No Mercy 10/8
WWE's October PPV No Mercy took place Sunday night, and while the card was very lackluster going in, and not much in the way of turns or title changes took place, the wrestlers all worked very hard and made it a show that was okay for what it was worth. The show was complete with a fatal 4 way for the title with King Booker keeping his title, and the other title match saw Kendrick and London keep their titles over Idol and Stevens in really what ended up being a very solid match.
Chris Benoit made his return on the PPV, and he and William Regal stole the show with a 12 minute match that included very solid wrestling as well as some vicious head shots that ended with Regal bleeding and Benoit having blood as well coming out of his mouth. The problem with the match as a whole is since it came across as a surprise, the match will be well overlooked by the fans that were watching the show mostly to see Booker go against the odds and lose his belt - which he didn't. I for one hope that they think clearly about this and allow Benoit to go up against Booker for the title and even think long and hard about him winning it. He would be a great example of what a champion should be, and with the belt would represent the promotion and SmackDown as a whole very proud.
The other matches on the card were again, well done as far as the effort from the wrestlers, but the overall buzz was just dead. Matt Hardy and Gregory Helms went at it in the opener, and had a solid match, which is not hard to believe at all based on their past matches. I don't understand why at a "B" PPV though, with not much else happening, that the match was a non-title match? Hardy went over and got the clean win, and by all means should not have the belt, but for some reason does not. Maybe its a setup for a future title switch, but we'll see.
The tag title match was very good, with again, the title staying with the current wrestlers in London and Kendrick going over clean against the tag team of Idol and Stevens. The four guys worked well together, and made this a very enjoyable and watchable match. I was expecting a title change, but can see the current champs keeping the belts, and hopefully they will keep these two teams going at it for a few more matches.
I get the whole thing with MVP. They wanted to bring in a guy with such an ego, that by wrestling stiffs for the first month to two months, he will get so much heat that the fans cannot wait for him to get his lunch handed to him. Of course in years to come, when people look at the lineup for No Mercy 2006, everyone will ask - who the heck is Marty Garner and why was he on a PPV match? MVP looked like a green rookie, that is going to need a lot of work to eventually get some real heat with the fans and good matches with faces.
Kennedy vs Taker was slow and pretty weak. They did what they had to do protecting Kennedy as a guy that is going to be part of the future of the show, yet as usual they protected Taker so that even though he lost, he looked strong with getting tombstones on Kennedy and the ref, which why the ref I didn't get, but whatever.
As far as the main was concerned, the four-way was a decent back and forth battle, with each guy getting some offense. I wouldn't really say there was a MVP (no pun there) of the match, since each guy got offense, and each guy was portrayed pretty strong in the end. Booker got the pin on his court member - Finley, after Batista beat up Finley enough to soften him up for the pin. This should lead to some interesting booking, if they continue with a Finley face turn, or do they go into the planned Batista-Finley feud that was supposed to be the one-on-one for this card.
One thing they clearly could not do, is go ahead with the planned main event, as no one for one second brought Lashley going over and getting the strap one-on-one vs Booker. They needed to spice the match up, they did, and it got over about as well as it was going to. I personally gave the card a thumbs in the middle, or the obvious 5 out of 10. The card was so weak going in, I don't think enough happened to make it any better, nor any worse than an average show.
