No Mercy is the latest beloved WWE B-pay per view to return under the NXT banner but these matches will make you wonder why anyone liked it in the first place. These are the 10 worst WWE No Mercy matches ever.
00:00 - Start
00:36 - 10
01:40 - 9
02:26 - 8
03:19 - 7
04:19 - 6
05:13 - 5
06:13 - 4
07:17 - 3
08:18 - 2
09:27 - 1
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00:00 - Start
00:36 - 10
01:40 - 9
02:26 - 8
03:19 - 7
04:19 - 6
05:13 - 5
06:13 - 4
07:17 - 3
08:18 - 2
09:27 - 1
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Now then, last week we made a list of the best No Mercy matches ever, and it was really
00:04 good.
00:05 Mark Markison gave it 18 stars.
00:06 The surprising thing about No Mercy, however, is there are so many bangers, which is good,
00:11 but what that meant was my honourable mentions category could have been a list in its own
00:14 right.
00:15 To that end, and because I like nice things, shout out to Edge and Christian, Rock and
00:19 Jericho, Austin and Triple H, Angle and Cena, and many, many more.
00:23 But because life is about balance and life is hard, I must acknowledge that No Mercy
00:27 was also the stage for a series of stinkers.
00:30 Thus, in the name of balance, I'm Dan hailing from partsFUNknown, and here are the 10 worst
00:34 No Mercy matches ever.
00:36 10.
00:37 CM Punk vs Big Daddy V (2007)
00:40 A two-minute match on a paid fee where your champion gets squashed is bad.
00:43 A championship match that ends in a thoroughly dumb disqualification is bad.
00:47 A match that solely exists as a punishment for something that happened off-screen is
00:50 bad.
00:51 This match is all of those things.
00:52 And when I tell you about the backstage incident itself, you'll need to pause the video and
00:56 pace around a bit.
00:57 WWE CW Champion CM Punk had paid a visit to OVW to work a very brief angle and help the
01:03 younger talent.
01:04 While there, he met WWE Hall of Famer Tony Atlas, who absolutely did not recognise him.
01:10 Later on, Atlas said he'd felt Punk was disrespectful, which led to Punk clapping
01:13 back in his own defence, just pretend to be shocked.
01:16 And when that filtered back to the main roster, the decision was made to have Punk face the
01:20 former viscera at No Mercy.
01:22 And then the match sees Big Daddy V do his impression of wrestling until his manager
01:26 Matt Stryker interferes in plain view of the ref to get him disqualified, the worst managerial
01:31 decision since Frank DeBoer.
01:32 Am I right, lads?
01:34 Little football joke.
01:35 Oh, and all of this happened in Chicago, which is where Punk's from, obviously.
01:39 Bloody hell.
01:40 9.
01:41 Naomi vs Alexa Bliss (2016)
01:43 So this one's not necessarily their fault, which is why it's so low on the list.
01:47 Alexa was supposed to challenge Becky Lynch for the SmackDown Women's Championship,
01:50 but Becky had to be pulled from the show due to injury.
01:53 In her place, they plonked Naomi, two good workers who plod through a routine match,
01:58 but when thrown together like this, there's not a lot they can do.
02:00 There's a ton of rest holds, there's very little chemistry in the ring, it's all…
02:04 I hate to use this word, but it's just quite boring.
02:07 There's no story for the crowd to buy into, and Alexa was still relatively new to the
02:11 main roster, so the crowd haven't fully got to know her, and Naomi's in the early
02:15 stages of a gimmick change, so the match plays to near silence.
02:19 In the end, Naomi does a weird roll-up that makes her victory look like a complete accident,
02:22 and that's it.
02:24 This match happened.
02:25 Clap, clap, clap.
02:26 8.
02:27 Torrie Wilson vs Stacey Keebler (2001)
02:30 Do you like boobs?
02:31 Do you like bums?
02:32 Do you like wrestling?
02:33 Well, here's a key to a time machine, 'cause in the noughties, you could get all of them
02:36 at once.
02:37 Except for the wrestling.
02:38 On a card that features not one, but three bona fide classics, Torrie Wilson and Stacey
02:43 Keebler were booked to have a scrap in their unmentionables.
02:46 I think the entire show might have been themed around this one match, because the stage does
02:50 look a little bit like a bridal lingerie factory, and they brought a softbox in to give the
02:54 whole thing a gentle softcore porn glow.
02:57 When Stacey comes to the ring, JR just outright calls her stupid, and the match starts, basically
03:02 as an excuse for the men in the crowd to get really excited because two girls' skin is
03:06 touching.
03:07 Look, I'm as horny as they come, but my idea of a good time isn't watching two women
03:11 awkwardly roll over Jack Doan, and then engage in a series of badly executed pinning combinations.
03:16 And nor is it…
03:18 7.
03:19 William Regal vs. Naked Midian (2000)
03:22 Wrestling matches are built around a simple story that you're telling between the bells.
03:26 Can he lift the big man?
03:28 Can she lock in her submission?
03:29 Will they co-exist?
03:30 It's what draws us in to the moment.
03:33 The question here is how long will it be before the man takes his clothes off, and the follow-up
03:37 question is why are we sitting here watching it by choice?
03:40 Naked Midian's entire character was that he was naked, and even the noughties crowd
03:43 don't vibe.
03:44 They respond with noisy indifference.
03:46 They have the energy of people who stop briefly in Leicester Square to look curiously at the
03:50 buskers before they go to the reason they're actually there, Eminem World.
03:54 Bloody tourists.
03:55 Where was I?
03:56 Oh yeah.
03:57 There's a weird hot tag energy to the moment Midian takes his clothes off, which gives
03:59 the match an unearned second wind.
04:01 But between the unfunny character and the uninteresting wrestling, this match is a pimple
04:05 on the nudist ass of the card.
04:07 William Regal and his posh Mancunian accent make me very happy indeed.
04:11 I thoroughly enjoyed his run as the goodwill ambassador to the WWE, but my goodwill for
04:15 this character doesn't present the match with any reprieve.
04:18 6.
04:19 Ivory vs The Fabulous Moolah, 1999
04:22 A little story.
04:23 In 1998, WWE reintroduced their Women's Championship.
04:26 They fleshed out the division by hiring women with in-ring pedigree, the likes of Jacqueline,
04:30 Tori and, of course, Ivory.
04:33 So naturally, the champion was entered into a feud with the septuagenarian Fabulous Moolah.
04:38 Being fearless, Moolah and Mae Young move around considerably better than I do.
04:42 But the match still takes place in slow motion.
04:44 The world's lightest forearm strikes give way to the limpest snapmares, and in one nail-biting
04:48 moment Moolah delivers some high-risk action from the bottom rope.
04:52 But not content to leave it all to Moolah, Ivory does go for a suicide dive and manages
04:56 to land squarely on her own head.
04:59 Lovely.
05:00 Honestly, Mae Young is a bit of a badass, taking three bumps off the apron in a way
05:03 that has me wondering if there's a direct lineage between her and Darby Allin.
05:07 But in the end, Moolah hits Ivory with a no-pressure roll-up and becomes the champion.
05:12 Good grief.
05:13 5.
05:14 MVP vs. Marty Garner, 2006
05:15 There's a good chance you've forgotten this match exists.
05:18 He might be a fave amongst the fans these days, but the start to life on the main roster
05:22 was a rocky road for Montel Montavious Porter.
05:24 People weren't sure what to make of his backstage segments, where he was presented
05:28 as an arrogant tool who talked a big game but never got his hands dirty.
05:32 So he already faced an uphill struggle when he had his debut match at No Mercy in 2006,
05:36 which became steeper when fans saw his athletic suit ring gear.
05:40 And as if it couldn't get any worse, colour commentary at the time was provided by everybody's
05:44 favourite bully, John Bradshaw Layfield, who brought his XXXL shovel to bury the debutante
05:48 this time.
05:49 The conceit was that MVP had handpicked his first opponent to showcase his talent, and
05:54 that opponent turned out to be enhancement wrestler Marty Garner.
05:57 Lovely heel tactics, but the crowd chants "boring" in the first ten seconds, and
06:01 then what MVP shows of his in-ring ability is tremendously dull.
06:04 This is a SmackDown angle at best, and not a good one at all.
06:07 Thankfully, over time, things started to click for the guy, but boy howdy, this was not the
06:11 way to show us he mattered.
06:13 4.
06:14 Enzo Amore vs Neville, 2017 There are several dings for this one, a match
06:17 so bad it made the man Gravity remembered, PAC, leave the company.
06:22 After building a ton of momentum in NXT that was brought gladly to the main roster, Enzo's
06:26 heap had evaporated by this point, evidenced by his entrance chants along, which the crowd
06:30 takes part in quarter-hearted.
06:32 It is stark how little people care.
06:35 And then he cuts a full promo.
06:36 Have you ever been to an amateur comedy show, and each act gets five minutes, then someone
06:40 starts bombing in the first 30 seconds, but you know and we know that they have to keep
06:44 going so we're all just sitting there and it's the longest five minutes of your life?
06:48 It's that.
06:49 And then that stretches to the entire match, which is just Neville massively overpowering
06:53 Enzo in such a way that is not exciting nor interesting.
06:57 But it's worse when you watch it back knowing the outcome.
06:59 Every one of Enzo's comeback spots is stifled, the ref gets to an eight count but just stops
07:04 because Enzo picks up the belt, and then he does a dick kick while the back is turned
07:08 and wins the belt, and it's just so insulting to everyone watching, and especially to the
07:11 work Neville had put into the Cruiserweight division, which was a large chunk of the reason
07:15 he ultimately left.
07:17 3.
07:18 Batista vs The Great Khali, 2007 Against my better judgement, whenever they
07:21 show a crane shot of the Punjabi prison, there's a little part of my brain that gets excited.
07:25 It's the same part of my brain that perks up when you drive past a theme park and see
07:29 the big exciting ride, forgetting that every time you go on it, you end up being a bit
07:34 sick.
07:35 I'm all for new and different match types as a special attraction to enhance the viewing
07:37 experience, but it generally does help with the viewing experience if you can actually
07:41 view the experience, which is barely possible here thanks to a combination of two cages
07:46 and a bit of local theatre lighting effects.
07:48 The pair give it a go gamely, but Khali can barely move, which means even when you watch
07:52 the match on double speed to refresh your memory, it feels like it's happening in
07:56 slow motion.
07:57 Meanwhile, Cole is really trying to make fetch happen by saying every few minutes that this
08:01 is steel reinforced bamboo, and I don't think that means anything.
08:05 The end is quite silly fun.
08:07 It all gets a bit American Ninja Warrior as Batista jumps from one cage to the other to
08:11 escape before the big man.
08:13 It looks cool and is mildly entertaining, but it is not good wrestling.
08:18 2.
08:19 Triple H vs Kane, 2002 Strapping, I'm gonna whinge.
08:22 The match here is actually kinda fine, but everything around it just makes me so very
08:26 cross.
08:27 First of all, it's the KTVic storyline, which is the Wagyu beef steak of yikes.
08:31 And that means we have two of the biggest stars of the era facing each other to unify
08:34 two of the biggest belts in the era, and instead of selling that, JR and the King are having
08:39 a lively debate over what constitutes murder.
08:42 And then yeah, they're unifying the World Heavyweight title with the Intercontinental
08:45 title and that just pisses me off.
08:47 We're right at the beginning of the trip's reign of terror.
08:49 After handing him the big gold belt, WWE made the decision, I assume to continue their great
08:54 tradition of nonsense, to not carry through the lineage that JR tells us is a century
08:59 long.
09:00 So instead, they decided to make it mean something by hoovering up the fabled IC belt into it,
09:05 which didn't work and instead just compounded the reign of terror because all it meant was
09:09 that there was literally one belt on Raw for people to fight over, and it was being held
09:13 hostage by the game.
09:15 It's a decision so stupid they reversed it just 6 months later, and thankfully it took
09:19 only 20 short years for the IC belt to start meaning something once more.
09:24 All hail the Ring General.
09:26 And number 1, Vince McMahon vs Stephanie McMahon, 2003
09:30 Twenty years before engaging in a hostile takeover of the company from which he'd retired
09:34 in alleged disgrace, steamrolling his own daughter in the process, Vince McMahon fought
09:38 that same daughter in a no holds barred I quit match.
09:41 This is like the worst hits of Vince McMahon.
09:43 It's navel-gazing family drama that had reached its peak two years prior.
09:47 Vince is using Sable as a prop to snog a younger woman in front of his wife on TV, and in the
09:51 end he doesn't even do the job for his baby-faced daughter.
09:54 It's not an athletic contest, obviously, so instead what you get is Vince mugging for
09:59 the camera and Stephanie screaming for 9 minutes like she's auditioning for a part in The
10:03 Exorcist.
10:04 At least when Vince fought Shane, there was a relative balance in their skill level that
10:07 allowed them to use smoke and mirrors to paper over the cracks.
10:10 In the end, Linda throws the towel in for Steph, and then because you might as well
10:12 go the distance, Vince does a post-match shove on his wife as well for good measure.
10:17 I love sports entertainment as much as the next guy, but this is certainly not sports,
10:21 nor is it entertaining.
10:22 And that's our list!
10:23 The comments section is now open for business.
10:25 Let me know any you think we might have missed, and while you're there, utterly destroy that
10:29 like button and have a sniff around the subscribe as well.
10:31 And when you're ready, have a gander at some of our other lists, like this one.