6 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE No Mercy 2017

1. Marquee Bouts Don’t Live Up To Hype

braun strowman brock lesnar
WWE.com

The positives of the two big matches will be extolled later, but when a PPV is hyped on the basis that there are two WrestleMania-caliber main events, then both or at least one better deliver an epic bout.

Instead, both matches were good, but not great. John Cena versus Roman Reigns was a pretty good contest, but if it closed Mania, it would have been a huge letdown, not just because Reigns would be anointed that future of WWE. And Brock Lesnar versus Braun Strowman wasn’t surprising for Brock winning, but because he took the monster out with only six German suplexes and one F-5.

It’s one thing to hype a PPV on two first-ever encounters, but it’s another to call the matches worthy of the Mania main event slot. WWE set the bar very high, and it simply didn’t clear the hurdle.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.