Let’s check out WWE No Mercy 1999 from Cleveland’s Gund Arena. Drawing almost 18,750 fans, it was main evented by a showdown between WWE Champion Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin!
The Best
Like their match at Unforgiven 1999, the showdown between Chyna and Jeff Jarrett was entertaining and didn’t go off the rails thanks to Jarrett. Chyna was doing her thing and most of it is such that she can’t mess it up. Meanwhile, Jarrett plays up the asshole heel that everyone wants to see get stomped out perfectly.
I actually prefer this bout to their Unforgiven 1999 one. It’s not the best match at all on this card but it is one of the more entertaining ones.
Nothing needs to be said about the ladder match better Edge & Christian and The Hardy Boyz—or the New Brood at this time. For 1999, this was incredible, it was the spectacle bout you’d like to have on a PPV. It was the one you talked about the following day at school—which I did.
It was a spotty showdown and WWE’s first tag team ladder match and it really set the pace for high-action, high-risk ladder matches going forward.
The main event was an Anything Goes match between WWE Champion Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin. It’s funny how WWE had so many different names for a street fight back then. Like, “Anything Goes for the No Mercy crowd, but for our spicier crowds we have Anything Goes No Holds Barred Falls Count Anywhere.”
Which is an exceptionally spicy match, by the way. As for this one, it was stock Attitude Era main event. Mind you, it was a really good, fun brawl to watch but it was more of the same on a mostly mediocre card.
I like that the crowd really woke up for this match and added to the match when Triple H and Austin moved the action into the masses.
While it’s more of the same, that’s not a flaw here. The main flaw is that the match kind of runs for a while but it’s a Triple H match and 10 minutes will sometimes feel like 15 when he’s wrestling. It was still a really good bout.
The Rest
Let’s just scrap the two opening bouts off the bat. The Godfather vs. Mideon didn’t look interesting on paper and wasn’t interesting on pay-per-view. It was a stock WWE television match to kick things off.
After that was three minutes of Fabulous Moolah taking on Ivory for the Women’s championship. That match wasn’t going to work at all but it was three minutes, so whatever.
Something told me that the New Age Outlaws taking on the Hollys could actually be better than decent. It ended up decent enough with a lot of room to groove.
Road Dogg was really lumped up by the Hollys and did well to get the hot tag from Gunn. Then we have the DQ finish which was…meh. If this was on TV instead of PPV, I would’ve been all into this match but on PPV, it was serviceable.
The main bright point of The Rock spanking the British Bulldog was that it was kept brief. Bulldog was not in good in-ring condition at this point but here he is facing a main eventer. OK win for the Rock even though he didn’t need this storyline at all.
I wasn’t expecting too much from Mankind vs. Val Venis but they went a little long for what was going on. That back suplex onto a chair was nasty but the crowd felt nothing. That’s just sad. For the most part, this didn’t do much for me as it was very much an Attitude Era comedy match.
I love elimination matches but the one featuring X-Pac, Bradshaw, Faarooq, and Kane wasn’t one of the more interesting ones. Also, we’ve got two teams facing off as singles here which is…whatever. X-Pac was the sauce here as without him, this match was pretty damn close to 10 minutes of NyQuil.
While watching X-Pac against opponents similar to him or more aerially/technically inclined is always a blast, the “OK, Sean let’s see you do something with this” matches are also interesting.
It’s as if X-Pac late Attitude Era run was the labors of Hercules or something.
WWE No Mercy 1999 Verdict: Bronze Medal (5.5/10)
This was pretty close to silver and that was purely off of the main event and the tag team ladder match. If anything those matches should’ve been better distributed throughout the card instead of getting blocks of meh matches. That’s more of a flaw of WWE’s match placement than it just being on the superstars. Our match of the show goes to the ladder match between Edge & Christian and the Hardy Boyz.
Even though Triple H-Austin had more of a story to it and the stakes were significantly higher, the ladder match was all killer and no filler.
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