AAA TV #653

AAA TV #653, aired US 12/01, taped on 10/20 (Edit: link fixed)

I thought this show had some of the better thought out matches. There’s nothing great here, but they didn’t run bits into the ground, repeat things unnecssairly or otherwise distract the fans from the points they were trying to make:

Point: Gran Apache & Mari Apache are rudos and anti-Billy/Fabi
By: just one spot of Gran Apache interfering, but at the most critical moment, and Mari doing the turn after the match to leave us with the proper ending.

Point: Alan Stone can beat Scorpio Jr., if he gets some help from Intocable
By: Intocable gets in one chair shot to lead (eventually) to the finish, and they skip Piero slow counting because that’s extraneous to this idea

Point: Turning down the Foreign Legion is a bad idea
By: Extreme Tiger gets killed, Mexican Powers get killed for getting involved. This was the least well done – it went on much longer than it needed to, and the MPs making the save doesn’t make any sense (unless they were thinking about reversing things and putting them back together)

This kinda falls apart with the fourth match (where Alan Stone saved Intocable for no particular reason besides them being partners), but they did the same simple and easy to understand story points in the semimain (instead of a dozen weapon shots, Zorro just did one for each guy to get the bit over, and Mesais added the belt shot to finish it off) and the main event (they established Cibernetico must beat a Legion member to get a title shot, and then had him just that.) AAA didn’t dull the points they were trying to make, as they usually do, by obscuring it with unnecessary and irrelevant material (meaningless run ins, heel ref stuff going nowhere, etc.) I liked that.