review and will be back for my Hell in a Cell review in a couple of weeks. You can always feel free to comment on here or on my twitter @MTW3589.