October 3, 2004
Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey
Attendance: 10,000
WWE No Mercy 2004 was a Smackdown PPV that featured all of the blue brand’s heavy hitters yet still failed to deliver.
Eddie Guerrero, Kurt Angle, John Cena, The Undertaker, Big Show, and reigning champion JBL all took center stage before a sell-out crowd, only to be completely outshined by two lower-card wrestlers nowhere near their level of star power.
You can read all about that in the review below, but first, a quick bit of housekeeping:
I’ve spent the past few months quietly migrating Retro Pro Wrestling from the blogger platform of old to a brand new WordPress platform.that I’m hoping will make your time here a smoother and generally more enjoyable experience.
I’ve got over 400 posts to tidy up after the move, and its taking a long time to get through them.
That explains why it’s taken me so long to publish anything new (I wrote the first draft of this No Mercy review back in November).
It also explains why things may still look a bit of a mess. Please bear with me as I continue to clean up, and if you spot any glaringly obvious problems, let me know.
Otherwise, lets get on with the show!
There Will Be No Mercy
Tonight’s opening video was underwhelming by WWE standards. In place of the usual dramatic flare (not to be confused with a dramatic Flair), we got a simple video focusing on Tonight’s three featured contests:
- Kurt Angle vs. The Big Show
- John Cena vs. Booker T
- JBL vs. The Undertaker
Each set of opponents was highlighted in turn, footage of their rivalries overlayed by soundbites that all conveyed an identical message:
They would show one another no mercy when they locked up in the ring.
After the usual pyro and ballyhoo, Michael Cole welcomed us to this Smackdown spectacular, taking a brief moment to introduce his broadcast colleague, Tazz, and sending the cameraman off to point at the Spanish announce team.
With all that out of the way, it was time for our first contest of the evening.
Eddie Guerrero vs. Luther Reigns (w/ Mark Jindrak)
If there’s ever been a more frustrating opening match in the history of pro wrestling, I’m yet to see it.
It had the potential to be quite good, as evidenced by the fact that, whenever Eddie Guerrero was in charge, it was very entertaining.
The rest of the time, it skittered between boring and downright annoying.
If this was an opportunity for Luther Reigns to get over by working with an established star, he flubbed it by using his time on the offense to do nothing more than a lengthy bow-and-arrow spot followed by an even longer backbreaker spot.
Both spots took tedium to whole new levels, sucking the life out of the arena.
Luther may have had peas before, but he certainly hadn’t had a clear idea of how to engage a pro wrestling audience.
Still, even his contributions to the match weren’t as bad as those of Brian Hebner.
The official appointed to oversee this match seemed to go out of his way to make sure we all knew that he was the single dumbest referee to ever wear the stripes.
As the bout crept towards its apex, both wrestlers collided. Eddie Guerrero rolled out of the ring while Luther Reigns remained prone on the mat.
Now, I know referees tend to have a lais sez faire attitude anyway, but surely when you have one guy in the ring and his opponent is on the outside, you at least do some kind of count, otherwise aren’t you depriving the guy in the ring of an opportunity to win?
Hebner clearly didn’t give a damn whether Reigns won or not, and simply let Guerrero do his thing on the outside for a while.
I’m not kidding. Luther Reigns could have won by countout three times over during the time it took Hebner to even begin thinking about starting a count.
All that time gave Guerrero ample opportunity to pickpocket a police baton from an indie worker disguised as a security guard.
Back in the ring, he scaled the top rope. Again, Hebner could have begun a count. Instead, he threw his arms up as if to say “I don’t know what I’m doing here!” and let Guerrero work the crowds before landing a frog splash.
That failed to connect, leaving both men prone on the mat long enough that I’m sure any other official would have started a ten count.
Not Hebner though.
He thought about it, sure, but decided that it was more important to go to the opposite side of the ring and clear away a chair that had been left from an earlier spot.
The idiot official picked it up, carried it over to Tony Chinmel, and proceeded to engage Chimmel in conversation for a while.
That gave Guerrero the chance to wallop Reigns with the baton, finally connect with the frog splash, and win the match.
I have no problem with distracted referee spots. They can sometimes go down really well, but a referee distracted by his own stupidity?
As the young folk might say, I can’t even….
Your Winner: Eddie Guerrero
Out in the back, Josh Matthews interviewed Dawn Marie, who had recently been meddling in the relationship between Jackie Gayda and Charlie Haas.
Tonight, she would team with The Dudleyz to take on Jackie, Charlie, and Rico, but first, she told Josh that Haas was infatuated with her and had no problem telling Jackie to her face.
To prove it, she burst into her locker room to catch Jackie in the middle of changing.
With her limited acting range more exposed than Gayda’s boobs, Dawn claimed the blonde grappler had forced Hass into marrying her. She was even so brazen as to insist that she was having an affair with him, something Jackie didn’t seem to believe for one moment.
Look, I’m sure Dawn Marie is a lovely person, but my goodness was this ever a cringe-inducing segment.
Thankfully, we had some more wrestling on our hands with match number two:
WWE World Cruiserweight Championship
WWE Cruiserweight Champion Spike Dudley (W/ The Dudley Boyz) vs. Nunzio (w/ Johnny ‘The Bull’ Stamboli.
At the peak of its importance, the cruiserweight championship was largely contested in matches of a style unique to anything else on the card.
It gave a kayfabe purpose to a division built around high-flying wizardry and technical prowess, a division that served as a special attraction in its own right.
Yet somewhere between Ed Ferrera, that whole Madusa/Evan Karagious debacle at WCW Starrcade ’99, and tonight’s event, the entire division -at least what was left of it- had been stripped of anything that once made it special.
After getting his hands on it, Vince McMahon had essentially destroyed both the division and its championship, rebuilding them in his own image until a cruiserweight match meant a match that was the same as every other WWE match, except the guys were a bit smaller.
I don’t mean to insinuate for one moment that this was by any means a bad match.
Nunzio and Spike Dudley were more than capable of delivering a solid display of sports entertainment style pro wrestling, and that’s exactly what they did.
It was a very good effort, so my beef is not with either of them. Rather, it’s with McMahon and the WWE braintrust who either didn’t understand or (perhaps more likely) didn’t care what made a cruiserweight division special in the first place.
Of course, the two competitors excelled despite the booking restraints and gave us a good match that was perfectly in keeping with its position on the card.
In the end, those dastardly Dudley Boyz got involved, interfering on behalf of Big Bad Spike and helping him pick up the win.
Your Winner and Still WWE Cruiserweight Champion: Spike Dudley
In the build-up to our next match, a video package highlighted the recent drama between former tag team partners Billy Kidman and Paul London.
The story was simple but utterly compelling, proof that WWE Creative really could deliver the goods when they tried.
To sum up:
Kidman and London had been on a roll, even capturing the tag team titles.
During a match on Smackdown, Kidman hit the Shooting Star Press in such a way that it injured Chavo Guerrero and put him out of action.
People were not happy with Kidman, who began to experience a crisis of confidence whenever it came time to do the SSP.
The more the fans, and London himself, clamored to see Kidman fly, the more he remained grounded.
Eventually, he had enough, turning on his partner and lambasting London for goading him into doing such a dangerous move.
Trust me, you’d better just watch the video package because this was really well done.
Billy Kidman vs. Paul London
If Kidman walks out of the match, he’s fired
OK, forget what I said about Vince and the cruiserweights.
McMahon may have ruined a lot of things, but this match was the perfect example of what’s actually possible when you combine sports-entertainment style storytelling with blistering action.
A stellar back-and-forth battle, the former tag team champions took out their aggressions and frustrations on one another in a tight, solid encounter that delivered from bell to bell.
As the match reached its climax, one question looked large:
Would he, or wouldn’t he?
Would Kidman finally use the Shooting Star again, putting whatever doubts he had aside for the sake of finishing off his nemesis once and for all?
Ultimately, the answer was yes.
Yes, he would.
After teasing the move once or twice, the former Cruiserweight champion scaled the ropes, shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘fuck it all’ and lept from the buckles, crashing down with a Shooting Star and driving his knees into London’s supposedly injured ribs.
Your Winner: Billy Kidman
Evil Kidman wasn’t done there.
As London was placed on a stretcher by medical professionals, Kidman blasted the crowd.
“YOU MADE ME DO IT!” He yelled, before scaling the ropes and hitting another Shooting Star on his battered and bloody opponent.
The Undertaker Wants JBL’s Title
A brief trip down memory lane reminded us of the time when The Undertaker beat Sid (RIP) for the WWF title back at Wrestlemania 13.
Tonight, he would try and do the same thing against John Bradshaw Layfield but, first, we had Josh Matthews standing by for an interview with the reigning champion.
Layfield cut a convincing promo, complaining that the entire PPV was biased towards ‘Taker when they should have been focusing on his (JBL’s) big wins instead.
“In every match, I have a guaranteed victory and tonight, I guaran….”
He couldn’t do it. The usually cocky champion couldn’t bring himself to guarantee victory over The Undertaker, instead claiming that the only way his opponent would take the title would be “over my dead body.”
WWE Tag Team Championship
WWE Tag Team Champions Kenzo Suzuki & Renee Duprees (w/ Hiroko) vs. Rob Van Dam & Rey Mysterio.
One of the best things about running this blog is that I finally get to check out the wrestling I missed when I tuned out for a while during my college years.
One of the worst things is some of the absolute WTFerry I sit through that I could have otherwise avoided.
Like this random pairing of Kenzo Suzuki and Renee Dupree, complete with Hiroko in full geisha gear waving a French flag.
Oh, and did I mention that Dupree had the words “French Tickler” on the back of his trunks?
Eew.
Before things kicked off, Suzuki “treated” the crowd to a tribute to New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen which consisted of him repeatedly yelling “Born in the USA. Woo!” and backing dat ass up like a coked-up Rikishi.
Thankfully, he was soon interrupted by Rob Van Dam.
Together, he and partner Rey Mysterio took the fight right to the champions, delighting the audience with a flurry of high-flying offense which climaxed with stereo cannonball planchas, the two somersaulting over the ropes and crashing onto their opponents outside the ring.
Dupree and Suzuki eventually seized control, slowing the pace and wearing down their opponents in the middle of the ring.
However, their offense didn’t last long.
The challengers regained momentum.
The pace quickened.
Rolling Thunders and 619s were thrown around with speed and authority.
The crowds roared. Van Dam and Mysterio clearly had this in the bag.
Except, they didn’t.
As Rey went to wrap things up with a West Coast Pop, Dupree yanked him down from the ropes.
Mysterio rolled into the ring where he was wrapped up by Suzuki.
The referee began to count and grabbed his opponent’s hands to stop him from grabbing the ropes. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that tactic used before or since, but I certainly appreciate it as one of those subtle yet effective little details that make pro wrestling feel that little bit more believable.
It struck me as the kind of thing you’d probably see Lance Storm praising on Threads. That kind of ‘yeah, this guy is REALLY serious about winning,” moment.
Anyway, not only did Kenzo stop Rey from grabbing the ropes, but he also grabbed them himself to really sync in the pin in the final milliseconds of the count.
Your Winners and Still WWE Tag Team Champions: Kenzo Suzuki & Renee Dupree
Up next, we got a recap of the rivalry between The Big Show and Kurt Angle.
To sum up:
Big Show ‘broke Kurt Angle’s leg’ on the April 15, 2004 edition of Smackdown by chokeslamming him off a balcony.
Big Show then disappeared for a few months to undergo knee surgery and had recently returned on Smackdown, making an immediate impact by chokeslamming the bejeebus out of half the roster.
Teddy Long was so impressed by Show’s return that he let him choose his opponent for No Mercy – Angle or Eddie Guerrero.
Angle shot Big Show with a tranquilizer dart (I’m not making that up), and then shaved his head bald.
Oh, and Mark Jindrack had now joined Angle’s camp along with Luther Reigns, but if either of them got involved in his match, they’d be fired.
Kurt Angle vs. The Big Show
If anyone interferes in the match, they’ll be fired.
Kurt Angle may be one of the greatest of all time, but this match will not go down among his career highlights.
Early on in the match, The Olympic Gold Medalist decided he wanted no part of his opponent and was willing to take a count-out loss to avoid getting his ass whooped.
As he tried to walk away, however, Teddy Long informed him that if he didn’t return to the match, he’d never compete on Smackdown again.
Reluctantly, Angle returned to the ring and the inevitable ass-whooping that awaited, getting smacked and chopped and generally assaulted all around the ring by an angry Show.
Beaten and battle-weary, the 2000 King of the Ring winner still somehow managed to turn the tables, reversing what looked to be a match-ending Big Show chokeslam into an ankle lock which he held onto for the next several years.
Seriously, this went on for a long time, just Kurt repeatedly going back to Big Show’s ankle in an attempt to keep him down and off his feet.
The crowd fell to a hush, broken only by a smattering of ‘Let’s Go Big Show’ chance which Michael Cole tried to convince us was ‘filling the arena.’
Yeah, no they weren’t.
At one point, Show managed to blast his way out of the hold, but in doing so, kicked Kurt right into the path of gormless referee, Brian Hebner.
With Hebner and his bleached-blonde hair taking a nap, Angle further damaged Show’s leg with a steel chair and then went right back to the boring ground-based offense.
As the finish approached, Show made an inevitable comeback. Kurt Angle grabbed an honest-to-goodness tranquilizer gun which Hebbner seemed perfectly OK with. Big Show snapped said gun in half
“That’s not a toy!” lied Tazz as Show lifted Kurt to the top turnbuckle and chokeslammed him off it for the cover, the count, and the fall.
Overall, this was a match that was better in theory than it was in practice.
The story of the desperate heel doing everything he could to prevent getting annihilated by a big angry giant was both obvious and somehow satisfying, but the actual execution of it was just not that great.
Your Winner: The Big Show
Following a commercial for Eddie Guerrero’s new double-disc DVD set, ‘Cheating Death, Stealing Life,’ we came back to the arena to find Angle being helped to the back by Jindrak & Reigns.
Booker and Cena: The Best of Five So Far
Cutting to a vignette for our upcoming match, we once again saw Kurt Angle, this time from his brief run as the commissioner when he was out injured and would ride around in a wheelchair with the French flag on the back.
Back then, Angle had stripped Cena of his US title after The Doctor of Thuganomic’s every attempt to hit arch-rival Booker T resulted in him accidentally taking out Kurt.
Once Angle was back in the ring and Teddy Long took over the reins, Booker T had recaptured the title in a shady fashion.
This prompted Long to order a Best of Five Series between Cena and Booker to determine once and for all who the true WWE United States Champion really was:
The guy who’d never lost the title or the guy who played dirty to get it.
So far, both were evenly tied at two victories a piece, with the final deciding match set to go down next.
Best of Five Series for the WWE United States Championship
WWE US Champion Booker T vs. John Cena
MATCH 5
Both men traded fist and fire in the early going before the action spilled to the outside. There, Cena gained a momentary advantage over his opponent but was cut off once things returned to the canvas.
Booker T was very much the aggressor here.
There, the reigning champion beat down on his opponent until eventually, he missed a scissor kick and landed goolies-first on the top rope.
The momentum shifted.
Cena took control and, as would be an unfortunate hallmark of his career, began calling spots loud enough that the people in the cheats could probably hear him.
Both the clothesline spot and Cena’s follow-up Bulldog were certainly loud enough for this reviewer to hear them on TV. However, by the time he got ready to drop his patented Five-Knuckle Shuffle, the fans were so fully behind The Doctor of Thuganomics that all you could really hear was the roar of the crowd.
Cena spent so much time milking that adulation that his opponent had more than enough time to recover and ultimately kick out of the fist-drop.
In his frustration, Booker rolled to the outside to grab a steel chair but thought better of using it when he was admonished by referee Charles Robinson.
After all, since this was a match to determine the undisputed champion, the rules stated that a title could change hands on a disqualification.
With no shady tactics he could resort to, the former Harlem Heat star returned to the ring, ate an FU, and lost what had been a pretty solid match.
Your Winner and NEW United States Champion: John Cena
The Doctor of Thuganomics celebrated his second US title victory by borrowing a sign from the audience that read “New Champ in New Jersey,” then pulled a sharpie from his boot, signed the jersey he wore to the ring, and lobbed it into the crowd.
Michael Cole and Tazz then took us back to Over the Edge 1999 to relive The Undertaker’s third WWF Championship win over Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Six-Person Tag Team Match
Dawn Marie and The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Rey & D’Von Dudley) vs. Miss Jackie, Rico, and Charlie Haas
Ugh.
This was several shades of horrible.
Dawn Marie was still trying to drive a wedge between Charlie Haas and his real-life partner Miss Jackie by claiming she was having an affair with Haas.
So far, so typical WWE soap opera.
I could look past that if it resulted in a decent match, but there was nothing decent about this.
For the most part, it was just The Dudley Boyz beating down on Haas and Rico in unspectacular fashion, interspersed with some good old-fashioned catfighting that turned Michael Cole into Jerry Lawler.
The horny announcer really wanted to see the girls rip one another’s clothes off. Instead, he had to call a spot where Bubba had Jackie by the hair and demanded a kiss from her.
The former tag team champion closed his eyes, at which point Jackie managed to sneak a tag to Rico.
Naturally, the flamboyant superstar positioned himself in front of Bubba (who still had his eyes closed) and surprised him with a tiny peck on the lips.
Bubba was, of course, mortified and disgusted, rolling out of the ring to wretch and dry heave and wash his mouth out with water, such was the absolutely terrible ordeal of being lightly kissed by another man.
The Dudleyz got their revenge on Rico by beating him down, but when it came time to do the ‘Wasssupppp’ on him, D-Von Dudley couldn’t do it.
Despite jumping off the ropes and ramming his head between men’s legs on a nightly basis for years, there was no way he was going to put his head anywhere near Rico’s crotch lest he, I don’t know, catch The Gay or something.
I repeat, ugh.
Anyway, the match continued, with everyone but Rico and D-Von spilling to the outside.
At that point, Rico hit a sweet moonsault off the top and won this embarrassing encounter.
Seriously, if you want to know how far the WWE has come in terms of the way it treats women and LGBTQ issues, just watch this match.
Your Winners: Rico, Charlie Haas, and Jackie.
After the bell, the girls continued to fight until they were pulled apart by the boys, much to the dismay of horny Michael Cole.
Prior to the main event, we went back to Judgement Day 2002 for The Undertaker’s fourth WWE Championship win over Hulk Hogan.
Could he make it five?
We’d find out after one final video package. This one looked back at ‘Taker and JBL’s last match at Summerslam 2004 and Teddy Long ordering a rematch within ‘Last Ride’ stipulations.
Honestly, I’m disappointed I wasn’t watching Smackdown around this time because the video also showed that JBL brought back former Ministry of Darkness members including Gangrel to fight ‘Taker.
I might just have to go back and watch that episode:
Last Ride Match for the WWE Championship
WWE Champion John Bradshaw Layfield vs. The Undertaker
The only way to win is to stuff your opponent inside a hearse.
The main event of No Mercy 2004 lasted a second over 20 minutes. It was entertaining for about five of those minutes.
Sure, things looked promising in the beginning.
The Undertaker flew at JBL and began wailing on him in the corner before running through The Deadman’s Greatest Hits, Vol 1. in about the first three minutes.
We got an Old School. We got a chokeslam. We also got that legdrop-onto-the-apron move that I don’t believe ever had an official name.
The problem was, we got most of this in what felt at times like slow motion as the challenger took his sweet time in beating his opponent into a lifeless heap.
Clearly, The Dead Man was in no hurry tonight, and that was his first mistake.
After destroying the champion to the point where he could have won any normal match, ‘Taker slowly labored over to the announce tables and began setting them up for a later spot. He took so long doing so that Bradshaw managed to return from the dead and seize control by smacking his rival upside the head with the ring steps.
The momentum shifted. The crowds got momentarily excited, then it was straight back to a long stretch of boredom during which Undertaker broke out his new submission move, confusing Cole and Tazz in the process.
The tedium was so mindnumbing that your writer zoned out, staring at the TV but not really focusing on the snoozefest at hand until one spot grabbed my attention with startling force.
That spot was ‘Taker hitting JBL with a tombstone piledriver onto the ring steps, busting the champ wide open.
Something about that made me sit up and take note, and I’m glad I did, because the next few minutes were relatively entertaining.
Layfield recovered and blasted ‘Taker in the face with a chair shot that struck so loud that those in the cheap sheets probably went home with hearing loss.
The two stumbled their way up to the announce tables, where the challenger sent JBL crashing from one table through another with a huge chokeslam that proved to be one of the very few highlights of the match.
A highlight it may have been, but it wasn’t enough to earn the man from Death Valley the win.
He dragged JBL all the way to the hearse, but when he opened it, who should pop out but Heindenreich of all people?
That was The Undertaker’s second mistake. How many times had he been in “put your opponent inside something” matches only to be ambushed by a gaggle of heels?
Had he learned nothing by now?
Anyway, as Michael Cole repeatedly yelled “WHAT’S HE DOING HERE? THAT LUNATIC!” Heinders knocked ‘Taker out with some chloroform and stuffed him in the hearse. Before it could drive completely out of the arena, however, Undertaker reemerged.
Not that it did him any good. Seconds later, JBL took his foe’s head off with a Clothesline From Hell, then he and Heindenrich teamed up to put ‘Taker back in the hearse.
Said hearse drove out of the arena. The bell rang, and that was that.
The first two-thirds of the match were among the most boring wrestling I’ve ever seen in my life and the ending was kind of silly, but hey, there were two or three minutes there at the start of the third act when it was actually pretty gripping.
Your Winner and Still WWE Champion: John Bradshaw Layfield
Post-match, JBL grabbed a microphone. His face dripping in his own blood, the reigning champion boasted about putting away The Undertaker, even going so far as to declare himself immortal.
His promo was quickly cut off, however, as we shot to the back where Paul Heyman was revealed as the driver of the hearse.
“COME ON! COME ON!” he yelled frantically as he stepped out of the vehicle and began waving over to Heindenrich, who was standing by with a big ol’ truck just ready to go.
After psyching himself up, ‘The Lunatic’ jumped in the car and drove right into the hearse, which immediately exploded on impact in true cartoon fashion.
He and Heyman then fled into the night, leaving WWE No Mercy 2004 to fade to black over a shot of a car wreck.
WWE No Mercy 2004: Final Thoughts
From top to bottom, No Mercy 2004 was very much a dissapointing show.
The few minutes of good stuff in the main event were not enough to counterbalance the endless minutes of boredom, and that whole stuff with the homophobic Dudley Boyz left a bad taste in my mouth.
That said, Paul London and Billy Kidman stole the show with a cracking match and Booker/Cena was decent enough, but there was certainly more guff than good stuff on this show. It’s certainly not one I’d recommend unless you’re a completist.
Until next time, thanks for reading.
More From Retro Pro Wrestling:
Be the first to catch the latest Retro Pro Wrestling reviews by following on:
