10 Things WWE Raw Can Learn From No Mercy 2016
1. Emotion Trumps All
How many times have Dolph Ziggler and The Miz faced each other for the Intercontinental Title? I think most of us lost count a few years ago. And yet none of those encounters felt as important as the one at No Mercy because none of those encounters had the emotional resonance that that one did.
By putting Dolph Ziggler’s career up against The Miz’s title, WWE made this special. However, it’s not as simple as saying Dolph will retire if he loses. That stipulation has been used a hundred times, and most of the time it just means we know who will win.
No, for this match WWE did a great job of building doubt in the mind of their fans. Dolph seemed like he might be at the end of his road and it made it so much more exciting. Credit must also go to The Miz. Since winning the Intercontinental Title the Awesome One has been in brilliant form, and his needling of Dolph Ziggler made sure that every fan was in the Show-Off’s corner.
It was a perfect combination and it meant that even if this was a match we had seen before, fans were suddenly hanging on every pinfall. Was the action in the ring actually that much better than any of their other matches? Or was the emotional involvement the real difference?