WWE No Mercy 2016 Winners: Biggest Stars of the Night

Despite having a fantastic card and a fantastic build, No Mercy was set up for failure. That's because on every news channel at the exact same time, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fought in the real main event of the year.

That's probably why WWE decided to put John Cena vs. Dean Ambrose vs. AJ Styles on first—to draw as many eyeballs as possible to the product before 9 p.m. ET. Then, every match had to deliver to ensure that those initial fans didn't change the channel.

The WWE Superstars seemed to realize they would be fighting an uphill battle for ratings, because every match had a sense of urgency, starting with the pre-show festivities. Here are the biggest stars of the night.

American Alpha

The highlights of the evening actually started on the pre-show, which featured a four-way tag match between The Hype Bros, The Vaudevillains, American Alpha and The Ascension. Eight guys thrown into a ring together with little to nothing at stake does not make for a good match. But despite this, American Alpha shone bright.

It's worth noting that out of all four teams, American Alpha is the only one that fights like a tag team, with frequent double-team moves and coordination. Jason Jordan and Chad Gable function as a seamless, single entity, not as two singles wrestlers who are both trying to get over on their own.

One minor highlight: American Alpha showed great ring awareness during the finish. Jordan made a quick switch with Gable to pin Aiden English when he realized that he, not Gable, was the legal man in the ring.

John Cena

Sunday night's Triple Threat match was a highlight reel of great John Cena moments from years past. There was the tribute to his double AA of Big Show and Edge at WrestleMania XXV. There was the callback to his Springboard Stunner of Rusev at WrestleMania 31, and another callback to his Sunset Flip Powerbomb of Kevin Owens at Money in the Bank 2015.

The whole match felt like a career retrospective, and even though Cena lost, he was the star of the match, pulling off impressive power move after power move.

Cena's work rate is truly astonishing—he's barely lost a step in the past 15 years, and he's become a better wrestler despite winning less. Vulnerable Cena is a lot more compelling than Super Cena. It was the right call to have Styles go over, but that takes nothing away from Cena's solid performance Sunday evening.

Nikki Bella

Carmella, an up-and-comer who's still a bit green, squared off against Nikki Bella, who just came back from a long-term injury. Despite both of those factors, the two women had an unexpectedly enjoyable, solid match. Bella has always worked a slower, more deliberate pace than the Four Horsewomen, and for a newcomer like Carmella, who's still finding her way around the ring, that's an ideal condition.

Expect Bella to contend for the title soon.

The Usos

The Usos continued their incredible heel turn; the two men have been doing some of their best in-ring work in years. Too many times, when babyfaces turn heel or heels turn babyface, the wrestlers do absolutely nothing to change their characters; the only thing they change is the people who they attack.

But The Usos seem like entirely different people than who they were a month ago. The heel turn has encompassed them wholly, from the way they dress to the way they walk to the way they wrestle. There are fewer high-flying antics and more limb-based attacks, fewer crowd-pleasing chants and more cocky swagger.

The Usos lost a match Sunday that, quite frankly, they shouldn't have. But it was still an absolute pleasure to watch them work.

Dolph Ziggler

And here, buried in the middle of the show, was the undisputed match of the evening. This Career vs Title match between Dolph Ziggler and The Miz went much differently than expected.

The speculation was that Ziggler would lose this match and transition into a backstage role for the company. Instead, Ziggler went over, and he and Miz tore the house down. Both men delivered on a technical level, and even the outside interferences by Maryse and The Spirit Squad were well-choreographed and thought out.

It was a feel-good moment for Ziggler after months of depressing, high-profile losses. And his post-match celebration, accompanied by The Miz crying at ringside, was the perfect closer. It's difficult to see where exactly WWE will go from here; for all we know, Ziggler might still end up retiring soon. But if so, it was nice for the Showstopper to have a final, definitive moment of glory.

In hindsight, this should have been the final match of the evening. Instead, we got a dull, plodding affair between Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt. Orton hasn't been the same since he returned this summer, and Wyatt becomes more and more of a joke with each passing month. He has sunk to the intimidation level of a haunted house carny at the county fair.

Seeing Luke Harper again was a nice surprise; he is easily the most talented wrestler in the Wyatt Family. But it underlined Bray Wyatt's essential weakness, which is that he cannot win cleanly on his own. He needs someone, whether a little kid or Luke Harper, to yell, "BOO!" at an opportune moment to eke out a win.