NXT No Mercy (2024): Everybody Believed; NXT Kept Moving Anyway

The opener does what Frazer and Axiom matches often do: it starts quickly, then somehow finds another gear without turning into visual static.

Andre Chase is the stabilizer. Ridge Holland is the mass. Frazer and Axiom are the accelerant. That combination gives the match a useful geometry from the opening minutes. When the challengers are controlling the pace, the ring feels enormous. When Holland gets his hands on somebody, it suddenly feels very small.

The near falls are ambitious but mostly earned. Chase surprising Axiom with a top-rope Spanish Fly is exactly the kind of spot that works because it belongs to the person you least expect to perform it. The Doomsday Device and the powerbomb/backstabber combination give Chase U believable finishing chances. Frazer and Axiom answer with speed, blind tags and the sort of timing that makes two wrestlers appear to share one nervous system.

The finishing sequence is clean. Frazer removes Holland from the equation, Axiom catches Chase with the Spanish Fly from the top, and Frazer follows with the Phoenix Splash. New champions. Then the actual story begins.

Holland's post-match attack on Chase U turns a title change into an angle without contaminating the match that came before it. That separation matters. Frazer and Axiom win because they are better on this night, not because Chase U implodes during the finish. Holland gets his betrayal afterward, when everyone can look at it directly.

The title reign for Chase and Holland was brief enough to make the switch feel abrupt, but the wrestling justifies the result. This is the best pure match on the card by a narrow margin, and one of those NXT openers that creates a slightly unreasonable standard for everyone scheduled after it.

Wes Lee and Zachary Wentz have the advantage every former tag team should have when it breaks apart: they already know where the other person is going.

The first half leans into that familiarity. Counters arrive early. Sequences stop before the expected landing. Neither man needs to spend ten minutes explaining his offense because the story is that both men have seen all of it before.

Once the match escapes the ring, the emotional temperature rises. Wentz is carrying the TNA X Division Championship, Lee has spent the build treating his old partner and TNA connection with contempt, and the crowd understands that this is not merely an athletic exhibition between two similarly sized wrestlers.

The broken announce table becomes an accidental production problem they handle well. A planned-looking sequence changes on the fly, and the match does not collapse around it. Lee's temptation to use a chair creates the opening for Trey Miguel to appear, remove the weapon, and give Wentz the moment he needs. The Canadian Destroyer on the floor followed by the UFO Cutter is appropriately emphatic. The interference is limited enough that the result still belongs to Wentz.

That result is the most important part. WWE could have booked the visiting TNA champion to provide a good match and then disappear with a respectable loss. Instead, Wentz wins. The crossover immediately gains credibility because consequences are allowed to travel both directions.

This is not quite as polished as the opener, and the first several minutes feel deliberately restrained compared with the sprint that follows. The restraint helps the final stretch, though. By the time Wentz wins, the match has moved from familiarity to hostility without losing the athletic identity that made the pair successful in the first place.

The problem is not effort. Kelani Jordan is athletic enough to manufacture highlights, and Wendy Choo is competent enough to structure a control segment around a slower pace. The problem is that thirteen minutes require an audience to care about the possibility of something happening, and this match never creates much belief that the championship is changing hands.

Choo's character work is meant to be unsettling. In a larger arena, it mostly lands as distance. The crowd quiets during her offense, and the match has to restart its emotional engine whenever Jordan begins a comeback.

There are individual pieces worth keeping. Jordan's aerial offense is crisp. Choo's sleeper gives the champion a simple survival problem. Jordan using the 450 splash as a setup rather than the finish at least creates a final escalation before the split-legged moonsault ends it.

But the structure is longer than the feud's emotional capital can support.

That is why the match reviews range from merely okay to actively poor even when the execution itself is not disastrous. The reported Observer rating of 1.25 stars is especially harsh, but it reflects the same underlying issue noted elsewhere: the crowd is not buying enough of the premise.

Tatum Paxley's post-match attack gives Choo another direction, so the segment is not useless. The title also stays on the correct wrestler.

Still, No Mercy is a card built on momentum, and this is the only match that noticeably removes it. The wrestlers have to spend the next thirteen minutes trying to recreate energy that the story never brought with them.

After two speed-heavy matches and one cold one, Oba Femi and Tony D'Angelo solve the pacing problem by hitting each other very hard.

The match benefits from contrast before either man does anything remarkable. Femi wrestles like his offense has weight before impact. D'Angelo is one of the better opponents for that presentation because he can absorb the power, answer with throws of his own, and keep the match from becoming a one-sided demonstration.

An apparent ankle issue gives Tony a vulnerability without turning him into a wounded passenger. He keeps finding short openings with the fisherman suplex, powerslam, electric-chair drop and spear. Femi's responses become increasingly violent and increasingly simple.

The Family's involvement is present without swallowing the match. Femi taking possession of the crowbar creates a brief distraction and lets Tony find another opening. Then the match returns to the central question: can D'Angelo survive the next powerbomb?

For a moment, yes. His kickout after Femi's power offense produces the match's best near fall and forces the champion to escalate again. Back-to-back powerbombs finally end it.

There is a ceiling here. Some reviewers were much higher on the match than others because the crowd does not sustain the same energy as the opener or women's title match, and the middle section is intentionally methodical. The appeal depends heavily on whether Femi's physical presence is enough to make that pacing feel threatening.

For WrestleFile, it is.

This is not Femi's masterpiece. It is another piece of evidence that he already understands one of wrestling's rarest skills: making basic violence look important.

Roxanne Perez spends most of this match doing the most useful thing an established champion can do with a newer challenger: treating her like a problem.

Jaida Parker is still early enough in her career that a championship match could easily become a test she is visibly taking. Perez prevents that by building the match around a straightforward weakness and then letting Parker fight through it.

The ribs become the story after Perez drives Parker into the steel steps. From there, the champion works like a smaller wrestler who knows she cannot win a power contest. She stretches the body, stomps the ribs and keeps forcing Parker to choose between protecting herself and attacking.

Parker's selling is the reason the match rises. She does not forget the injury when it is time for offense. Her power spots look more desperate because they cost her something, and the Hip-notic near the ropes creates the biggest moment where an upset feels plausible.

Then aggression becomes the mistake. Parker attempts another hip attack on the floor, Perez moves, and Parker crashes through the barricade. Pop Rox outside, another Pop Rox inside, title retained.

The finish is excellent because the challenger loses to the same impulse that made her dangerous. Perez does not simply hit a finisher after a random counter. She survives Parker's power, lets Parker overextend, and turns that mistake into the championship-saving sequence. Afterward, Giulia arrives.

That moment could have reduced Parker to the person who happened to lose before the real star appeared. The match protects her from that. Parker has already produced the performance that convinces the room she belongs.

Perez keeps the championship. Giulia gets the entrance. Parker gets credibility.

Three winners, one pinfall loser.

Joe Hendry's greatest contribution to this match happens before the first lockup.

The crowd believes he might win. That sounds obvious for a championship challenger, but modern wrestling produces plenty of title matches where everyone understands the administrative paperwork before the bell. Hendry arrives from TNA with enough momentum that Denver is willing to imagine WWE actually putting the NXT Championship on him.

Ethan Page works against that belief rather than trying to out-wrestle it. The early match is deliberately conventional. Hendry gets power spots and pin attempts. Page keeps resetting. Trick Williams' role as referee remains visible without immediately becoming the only story. The final minutes are where the match earns its score.

Hendry hits the Standing Ovation and appears close to the upset, but Page's foot reaches the rope. Trick is bumped to the floor. A second referee arrives. Page uses Hendry's own offense, a title-belt sequence creates another near fall, and Trick returns in time to interrupt the secondary count. The chaos finally gives Page the opening he has been seeking: he drops the second official, Trick looks away, Page hits the low blow and finishes Hendry with Ego's Edge.

It is busy. It is also completely consistent with Page.

The champion survives because he is better at exploiting the machinery around a championship match than the challenger is. Hendry is protected by the cheating, and Trick leaves with an obvious grievance before Pete Dunne attacks him after the bell.

As a standalone wrestling match, this is below the opener and Perez-Parker. As a main-event television story performed in an arena, it works.

The only real frustration is that No Mercy spends fifteen minutes asking the audience to believe, then makes the answer procedural.

Appropriate, perhaps. Belief got Hendry to the main event. Paperwork kept the belt in NXT.