Throwback Thursday: Looking back at WWE No Mercy 2002

Each and every Thursday I will look back at a different pay-per-view event from the past via the WWE Network. Want to see a certain event covered? Send your suggestions to @VaughnMJohnson on Twitter.

Last week, I covered the 1996 King of the Ring.

WWE No Mercy 2002

Date: Oct. 20, 2002

Venue: Alltel Arena (now Verizon Arena), North Little Rock, Ark.

Some random notes

This was the fifth annual No Mercy event. No Mercy began as a pay-per-view event exclusively for the United Kingdom. It eventually morphed into an annual event for WWE.

To date, this is the only WWE pay-per-view to be held in the state of Arkansas.

Earlier in the year, WWE had introduced its first iteration of the brand extension. However, it had not yet gone to brand exclusive pay-per-views. That didn't begin until Bad Blood in June of 2003. That was a pay-per-view that was exclusive to Raw.

Along with the brand extension, WWE had recently split up its world title. On one hand, you had the WWE championship, which was held by Brock Lesnar. But when he signed a deal to be exclusive to Smackdown, Raw general manager Eric Bischoff re-introduced the World Heavyweight championship, otherwise known as "The Big Gold Belt."

The title was handed over to Triple H. Because of the two world titles, this show was billed as a double main event.

The world titles weren't the only thing that was split. As a matter of fact, everything was. There were two sets of tag team titles: The World Tag Team championships and the WWE Tag Team titles.

Apparently, the lineage of the former goes back decades, including the days of the Hart Foundation and the British Bulldogs. The lineage for the WWE Tag Team championships — as silly as that sounds — didn't begin until this night. WWE has kept the lineage alive until this day.

So despite the fact that WWE is well over 50 years old, the tag team titles that bears its name is only 14 years old. I don't get it either.

We also got split announce teams, which was the norm during the brand extension. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler were positioned near the stage calling the Raw matches. Calling all of the Smackdown matches were Michael Cole and Tazz.

The ring announcers and backstage interviewers were also split. For Raw, the great Howard Finkel introduced all of the wrestlers. For Smackdown, it was the less great Tony Chimel. Backstage for Raw was Jonathan Coachman. For Smackdown, it was Funaki. I'm not joking.

With that said, let's get to the matches.

World Tag Team championship – Chris Jericho & Christian def. Booker T & Goldust

WWE still had the classic world tag team title belts that I always gush about. This must have been one of the last hurrahs for those beautiful pieces of gold.

Jericho and Christian only had the titles for eight days heading into this match so it was a long shot that they were going to drop them to the comedic team of Booker T and Goldust so quickly.

However, Booker T and Goldust did eventually win the titles in December.

During the latter stages of the match, the middle turnbuckle broke when Jericho attempted a springboard drop kick to Booker T. The accident has probably been played on Botchamania for years and years, but it certainly wasn't the fault of the wrestlers in the ring. Fortunately, Jericho wasn't injured and the match didn't necessarily suffer because of it. All four men were veterans of the ring and handled the situation rather professionally considering the circumstances.

The one thing the missing turnbuckle played a part in was that Jericho couldn't do the lionsault to Goldust for the finish. Instead, he went all the way to the top rope so that he could do a traditional moonsault.

Quick thinking by Jericho there to salvage what could have been a disaster. The turnbuckle was quickly fixed after the match wasn't a problem the rest of the night.

Torrie Wilson def. Dawn Marie

If you weren't enthralled by the in-ring match-up, maybe you would be over the story being about Wilson's fighting for her storyline father/Marie's storyline boyfriend/sugar daddy, Al Wilson.

That didn't captivate you either, huh? Yeah I figured.

Funaki interviewed Al Wilson before the match for what seemed like forever. Funaki, whose first language is Japanese, did almost all of the talking.

All Al Wilson had to say was, "Uh," and "I don't know."

The awful interview ended with WWE making a Bill Clinton joke four years after the fact.

Wrestling was not necessarily the forte of Torrie Wilson and Marie, but they actually decent during this match. They got to show off some athleticism and even worked body parts.

Yes, there was the typical catfight spot with both women rolling over the referee, but that was only spot during the match.

Eventually, Torrie Wilson won with a devastating swinging neck breaker.

Rob Van Dam def. Ric Flair

Before the match, Van Dam did his best Flair impersonation during an interview. This wouldn't have made sense for most people to do before what was supposed to be a personal feud, but I guess it made sense for the easy-going Van Dam.

For some strange reason, WWE used Flair's music from 1992, which was weird because WWE used his iconic theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey before this, including at WrestleMania that year. I have no idea why WWE temporarily went away from it, but I'm so glad it stopped rather quickly.

The match itself was mostly Flair working over Van Dam's legs to nullify his dangerous kicks. In fact, Flair dominated most of the match until Van Dam finally found his second wind and rallied to pick up the win.

This match was a prime example of just how many stars WWE had at its disposal. A match between Van Dam and Flair — two all-time greats — was just another match on this card.

To be fair, Van Dam wasn't quite a legend just yet, but Flair definitely was and a victory over him should have meant a lot for Van Dam.

WWE Cruiserweight championship – Jamie Noble def. Tajiri

There wasn't much here storyline wise. This was just a fun match in the middle of the card that showcased Smackdown's cruiserweight division.

I always thought it was smart of WWE to keep the Cruiserweight championship and make it exclusive to Smackdown. It gave it another thing that made it different from Raw other than it being the blue show.

World Heavyweight championship & WWE Intercontinental championship – Triple H def. Kane

For some strange reason, WWE thought it was a good idea to retire the Intercontinental championship and unify it with the World Heavyweight championship.

From what I gather, WWE wanted only one singles championship, one set of tag team titles and a specialty title for each brand. Raw got the Women's championship while Smackdown got the Cruiserweight championship.

I could go into great detail as to why getting rid of the Intercontinental championship was a stupid idea, but I don't want this post to be 4,000 words long. Let's just say that it was a mistake on WWE's part and leave it at that.

Thankfully, this horrible idea didn't last too long, as WWE reinstated the title in May of 2003.

Even worse than retiring the Intercontinental championship was the backstory between Triple H and Kane. Yes, this was the infamous Katie Vick storyline, where Triple H accused Kane of murdering a woman from his past … and having relations with her after the fact. Yes, this story was about necrophilia.

It didn't stop there. Triple H went as far as to reenact Kane committing the horrific act. He went to a church with one of Kane's masks, hopped inside of a casket and began to hump what was supposed to be a dead body.

I cannot make this up. I had hoped to forget all about this, but this event unfortunately conjures up these god-awful memories.

The worst part about all of this was that after all of the horrible things Triple H said about Kane, he still beat him, which sort of defies the logic of storytelling, but whatever.

Another horrible thing about this was that this was supposed to be this historic unification match between the Intercontinental and World Heavyweight champions. Instead, almost all of the focus was on a horrific story about alleged murder and necrophilia.

The match itself wasn't bad. Despite the horrid story leading, Triple H and Kane were and still are talented enough to at least make this interesting once it got inside the ring. However, even they weren't good enough to completely salvage this proverbial chicken poo.

WWE Tag Team championship – Kurt Angle & Chris Benoit def. Edge & Rey Mysterio

The complete opposite of that garbage was all of the goodness that was Smackdown at the time, specifically the "Smackdown Six."

What was that? It was the group of wrestlers Paul Heyman relied upon while he was the creative force behind Smackdown in 2002. Four of those six wrestlers were in this match. The other two were Eddie and Chavo Guerrero.

Heyman used the six men whenever he could on Smackdown and even used them to crown the first-ever WWE Tag Team champions.

This match didn't have the typical heel/babyface dynamic, but there was still some good storytelling being done.

On one end, you had the makeshift team of Angle and Benoit, who were forced to work together despite being heated rivals. On the other, you had another makeshift team, but a pair of upstarts in Edge and Mysterio.

Edge and Mysterio were fun to watch, but could still play underdogs due to Mysterio's small stature.

With all of these factors at play, both teams tore the house down and more than made up for that debacle between Triple H and Kane. This was just another piece of evidence of how much better Smackdown was than Raw at this point.

WWE Women's championship – Trish Stratus def. Victoria

Everyone harkens back to the days of Stratus, Lita and Victoria as a golden age of women's wrestling. This match won't be a good example as to why.

It has nothing to do with the talent level of Stratus or Victoria, as both of these women were great. It was that they didn't receive a ton of time to tell a good story in the ring. It was over before you really got a chance to get into it.

As much things change, some things stay the same. Sigh.

For what it was, it was good.

WWE championship (Hell in a Cell) – Brock Lesnar def. The Undertaker

A Hell in a Cell match between two monsters like and Lesnar and Undertaker was plenty to get people to watch this match, but nope. That wasn't enough for WWE.

WWE had to add on an extra layer. That layer was Heyman having a lady claim that she was having an affair with The Undertaker while his wife was pregnant.

It was done to get inside The Undertaker's head, but this was stupid and thankfully resolved before the match.

I'm not sure what is scarier: Young, really athletic Lesnar or older, wiser, bigger Lesnar. Probably the latter, especially when you consider the latter has mixed martial arts experience.

It really doesn't matter either way. It's like asking would someone rather be shot with a shotgun or an assault rifle. It's going to do bodily harm regardless.

Speaking of bodily harm, there was a lot of blood during the match. Even Heyman, who spent the entire match yelling outside of the cell, got busted open after The Undertaker used the cell to inflict harm to him. Lesnar bled some, but not nearly to the extent of The Undertaker, whose entire face became covered in blood.

As Ross would say, his face became a proverbial crimson mask.

This match was incredible, but there was one minor thing I didn't like about and that was the fact that at one point, Lesnar put his hand on the rope to stay alive in the match.

I understand that this came after The Undertaker's last ride finish and in an effort to protect it, Lesnar didn't simply kick out, but this was a Hell in a Cell match, where the only rule is that there aren't any. Why would a rope break come into play?

Other than that, the match was still great and ended with The Undertaker doing the right thing in elevating Lesnar to a higher level. It's crazy to think that more than a decade, these two are still putting on high-quality matches in the ring.