WWE No Way Out 2012 Review

[We Are Legion]

Tonight WWE presented the No Way Out pay per view live from East Rutherford, New Jersey, not far from the site of the upcoming Wrestlemania 29 next year. The big hype of this particular event revolved around John Cena's feud against the corrupt Raw GM John Laurinaitis and his 500lb henchman The Big Show. Even though we've seen John Cena vs The Big Show several times over the past decade, John Cena relentlessly swore up and down that before the last pay per view (Over the Limit) in May, he and Big Show had always been friends. That's cool, I throw my friends through spotlights all the time, so I understood this completely.

The card also featured a triple threat match between CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and Kane for the WWE Championship and featured numerous segments of AJ Lee walking around backstage between matches kissing all three men. I think instead of the "I dig crazy chicks" shirt CM Punk was wearing tonight, he should have went with "I dig sluts" instead.

The card was pretty underwhelming in my opinion, barring a few exceptions, not exactly the sexiest card on paper. If you have read my reviews before, you know that I don't exactly review pay per views play-by-play, and I sure won't be doing it in this article either as I found it difficult to become absorbed in a few of these matches.


World Heavyweight Championship: Sheamus (c) vs Dolph Ziggler

Once again, for reasons I do not understand, the pay per view starts with what should be billed as one of the two biggest matches on the card. For some reason, Smackdown's heavyweight championship just isn't being pushed as that big of a deal. Some would argue that the match's placement on the card shouldn't be an indication of the match's importance, but I really think it does. The curtain-jerkers are supposed to set the tone of the event, and unless it's a Night of Champions atmosphere where titles are on the line in every single match, this is a very sloppy schedule. WWE really, really does not need to have the second-biggest title on the line right off the bat to make a viewer interested in what they're watching. Most of the people watching either paid for tickets to the event or paid $60 to watch it at home, so they've ALREADY accomplished that. I liked what WCW did with the cruiserweight division, it was the perfect way to kick off a big event. WWE could use their tag division the same way, especially considering this event featured a 4-team tag match loaded with young talent.

BUT ANYWAY.... this match was surprisingly better than I thought it would be and easily one of the best matches of the night. Dolph Ziggler continues to be an absolute work horse for Smackdown and put on what I consider to be one of his better performances of the year so far against the man beast Sheamus. Vickie Guerrero wasn't quite as involved as I would like her to be, particularly because she used to be a lot more involved that she has been lately, but Ziggler and Sheamus made due without her for the most part.

I felt the ending was a little boring and routine though, which disappointed me considering the rest of the match was a complete work of art. Sheamus follows-up White Noise with the Brogue Kick after Ziggler slowly gets to his feet and picks up a clean win. I kinda wish Ziggler would have countered the Brogue Kick and forced Sheamus to at least pin his shoulders in a less-conventional fashion, but the match was solid nonetheless.


Tuxedo Match: Ricardo Rodriguez vs Santino Marella

This "match" is going to be frowned upon by everyone on planet earth who does wrestling reviews. Especially if you're a Meltzer wannabe who thinks the only way to enjoy a wrestling match is how many times it makes you press SHIFT+8 on your keyboard.

Let me be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with comedic matches like this on a ppv because you rarely see crap this ridiculous on Raw or Smackdown. It's very unlike what viewers are normally treated to, but I still had a couple issues with this particular bout. First of all, there was really nothing riding on it. Secondly, it wasn't very funny, which is inexcusable from two people like Santino and Rodriguez. And third, it will lead to absolutely nothing on the next show.

Santino strips Rodriguez down to score the win, which infuriated me because it once again demonstrates WWE having something potentially-good in their hands, then making it blatantly clear it was only a fluke. All it would have taken was Alberto Del Rio to interfere in this match so his personal ring announcer Rodriguez wins (regardless of how injured ADR is, he could have at least done this simple task). Then whenever Del Rio returns to television in a couple weeks, there's his return feud: Santino Marella. And as silly as all 3 of those guys are, this could have been a great feud, even without a title on the line. Big swing and a miss by WWE here.


Intercontinental Championship: Cody Rhodes vs Christian (c)

This actually may have been my favorite match of the card. I can't remember another time I saw Cody Rhodes put on a performance like this and it was undoubtedly one of the better matches I've ever seen from him. Christian put on a hell of a show as well, but I'm much more used to seeing Christian perform at this level. I'm glad these two got the amount of time they did to showcase what they are capable of, I just wish WWE could make a better deal of the Intercontinental Championship. It's also kind of a bummer for me to watch Christian fighting that hard for a mid-card belt, considering he's a two-time World Heavyweight Champion. His entire reign recently has been a downer actually considering it's pretty much set in stone for him that he'll never be main event material.

Aside from the superb performance by each wrestler, nothing remarkable really took place in this match as far as story line material goes. Christian picks up a clean win over Rhodes after delivering the finishing move of his Hall of Fame former tag team partner and can feud with literally anyone he wants on the next edition of Smackdown.


Tag Team Clusterf*ck for #1 Contender to WWE Tag Team Championship:
Primo and Epico vs Tyson Kidd and Justin Gabriel vs Titus O'Neil and Darren Young vs The Usos

So what were all these jobbers doing on a pay per view? The world may never know.

Seriously, this was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for a match to fill a slot on the card. If you're a fan of any of these guys, I'm sorry, but this match in no way deserved this much attention on a pay per view. It's not even the fact that it's only for a "#1 Contenders" status and not the actual title, which even though is a little TNA-ish, at least TNA does a better job making me care about the wrestlers involved before hand. AW promises Epico and Primo before the match that this match will be the pinnacle of their success in WWE so far, which would have been hardly reassuring if I was Epico and Primo considering I still have no freaking clue who AW is or where he came from.

I really hate matches like this considering only two wrestlers from two of the four teams wrestle at a time in the ring, while both members of the other two teams just wait to be tagged... which is pretty stupid when you think about it because who in the blue hell tags another team when their own partner is an option? Wouldn't you just want to keep your own team in the ring the whole time considering you can only WIN the match if your team is in the ring? None of this makes any sense. These 4-team tag matches with traditional 1-on-1 action are a poor attempt to bring order to chaos and this match was hardly any different. I wouldn't have liked this matched even if I was even moderately entertained by at least one of the eight wrestlers in the match.

Well, AW's pre-match reassurance proves to be worth as much to Primo and Epico and this entire match was to me as O'Neil and Young pick up the win. Afterwards, AW celebrates in the ring with the winners and not the team he swore to bring success to. I guess this makes a bit of a heel out of AW, but really, who cares? Screwing over Epico and Primo will hardly piss anyone off unless you're just a raving fan of everything Puerto Rican.


Triple H talks Brock Lesnar in the ring

Once again, someone in WWE must have miscalculated how many minutes are in a 3-hour pay per view, because this was another segment that could have just as easily been on Raw or Smackdown. I guess this also demonstrates how highly WWE thinks of Brock Lesnar's marketability when Triple H can just waltz down to the ring and talk about the guy, and somehow it's worthy of pay per view.

That's all that really happened here though, Triple H basically took 10 minutes of our time to explain how he wants to fight Brock Lesnar, which most of us already knew, and then walks away. Also, the more this rivalry gets talked about and the fact that Brock Lesnar isn't actually on television, it really makes me lose interest in this rivalry completely.

Michael Cole mentions "Triple H" is trending on Twitter. Thanks, Michael. That completely lifted my spirits of this unbelievably pointless segment.


WWE Divas Championship: Layla (c) vs Beth Phoenix

Yeah, I'm not going to lie... after those last two segments, the absolute last thing in the world I wanted to see was a divas match.

WWE must have something seriously special lined-up for Layla down he road considering not many people make Beth Phoenix look this weak. Even when Layla returned at Extreme Rules two months ago and picked up what was thought to be a "fluke victory" over the Glamazon, all of a sudden she looks like a better wrestler entirely.

Beth Phoenix loses cleanly, and now Layla seems like she might be more than just a transitional champion, probably not the place-holder for the Divas Championship until Kharma returns as many people speculated. In fact, it looks like we might get Layla vs Kharma long before we ever get Phoenix vs Kharma. Though I gotta say, if Phoenix keeps losing like this, it might hurt "Phoenix vs Kharma". If WWE has any intention to preserve Phoenix's intimidation factor, Layla should be scoring shady victories, not clean wins.


Sin Cara vs Hunico (w/ Camacho)

So... when do either of these wrestlers ever wrestle anyone but each other? I am seriously getting sick of this match. It seems like I see this match every time I watch Smackdown, and now here it is again on pay per view.

Sin Cara obviously wins.

Enough of this crap already. This match being spammed as much as it is actually makes me slightly resent both wrestlers at this point.


WWE Championship Match: CM Punk (c) vs Daniel Bryan vs Kane

So finally after 4 segments of complete garbage, we finally move on to a good match.

Early on in the match, I was under the impression the match would be mainly between Bryan and Punk, whereas Kane would be more of a booster to the story line involving AJ Lee and nothing else. Especially considering the majority of the action was between Bryan and Punk, who even teamed up at one point to throw kicks to Kane, who was groggy on his knees. Though that proved to be a false assumption as Kane became more and more involved in the match as it progressed.

I actually felt Daniel Bryan was actually more impressive working the crowd in his favor during the match than Punk was, which goes to show how far he's progressed.

The match was very good, not nearly as good as Punk and Bryan's Over The Limit bout or anywhere close to Punk's bout with Jericho at Extreme Rules, but for a triple threat match (which I'm not usually fond of) this was actually a very decent performance.

There were a few parts I found silly, particularly where Kane and CM Punk were fighting over who got to perform the superplex off the top rope to Bryan. As Bryan sat helplessly on the top of the turnbuckle, CM Punk and Kane kept rushing towards him, throwing one another away because apparently performing this move on Bryan is a huge freaking deal. Not sure why you wouldn't just let the other guy do it considering a superplex is supposedly known to incapacitate both the person receiving it and the person performing it. Eh... but whatever.

AJ runs to the ring during a slugfest between CM Punk and Kane while Daniel Bryan is outside the ring somewhere. As AJ jumps on the ring apron, Kane inadvertently bumps her off, causing her to plunge to the floor violently. As Kane focuses his attention on the injured AJ, CM Punk sneaks up behind him and lands the GTS to pick up the win and retain the WWE Championship. I also can't recall CM Punk ever hitting that move on someone as gigantic as Kane before, Punk is definitely a lot stronger than he looks, that's for sure.

After the match, Kane carries AJ up the ramp backstage as AJ smiles over his shoulder at CM Punk who is celebrating with his belt in the ring. Very inconclusive finish to the match as AJ's true allegiance is still not known. I was a little surprised Daniel Bryan was not involved in the match's finish at all.

Lawler's comment, "Daniel Bryan's not two-faced. If he was, he wouldn't be wearing that one." was the highlight of the night for me.


Delaney and Grimes vs Ryback

All I can say is, these were unquestionably the loudest "Goldberg" chants I've heard for Ryback yet.

But seriously, the 1-on-2 handicap squash matches are wearing thin. I get that WWE wants this guy on television every chance they get considering they are trying to turn him into the next Goldberg, but give this guy a real opponent, please. Not even Yoshi Tatsu battled this many nobodies when he signed up.

Feed you more? You haven't been fed anything, Ryback. Ethiopian nomads eat more than you.


Steel Cage Match: John Cena vs Big Show

Once again, John Cena continues to headline the show, over even the WWE Championship which I am getting a little sick of. When it was against The Rock, okay, no question about that. That was the biggest match of Wrestlemania 28. Against Brock Lesnar at Extreme Rules... sure. Lesnar is still a humongous name in the world of wrestling and his return was definitely what everyone was looking to most at that ppv. Against Laurinaitis at Over the Limit? Ehhhh... not really, but since Johnny Ace is the GM and it's such an unorthodox match-up, maybe that works. But against Big Show? Nahhhhh sorry. Even with Johnny Ace's job on the line, this shouldn't have been the main event in my opinion. I think the WWE Championship still comes first, before any wrestler on the roster. Even if Cena is having a pretty engaging feud with Johnny and getting tons of tv time doing it, WWE still has to make it seem like their championship is the most important thing... not just John Cena.

And don't even get me started on my gripes with the rules of the steel cage match. I hate the door escape, always have, always will. When I imagine a real steel cage match where that is an option to win, I picture two guys sandwiched in the corner hanging on the ropes with each other in headlocks in a stalemate that lasts 20 minutes until one of them wiggles free and gets out the cage. Not... like... what we normally see in a WWE steel cage match.

Big Show dominates for the good majority of the match, even takes a dive off the top rope. And not just the top of the turnbuckle... like, LITERALLY the top rope. The middle of it to be exact after walking it like a tight rope, which is completely unlike anything I've ever seen Big Show do. It actually kind of made me wonder how many times he rehearsed it and fell trying before he finally got it right. Show me THAT footage ffs.

Johnny Ace interferes relentlessly in the match, holding the cage door closed to prevent Cena from escaping through it, even going so far as to knock down Vince McMahon who was holding it open for Cena. Tons of run-in's to the aid of Cena as well, including Kofi Kingston, Zack Ryder, Brodus Clay, and a few others. After all the chaos, Cena escapes over the top of the cage just seconds before Big Show crawls through the door and picks up the win.

The pay per view ends with Vince McMahon delivering his famous two words, "YOU'RE FIRED!" to Laurinaitis who is then put through a commentator's desk by John Cena via the Attitude Adjustment.




Overall, the pay per view was pretty underwhelming as half of it really wasn't worthy of being on a pay per view card in my opinion. Not because of who was in the matches, but because of how little those matches were booked, how unimportant many of them were, and lack-luster performance from a few people. Even for the hardcore CM Punk/Daniel Bryan fans, I really couldn't tell you that triple threat match is something you absolutely MUST see, because it wasn't. It was also John Cena's most passable match of the entire year so far. Cody/Christian and Sheamus/Ziggler are certainly worth a watch if you're big fans of either of those guys, but that's about it.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

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Until next month!

 

[Heisenberg]

Pretty good review but I disagree with what you said about the tag match and with the Santino/Ricardo thing, they're not going to get ADR involved as they wouldn't put a guy like him against Santino who isn't taken serious and that's why he is not a threat to ADR. Why he also isn't a threat is because Del Rio has beat him countless times in such short amounts of time. Santino is also much lower value on the roster to someone like ADR which is why you don't put the two together in a feud as it could put Del Rios value down a little. And he only got accidentally injured. When he's back on TV after cleared to compete from his concussion, he'll be straight back in the title scene with Sheamus and will have his rematch clause at MITB probably.

 

[PHX]

Good review, I can see why people would not like it because there was a amount of skip worthy stuff like HHH's promo, Ricardo/Santino, etc but Sheamus/Dolph, Christian/Cody, WWE Title 3 way were good enough to make it a solid PPV. Also one of the few I guess that thought the tag title match and the diva match weren't bad.

 

[We Are Legion]

Pretty good review but I disagree with what you said about the tag match and with the Santino/Ricardo thing, they're not going to get ADR involved as they wouldn't put a guy like him against Santino who isn't taken serious and that's why he is not a threat to ADR. Why he also isn't a threat is because Del Rio has beat him countless times in such short amounts of time. Santino is also much lower value on the roster to someone like ADR which is why you don't put the two together in a feud as it could put Del Rios value down a little. And he only got accidentally injured. When he's back on TV after cleared to compete from his concussion, he'll be straight back in the title scene with Sheamus and will have his rematch clause at MITB probably.

ADR feuding with Santino for a few weeks wouldn't be hurting ADR at all actually. Can't believe you actually think WWE still doesn't take Santino seriously either considering his US title reign and his wins over Miz. I'm not talking about a 3 month feud between those two either, I'm talking about a brief comedy feud thar gets them both to the MITB match, which could be utterly hilarious considering the potential verbal chemistry between those two. Sheamus/ADR can wait until Summer Slam, there's really no urgency for that feud.

Good review, I can see why people would not like it because there was a amount of skip worthy stuff like HHH's promo, Ricardo/Santino, etc but Sheamus/Dolph, Christian/Cody, WWE Title 3 way were good enough to make it a solid PPV. Also one of the few I guess that thought the tag title match and the diva match weren't bad.

Yeah I just wasn't a fan of the tag match the slightest. I figure if you're going to throw that many teams into the mix, you may as well throw out the rule book and let them completely open the flood gates. I just really, really hate the way that match was set up. That's why I loved it when the New Age Outlaws made a complete mockery of that kind of match in the 90's when they pinned eachother to retain and the "Outlaw Rule" came into play afterwards.

The Divas match wasn't bad, it was just bad timing for that match IMO. The ppv was moving at a snail's pace by that point and it needed something to get the ball moving again. I was just a little irked by the fact Layla won the way she did because I hope they don't come back to Phoenix later and try to pass her off as the unstoppable force. Losing once this way isn't terrible, but a couple more like this could hurt her image. Nothing against Layla either, I just don't think she's someone that should be taming the Glamazon like that.

 

[Sexton_Hardcastle]

Terrible review. NWO was brilliant, and any legit fan would appreciate it for what it was.