Squared Circle PPV of the Week #10

[The Legend]

So for those unfamiliar with this concept, each week someone will choose a PPV for those interested to watch and review within the next week. Everyone who reviews that week's PPV will be put into a random selection process that I will use to determine who will select the next PPV, and we'll continue on like that. I hope everyone will give this a shot because the more people we have participating in this concept the better it will be and the more active it will make our club.

Without further ado, our first selection for the PPV of the week club is....

No Mercy 1999

FYI, this is the SECOND NO MERCY in 1999!!! Not sure why they had two PPV events called No Mercy in 1999, but just be aware the I was selecting the one in October!



October 17, 1999
Gund Arena/Quicken Loans Arena/The Q
Cleveland, Ohio

CARD:

Singles Match: Godfather w/ The Ho's vs Mideon w/ Viscera
Women's Championship: Ivory (c) vs Fabulous Moolah
Tag Team Match: New Age Outlaws vs The Hollys
Good Housekeeping Match - Intercontinental Title: Jeff Jarrett (c) w/ Miss Kitty vs Chyna
Singles Match: The Rock vs British Bulldog
Ladder Match: Edge & Christian vs The Hardy Boyz
Singles Match: Val Venis vs Mankind
Four Corners Match: Faarooq vs X-Pac vs Bradshaw vs Kane
No DQ - WWF Championship: HHH (c) vs "Stone Cold" Steve Austin


Past PPV of the Week selections:

POTW 1: Backlash 2004
POTW 2: Vengeance 2003
POTW 3: SummerSlam 2005
POTW 4: Great American Bash 1996
POTW 5: Canadian Stampede
POTW 6: Survivor Series 2002
POTW 7: Destination X 2012
POTW 8: Armageddon 2000
POTW 9: SummerSlam 1992

[Daz]

"w/ Ho's" made me laugh way more than it should have.

[The Legend]

"w/ Ho's" made me laugh way more than it should have.

Yeah, I just copied the card from another site that has every WWE PPV card from WM 1 through about 2009.

[The Legend]

Everyone please see my new note about which No Mercy I selected, as there were two No Mercy PPV's in 1999.

[Messiah]

I'm gonna give this a review later today!

I have never seen this pay-per-view before. The only match from the show I have watched is the tag team ladder match, and I'm really excited to give that a re-watch! Interested in seeing Rock/Bulldog and Austin/HHH.

[The Legend]

Godfather vs Mideon – It kind of amazes me how much of a pop the Godfather can get even to this day when he returns considering how much of a one trick pony he was as a performer in this gimmick. I mean seriously, if you’ve seen one godfather feud/match you’ve pretty much seen them all. Add in the fact that when with Undertaker the Ministry stable and gimmick made sense, but to see Mideon and Viscera here after Taker had left to heal injuries (right before he became ABA/Big Evil) just doesn’t make sense at all.

Ivory vs Fabulous Moolah – Just so we realize how far WWE has to come to treat their main Diva roster better (considering how it’s a hot topic currently with NXT’s performance), consider how crappy they treated the division all the way back in 1999 to have a senior citizen win the belt and be a prominent member of the division for a pretty long stretch. They’ve basically never used this division properly, barring a few examples – the main one being Trish vs Lita.

New Age Outlaws vs the Hollys – There was nothing groundbreaking about this match, but it was filled with solid action none the less between two teams that I really enjoy watching, with the NAO being one of my favorite all-time teams. One big issue occurred before the PPV itself. Lawler and Ross talk about how this match was supposed to be for the tag championships, but NAO lost the belts to Rock N Sock the week before, because the Hollys interefered on behalf of Rock N Sock. That makes no sense. If you’ve got a title match if anything you’d want to protect it, not throw it away.

Jeff Jarrett vs Chyna – I’m kind of torn on this match and feud. On the one hand, it was in about as bad taste as WWE could pull off at the time. On the other hand if the goal was to get Jeff Jarrett as much heat as possible at the time, well it accomplished that in spades. Overall though, this match was a really bad joke.

Rock vs British Bulldog – This was a really simple, yet effective feud and that led to the start of a great second half of the PPV. The match itself was a simple, entertaining brawl that did a nice job of getting things going.

Edge & Christian vs The Hardy Boyz – The match that changed everything. Without this match the great tag team rivalry of the Attitude Era may never have happened and it certainly revolutionized the ladder match and what it would mean going forward. The only downside was Jerry Lawler.

Val Venis vs Mankind – This is a good example of something the WWE used to do better. This was a crowd reset match, for all intents and purposes. A break between the fantastic ladder match and a stellar main event. All that being considered the WWE still invested some time in it and created a story that they carried through that allowed the fans to catch their breath, but not totally check out either. Also, good bit of comedy interjected into the end of the match in a way that still fit and made sense.

Four Corners Match – This was a silly stipulation. Let’s see, it’s four men all for themselves, but only two of them can be in the ring at once. So, let’s have these two tag teams, act as individuals, but get in a match where they have to tag each other in and out of the match. All that being said, the match was still better than solid and provided a lot of entertaining action.

HHH vs Austin – Fantastic main event. I really think the chemistry these two showed together in the ring gets underestimated by other matchups for both men, but they were pretty damn good foils for each other. Nice combination of story, science and some brutality. I do miss main event championship matches like this where you can see how important the title is by how hard both men fight for it and how much they are willing to do whatever it takes to win the belt. I wish WWE would do more today of not necessarily calling a title match No DQ, but being lax with the rules in a match with so much at stake.

3 Things I liked:

1. The Birth of Tag Team Ladder Matches – What’s not to like about the Hardys and E&C in a ladder match? Particularly one that was as important as this one. Without this match we may have never gotten to see TLC and these two teams would have very different legacies.

2. A great Main Event and feud – HHH vs Austin was just a great story. They had a good feud and they tied it altogether with a match that made sense. It was great to see.

3. Really good pacing – This PPV started a bit slow, but they were always building to something. I also miss the days of WWE knowing what they have in a match. They knew when it was a 5 minute throw away, when it was a 15 minute important midcard bout and when something needed 20+ minutes. Now it feels like barring the Divas everyone in the undercard gets 12-15 minutes, the secondary ME gets 12-15 and the main event always gets 15-20 minutes. There’s nothing wrong with throwing quick bouts that end in DQ or a brawl that furthers a storyline to pick up the pace of the show and progress it. It can be tedious today if you know that the finish of a match is at least 10 minutes away from the opening bell. I want them to interject more of a sense of immediacy and this match could be over at any minute back into wrestling.

3 Things I disliked:

1. King was in rare form – Jerry Lawler paired with JR was great in the Attitude Era, but I don’t know if it’s just because I’m older now or what, but a little King goes a long way. The way this card stacked up there was just too much King being King in a bad way. Between the Godfather match to start, jumping right into Moolah in the women’s title match, to Jarrett and Chyna to all the things with Terri thrown in throughout various parts of the night I got to the point where I was just tuning King out halfway through the PPV.

2. Moolah winning the championship – All the evidence you need that the WWE never took this division seriously and still doesn’t. This was a terrible booking decision.


3. The whole Chyna vs Jarrett Match – I’m glad we don’t have to suffer through matches like this any more.

[Messiah]

The Godfather was awesome. I'll mark out for him any day of the week.

Great review. Sorry I didn't get one up as promised, the feed kept screwing up for me. But I'm gonna try it again in a bit.

[Str8Shooter]

I’m looking forward to watching a show from the heart of the Attitude Era. Let’s just see how different things are.

The Godfather, there’s a gimmick you won’t see now days. The Ho’s just got a bigger pop than three quarters of today’s superstars. That’s either hilarious or sad. The crowd is full of adult males, this is weird. Wow, he really said to roll a fatty and light that blunt up. He’d be fired immediately if he did that now. Depressing though, those Ho’s are probably 40 now. A “We Want Puppies” chant! It is 1999!

Moolah & Mae Young! I bet Ivory never thought she would wrestle a 70+ year old. The hell is going on in this match, Lawler’s right, it is in slow motion. Botched suicide dive from Ivory, this match is not going well. Jeez, she can’t even throw Moolah into the ring. This is ugly. That was maybe the worst roll up in history. This is an abomination. Poor Ivory, not her best night at the office. Say what you will about the Divas division now, but it's way better than this.

Man Vince looks so much younger here.

Haha The Outlaws! Didn’t they just recently reunite at this point? I think so. Crash and Hardcore! The Super Heavyweights! Pretty decent match here, man Billy Gunn was damn good at the hot tag, coming in and cleaning house. The Outlaws were always over as a team. Road Dogg was one of the most charismatic guys of the era.

Misogynistic douchebag Jeff Jarrett was one of his better runs. Lmao @ hitting her with a toaster. I don’t remember much about this feud but that video package made it look like a damn good build. Well that was an enjoyable brawl. Probably a better match than it had any right to be. The fact I didn’t write anything down during it was probably a good sign. It kept my attention at the very least. I believe this was Jarrett's last match in WWF before leaving for WCW and he got paid extra for this match because his contract had run out the day before.

Man, poor Bulldog. This was only 2 years after his best run in the Hart Foundation and he looks like a relic of a time gone by already. The terrible music, wrestling in jeans, just trying too hard to be Attitude Era. Decent match between the two, a little rough around the edges. It makes me sad seeing the Bulldog like this though. Rock was over as hell and probably deserved better on this card.

It’s funny seeing how the crowd isn’t really into Edge and Christian and the Hardys yet. A year later they were way more over than they were here. Gangrel was such an afterthought lol, he was clearly on his way out at this point. This was really the originator of the ladder matches that we would see the next year, a lot of spots we’d say many times afterwards but they were still fresh here and never had been seen before.

Haha Foley is awesome. That book was great. To Crash “Sorry kid, you didn’t make the cut”.

Foley got back Mr. Rocko! He’s a hero! Val probably should have been a bigger star than he was, he was in great shape, decent in the ring and solid on the mic. Somehow never got into that main event scene, I guess the depth of the top of the roster during this period didn’t help matters. Is it just me or does Teddy Long have the slowest counts ever? Crowd seems pretty dead for this match, maybe burnt out by the Ladder match and the Rock segment? Lmao, what a dumb finish, he passed out from someone grabbing his nuts?

I remember loving Kane and X Pac as the weird tag team buddies. I’m not quite sure why these four all against each other here. I’m probably missing something leading up to it.

Ah, the traditional brawling through the crowd of WWF 1999 Main Events! It wouldn’t be the Attitude Era without it! Haha I love it when Hebner gets into Trips face! Man, the crowd is so hot for this match; look at them all standing throughout the match, that never happens now. The Rock is back, and he screws up lol. Pretty good match between the two, a good example of the time period of this PPV. I loved how Chyna was the babyface earlier against Jarrett and now is the heel with Triple H.

Overall a solid PPV, 2 Really good matches in the Ladder match and Main Event. For an Attitude Era card that isn’t bad. I’ll give it a 6.5/10.

[SortaCreative]

Aight, i've been looking forward to this for a while. No Mercy 1999! I actually remember watching this live at my cousin's place. Fell asleep before the end

I love the golden era of JR and King.

Godfather vs. Mideon:

Godfather was over! A lot of the face attractions were back in those days. They all had some aspect of their character that was over. Unfortunately nostalgia made this era seem a lot better than it was when it comes to in ring action. What the hell was this match. I loved the Godfather back in the day but looking at this match now. He's not that great in the ring. Neither is Mideon. A pretty lame opener to be honest.

Moolah vs. Ivory:

Why? Just... why.

New Age Outlaws vs. Hardcore and Crash Holly:

Now nostalgia was on the button when it came to my love of the NAO. Fucking love em! OH YOU DIDN'T KNOW. Decent enough match. I've always enjoyed watching Road Dogg and Billy Gunn. Hardcore Holly was a pretty solid hand back in those days too. Crash could always work to a decent level. Odd finish.

Chyna vs. Jeff Jarrett:

I'm torn on this match. It's an odd one really. It's horrible offensive way to crown the first woman Intercontinental Champion. It wasn't all that bad when it came to in ring action but, idk, I couldn't get into it. I couldn't get over me cringing throughout.

The Rock vs. British Bulldog:

ROCK BOTTOM INTO THE DOG POOP. INTO THE DOG POOP. INTO THE DOG POOP. Bulldogs theme though, what the fuck is that. It's jobber music. Which is appropriate considering how this match turned out. Bulldog just didn't fit the attitude era. The match was, what, ten minutes long? Eh. Rocky was entertaining though.

Edge and Christian vs. The Hardy Boys:

It's pretty cool to see the beginnings of the infamous tag team division and their work with ladders. The crowd were a little dead at times but they popped for some of the decent spots - i'm assuming it's the first time they were done in WWE considering the response and commentary. These guys would only just get better from here.

The Rock and Mick Foley were gold. I freaking love watching them.

HHH brtualising the Rock with the hammer. The game! THE DUBYA DUBYA EFF CHAMPION.

Val Venis vs. Mick Foley:

The WWE Network has "Val Venis applies the testicular claw for the win". What the fuck man.

Farooq vs. Kane vs. Bradshaw vs. X-Pac:

I don't really get this match. It's nice to see an elimination fatal four way though. It's an odd way to do it though. This is in the midst of the odd Kane/X-Pac stuff. X-Pac getting the win - shit bastard.

WWF Champion, The Game, The King of Kings Triple H vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin:

I've always loved watching these two work together. One of my favourite matches is Austin vs. HHH in Three Stages of Hell. I just generally loved the angle of HHH being behind Stone Cold being run over. This is before all that though and man were people hot for this match. Solid in ring action, solid brawling and outside fun. This really is the attitude era in a match. The Rock run in was retarded It actually made him look like a right idiot. Decent main event though.

The attitude era was interesting for wrestling. You can't match it for atmosphere and action and passion but the general in ring product was pretty bad outside of a few matches. A lot of this undercard was shit bar the ladder match, main event.

5/10

[The Legend]

OK, one more day or so to get a review in on this one before we move on to the next PPV. Hopefully we can get some more responses to this show.

[Str8Shooter]

OK, one more day or so to get a review in on this one before we move on to the next PPV. Hopefully we can get some more responses to this show.

I know @Messiah & @Hanley! were going to try and watch it and comment.

[Messiah]

My insomnia decided to take a break for a night so I'm tired as hell so this is a bit rushed.

This may be an unpopular opinion but it is hard for me to consider mid to late 1999 and beyond as a part of the Attitude Era. Technically, it is. However, just looking back, it felt like the WWF was in a transitional period that often gets overlooked. Steve Austin's iconic feud with Mr. McMahon had ended and he was limited by injuries which would end up sidelining him. The Undertaker was out of the picture and was already beginning to lose a bit of his mystique. Someone who has more knowledge on this time period can correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't there talk of Undertaker retiring even back in '99? For as big as The Rock was, he was in a mid-card feud with British Bulldog at this pay-per-view while Mankind was with Val Venis. The company at this point was lacking in star power. They still had Austin carrying them, but it wouldn't be until 2000 that Triple H and The Rock took that next step, the latter in particular solidifying himself as the number one babyface in the company during Austin's absence. I guess it just feels like, in hindsight, the WWF was directionless at this point. It wasn't really the Attitude Era but it was the Attitude Era. Going back and watching the WWF once it hit the year 2000 though, it really didn't feel like anything like how the WWF was in early '99 and throughout 1998. Maybe it has to do with the lack of Russo. Anyway, tangent over. On to the pay-per-view!

The Godfather vs Mideon w/ Viscera - I have always been a huge mark for The Godfather and still am. There is always a place for fun gimmicks like his in professional wrestling and the crowd ate him up. Unfortunately, this was just an uninteresting match-up. I don't know who Mideon is, but Viscera was miserable even if his attire was kind of cool. A Godfather/Mideon match should never open a pay-per-view. It shouldn't be on a pay-per-view. Nothing more to say about the match outside of that. Side Note: What happened to signs? I swear, arenas were flooded with them back in the day. Now they are almost nonexistent.

The WWE loves playing with history and overrating Triple H's impact and place in the WWE back then, but there is no denying how good of a heel he was. Strong promo from him here.

The Fabulous Moolah (w/ Mae Young) vs Ivory - Y'know, for as bad as the women's division may get at times, at least it is no longer degraded like it was in the Attitude Era. I liked Ivory, but nothing she could do here in a match that was never meant to be anything more than a joke.

The Hollys vs The New Age Outlaws - How could anyone hate The New Age Outlaws? I always had a soft spot for Hardcore and Crash too. Also, lmao @ Crash with the scale. Also I can't be the only one who actually thought Crash and Hardcore were related. This wasn't a bad match and the disqualification finish didn't bother me. Just wasn't particularly interested in this.

Jeff Jarrett (c) (w/ Miss Kitty) vs Chyna for the WWF Intercontinental Championship - Overbooked ending with good ol' Teddy Long as referee.

The Rock vs British Bulldog - I have seen Bulldog's earlier work and he was great. So it really sucks whenever I go back and see him in the Attitude Era. Like Taj said, he just didn't fit and he just wasn't the same wrestler he once was. Just a meh match. Rock was bigger than this.

The New Brood (w/ Gangrel) vs Edge and Christian - This is my first time watching this pay-per-view but I have seen this match several times and for a reason. The stipulation was stupid as hell but this was a really good, innovative match. Its pretty funny seeing The Hardyz and E&C before they ended up becoming what they became, but you can tell the WWF had a lot of confidence in them at this point. This wasn't as good as the ladder matches they would have in the future but the significance of this is undeniable. Also, Gangrel.

Foley was funny as hell, one of the funniest wrestlers ever. "Sorry Crash, you didn't make the cut."

That damn Trips!

Mankind vs Val Venis - Eh.

Bradshaw vs Kane vs X-Pac vs Faarooq - I can never tell if people really disliked X-Pac or not. I was always a bit of a fan of his. This match was just there.

Triple H (c) vs Steve Austin in a No DQ match for the WWF Championship - Another unpopular opinion relating to what I said in the beginning of this post. Looking back, you almost got the feeling the WWE didn't know what to do with Steve Austin's character after the story with McMahon. I mean don't get me wrong, the dude was a star still, but it just feels different I guess. The same was the case when Austin turned back face in 2001 and he started to just drift around in 2002. Maybe he was just stale, someone who remembers that time period better could tell you. Anyway, this was a really fun match. Triple H was a main event player and he had really good chemistry with Austin in the ring.

Outside of the WWF Championship match and Ladder match, this was a hard PPV to watch. The lack of a midcard was pretty blatant here and it goes back to my point of the WWF being in transition around this time.

PPV Rating (Calc. presentation, memorability, significance, match quality): 2.8/10. FWIW, while that might seem really low and it is, it isn't all that bad. I talked about it in the cBox, but I'm going to do be doing a little challenge for myself and for comparison's sake, my WrestleMania I review gave it a 4.6 which was almost strictly because of the rating I gave it for its significance. And I actually kind of enjoyed WrestleMania I (was my first time watching it), well to an extent. This was just a damn bad show though, not even the two good matches could make up for it.

[VaderBomb]

I wish that didn't get so drunk watching this last week so that I could write a solid review but it was a mediocre show regardless with only the tag team match standing out as memorable.