8 Things WWE Got Right At WWE No Mercy 2016

8. Opening The Show With The Main Event

AJ Styles John Cena Dean Ambrose
WWE.com

Okay, this got a bit of stick on the interwebs, but there are actually a lot of decent arguments in favour of opening last night's show with the WWE World Championship triple threat match between AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose and John Cena. The main argument is that WWE assumed (correctly) that once the presidential debate began many would tune out. So it makes sense that they would play their strongest card first.

Why anyone would want to watch two equally irrelevant and abhorrent human beings argue is beyond me, but that is besides the point. WWE moving the match to the opener raised a lot of eyebrows, but it shows that the company is at least aware of what's happening in the outside world, away from the WWE Universe.

It also goes along with the words of Daniel Bryan recently, who stated that he wanted SmackDown Live's stories and shows to follow a less conventional arc, not unlike Game of Thrones. Sometimes shows will open with what is considered the 'A' story and finish with the 'B' story, among other formats.

Opening the PPV with AJ Styles vs. John Cena vs. Dean Ambrose certainly was unorthodox, but it was the right decision. Now, if only they'd ended with Ziggler vs. Miz...

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.