Cory Wiatrek of worstofwrestling.cjb.net sent in the following report from No Mercy last night:
Alright guys, here are the live notes from No Mercy in Houston. I just got back home one minute ago. Long Drive. I won’t go into match results because you already posted that, so this will just be off camera and weird stuff.
We met Super Crazy before the show. He does not speak much English at all.
First off, this event had to be heavily papered! If you noticed they didn’t shoot one side of the ring all night long it was because of hundreds of empty seats. A lot of box office tickets were sold, but out of all the times I have been to Houston WWE shows this was the lowest attendance I have seen ever. Also, Houston is usually a very hot Texas crowd and tonight it was rare to see a chant go off in unision or ever get loud. The Astros game also ended in the 18th inning as the doors a few blocks down at Toyota Center were opening. Bad luck for any wrestling fans stuck at the playoff game.
First, some bad news for SmackDown! The JBL segment where he made fun of Rey Meysterio’s size from this past Friday was shown on the titantron before the HEAT match. In the segment he walks into the arena… everyone including me thought he was in the Toyota Center live! So we were all looking for him and no one could find him. A good 95% of the crowd was standing looking for him. Then they finally realized that it was a clip from Friday night and not live! This doesn’t look good for SmackDown because 95% of the crowd wasn’t watching the brand they went to see tonight, including me.
Bobby Lashley’s music skipped, don’t know if you could tell on the PPV. Tazz is starting to bald a lot! I could see his head from far away.
Booker T didn’t get a bigger pop than Chris Benoit and Houston is his home town! After the 4 way US Title match Sharmell was yelling at Booker but the director stayed on Benoit. So she finally stopped talking, but just before they cut back to her the camera guy made a “Talk some more” gesture with his hands to Sharmell, then they went back to her. I noticed the director was late on a lot of shots tonight. I work in television news so I was watching a lot of the production as the show went on too tonight.
Mr. Ken Kennedy got over huge! This guy is hilarious and I see him becoming a big success if he continues down this path. People didn’t know who Sylvain Grenier was when he attacked Hardcore Holly…. poor Sylvain.
The Undertaker/Ortons match seemed best live and I was surprised at how many pops Undertaker still gets. After the match the crowd was very let down with the burning casket. It was obvious to everyone that Undertaker probably wasn’t in the casket and was under the ring or was safe anyway in the casket. When Randy lit the casket WWE has “FIRE AUDIO” that they use. Fire doesn’t whoosh like that right away. I know that too from being a firefighter and attending fire academy. And just because I fight fires does not mean I was the only one who could tell. It was very obvious they use “FIRE SOUNDS”. More on that audio later…. and you will like this.
The Cruiser match was awesome. Some jerk behind a few rows started a “Boring” chant. I soon fixed him before he could get others involved. I stood up and yelled for him to please leave or shut up. I said if he thought it was boring then he needed to be somewhere else. Needless to say my whole section was cracking up and they started riding the guy. He got pretty red. I can’t stand losers who start those chants. How disrespectful is that guy?! I don’t go to his job and yell boring to his face. And the match was far from boring! It was really great and the crowd popped big for Juvi when he won the title.
Funny note. Tony Chimmel and the camera guy almost get into a fight! As the Mexicools are on their lawnmowers ready to leave, no one moved the set of stairs on the other side of the ring so they could get by. Tony is getting pissed that no one will do it, so he walks over himself to do it and the camera guy is shooting Psychosis. Chimmel pushed the camera guy out of the way in a very rude manner and the camera guy looks at him like he is a jerk and asks the crowd what he did wrong. Chimmel is stuck by himself trying to move the stairs. When he finally gets them moved he looks flustered and mad. But by that time the Mexicools had already gotten off the lawnmowers and started walking out. Tony was real pissed now. He puts the stairs back by himself, and proceeds over to the camera guy and gives him an ass chewing. I felt bad for the dude as I don’t see how him being in the way was a problem. The stairs are not his job. But they were not joking and it was pretty funny to see Tony Chimmel get into it verbally with a camera guy. Then the camera guy got yelled at by some other dude. I happen to be a camera guy and I can tell you we just get blammed for everything… seriously. I don’t know why.
I have to say even though Batista was over, this crowd was pro Eddie Guerrero. Texas fans love Eddie and that includes yours truly.
Now here is what happened when the PPV went off the air. Pretty funny stuff. Some guy mouths off to Batista, just jokingly of course and Batista threatens that he will steal his cap. Batista tells his 13 year old daughter happy birthday but says someone else has a birthday today, that being Eddie Guerrero. Batista says Eddie is turning 22 years old and the crowd laughs. He convinces Eddie Guerrero to come back into the ring and we “the Houston Audience” sang Eddie happy birthday along with Batista as the refs wheeled down a cake! It was awesome. Then Eddie told Brian Hebner to get his ass in the ring because he wasn’t the only birthday boy today. So Eddie said that Hebner was just as important as he and Batista because he is “one of the boys too”. Batista and Eddie take off Hebners shirt and he poses for the crowd. He is slim and scrawny and needs to tan. So Eddie said that Brian Hebner had to eat the cake with him. Eddie and Brian go outside the ring.
THE FIRE AUDIO THING: As the camera is focused on the cake and the burning candles are on there the audio guy plays the “FAMOUS FIRE AUDIO”! Eddie proceeds to smash Brian’s head in the cake. Batista then throws the rest of the cake on Brian Hebner and everyone including Hebner is cracking up! They all throw cake in the audience. Batista then finds the ballcap guy that was talking trash and smears cake all over his head while the guy isn’t turned around. I believe these two have to be buddies of some sort. Then Hebner leaves and Eddie tells Batista that he is the man and that he truly loves Houston and all of Texas. He leaves. Batista poses with the belt some more.
Batista leaves and the typical Tony Chimmel speal about thank you and we will be back. That was it and if I think of anything else I will email it to you guys. Here are the pops and heat of the night in my opinion:
BIGGEST POPS:
1. Batista’s Entrance
2. Undertaker
3. Eddie’s Entrance
4. Juventud winning the title
Biggest Heel HEAT:
1. Ortons
2. JBL
3. MNM
