WWE No Mercy 2007

I'd never watched this show before, but the recent announcement of the returning Punjabi Prison match made me realise I'd never actually seen one before. So, hoping to use the hype for the returning match to pad up the reading figures for this blog, I decided to give it a watch. No-one warned me about THREE Triple H matches though...

Triple H vs Randy Orton

Right, I don’t want to get onto a “slagging Triple H” off thread right at the start of the show, but there are a select band of wrestlers I’d be happy to see wrestle three times in one night and HHH is not one of those guys. The challenge is to have three interesting matches on the night, and unfortunately you suspect he must have been saving the interesting stuff for later in the night. Honestly, if I told you to close your eyes and imagine a 10 minute HHH/Orton match, you’d almost certainly picture this match move-for-move. There are a few positives: I liked the big clothesline and double-sledge to the back of the head that HHH hit, Orton had great timing kicking the ropes into HHH’s crotch before hitting the draping DDT and HHH locking in a figure-four after Orton misses a kneedrop is a logical move. Also, the ending was a nice change – no finishers, Triple H gets the pin from a roll-up after Orton missed a corner charge.

Jeff Hardy, Paul London & Brian Kendrick vs Mr Kennedy, Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch

This is billed as a bonus match, and it’s a nice little 8 minute match. Wisely, they largely leave Kennedy out of this, only really featuring at the end. Murdoch seems especially inspired here, really liked him countering Hardy’s sitdown jawbuster by simply not going down with him and instead booting Hardy in the face. Kendrick becomes face-in-peril after Murdoch opens up the ropes, sending Kendrick tumbling to the floor. The heat on Kendrick is brief due to the match length, but he hits a wild leaping DDT on Cade to make the hot tag. Hardy basically dumps Murdoch on his head with a gourdbuster, and everything breaks down, leaving Kennedy and London in the ring. Kennedy takes the win with the leaping Finlay roll. Good little sprint here.

CM Punk vs Big Daddy V

Nonsensical stuff here. V looks great dominating Punk to start, smothering him on the mat and wailing away with crossfaces. When Punk does escape, he’s quicker getting up so can hit V in the head with some (admittedly crap) kicks to the head…and so Matt Striker leaps in to beat him down for the DQ. This costs his charge the ECW title, doesn’t make any sense. Waste of time match.

Triple H vs Umaga

Because Vince is a bastard, he puts HHH into another match to defend his title. This is a lot better than the opener, they keep it brief and actually tell a decent story. An early HHH DDT looks like shit, with Umaga falling to his knees with his head nowhere near the mat. Umaga hits HHH in the ribs with a thrust kick, and from that point on has a focal point. A Samoan Drop and a series of big strikes highlight this plan, and HHH does a nice job of selling the damage. Umaga locks in a bearhug, continuing the focus, though I’m not a fan of HHH using an eyerake to escape when he’s a face. The end doesn’t hurt Umaga either, as HHH takes advantage of one mistake – a missed corner charge – and quickly hits the Pedigree to retain. This was a fine little match.

Finlay vs Rey Mysterio

When you’ve got two guys who were pretty much the best in the world at the time facing each other, you go in with pretty high hopes. I’d say that these hopes weren’t fully met, but that’s due to the booking rather than the performances of both men. Love Rey’s fluidity early on. It’s not just that his spots look impressive, but also that everything flows in a way that makes sense, each move follows on logically from the one he’s just hit. For example, he hits a slingshot dropkick into the ring on a sat-down Finlay, which positions him perfectly to hit a slingshot splash. Finlay takes over in a lovely way, avoiding a Rey sunset flip powerbomb to the floor by grabbing the ring apron and pulling it up over Rey’s head to pummel him. From there, Finlay slides Rey shoulder first into the ringpost, and from there works over the shoulder. Loved him stopping Rey’s momentum on a flying headscissors to turn it into a shoulderbreaker. Mysterio’s comeback is really nicely done and he kind of peppers Finlay with offence until Finlay tumbles backwards from the ring apron with a sickening thud. This ends up being the end of the match, with the referee throwing up an X for the match stoppage. They really blow the end though, as Finlay is faking the injury to jump Mysterio, and the camera zooms in on Finlay’s face to show this. Even odder, Cole acknowledges the faking, but then continues to pretend Finlay is actually injured, thus blowing all the suspense. Unsurprisingly, Finlay jumps off his stretcher and attacks Rey. Match was really good until the hokey ending.

Candice Michelle vs Beth Phoenix

This is really interesting, as the match itself is very much not good, but there are some really good bits mixed in. Candice, for example, hits really shit kicks and can barely run the ropes, but she pulls off this cool little roll-up and works a nice short-arm scissors. Michelle also hits a decent crossbody. Phoenix is really good at working the size difference, but the match is a bit too clunky and they both seem a bit lost in between moves. Phoenix wins with a cradle suplex.

Batista vs The Great Khali

So, the rules of the Punjabi Prison match are that there are two big cages, with the inner cage attached to the ring. Each side of the ring has a door that can only be opened once and is padlocked after 1 minute. If all four doors get padlocked, you have to climb out. The winner is the guy who successfully escapes both the inner and outer cage.

This isn’t a match you’d technically call “good”, but it’s an enjoyable spectacle for the most part. The limits on the door opening times are, I assume, designed to add some psychology as you can’t just open doors willy-nilly, but Khali pretty much blows that by calling for the first door less than a minute in. Batista pretty much bumps around like a loon for Khali here, and this may be what carries the match. There’s a nice tease of the Batista Bomb when Khali tries a ten count in the corner, and the spinebuster Batista hits on Khali looks good. Less good is Khali attempting to crush Batista under the weight of the final cage door when he realises that they aren’t going to be able to walk out – it looks really terrible despite Batista doing his best to make it look painful. Batista takes a huge bump from the cage when they both try climbing out, which gives Khali a huge lead, and this means that Batista also has to take the biggest risk by leaping from the top of the inner cage to the outer, which would have been a nasty bump if he’d missed. Luckily, he makes it and touches down first to win this fun, but nonsensical, match.

Triple H vs Randy Orton

This is, thankfully, the final HHH bout of the night and is a last man standing match. Orton goes right after HHH’s injured ribs to start. Really nicely done too, he’d hit a rib, then take advantage of HHH recoiling to blast him in the face a few times. Then, when HHH would start to cover his face, back to the ribs again. Orton continues the rib work with a backsuplex on the barrier, then brilliantly locking in a bodyscissors on the ribs whilst choking HHH with a cable. Nice spot. Orton shows great poise here, standing by passively whilst the ref counts, but as soon as HHH even moves an arm, he changes stance, getting ready to strike. HHH gets his moments to shine as he throws Orton through a table on a missed RKO and then hits a spinebuster on the floor for a close call. They start hitting bigger and bigger shots that should really finish it, considering both guys had barely been making an 8 count earlier. The RKO on the open chair would have been an acceptable finisher, and it does start to get towards overkill by the end. HHH hitting a chairshot with Orton’s head held in the “V” of the ringsteps looks shit, as he’s obviously not hit him. Eventually, Orton hits the RKO on the announce table to finish it. This was actually a pretty good match for the most part, but honestly you could have put anyone in the HHH role, as Orton’s character work and match timing were spot on here.