(interview was subscription only @ f4online. go sign up.)
There really wasn’t a lot of news – some confirmation of what we’ve heard elsewhere (though often that’s because it was previously Konnan’s words coming out of other’s mouths) – just a lot of Konnan’s thoughts about things. It really wasn’t the MMA/Boxing discussion I thought – no pick for anything on Saturday!
Konnan also didn’t seem plugged into with the day by day for AAA; obviously he goes to tapings, he probably watches the TV, and he definitely has influence on the stylistic direction of the promotion, but there were bits where someone who’s more intimately involved with AAA might know stuff Konnan wasn’t sure of or had wrong. Konnan (and Bryan) were unsure if the Lucha Libre Premier show on Fox was airing in the US (it’s not), talked about all the shows having one match of minis, one match of women, one match of hardcore, one match of something else (may be the ideal, but doesn’t usually happen that way.)
There’s just three points of what he said I thought worth making
– Either’s a misunderstanding, a disconnect, a strawman argument being used, but I don’t think most people actually have a problem with AAA trying to be WWE like. They’ve been trying to be WWE like for over a decade, it’s really not a big change.
What people are actually complaining about is AAA coming off a like a third-rate WWE knockoff. There’s too much trying to repeat angles seen on TV elsewhere three years ago, except done half as well, because they’re not executed as well, or they’re forgotten about halfway thru (are Nicho & Lider still taking jobs?), or they’re completely missing the context that made them work in the first place (DX was a heel stable, people only started cheering them because they were so good at it.)
Why watch a third rate WWE when the actual one airs? People have been very clear on voting with their remotes on that one. It’s not even like a third rate WWE is an innovate idea. They have in the US too, they call it TNA, they also air “shoot” vignettes that turn out to be fake, and they also get about 40% of the audience who watches WWE. You’ve got to be something new, something different, nothing just something else.
There’s also the whole confusing thing about the new writers and Moody Jack taking over Creative from Doain. They might have different people at the wheel, but if you ignored the production, any episode I’ve seen this month could’ve aired any other time this year, or maybe in the last couple, whenever else Konnan and Roldan were feuding. There’s the same bad pacing, there’s same characters turned and dropped without an attempt an explanation (all that TV time on Gato/Pimpi and it just stops after the date), there’s the same guys in the spots. You could point to little touches, like the clocked being lifted from 24 for one episode, but the show’s laid out the same as it always was.
– There’s a lot of circular and specious reasoning that one could have fun with, if arguing with Konnan about near irrelevant things is what you wanted to accomplish with your life. Like
Konnan, while talking on a show solely listened to by people who read/write stuff about wrestling, noted early on how irrelevant the opinions of fans who go read/write stuff about wrestling on the internet. Later, he hyped the hipness and plugged-in news of the new AAA writers by mentioning how they’re all about the internet.
Konnan justified the amount of foreigners in AAA by saying they’re all over, and proved this by talking about how each guy was over. Either he got lost on his way to his point, or he just didn’t have one to say, and it was goofy.
– I hope, when the history of lucha libre gets written for all us who are too dumb to be fluent in Spanish, it’s not all based on Konnan’s view of history. Over the course of his appearances, Konnan’s description role in the formative years of AAA has seemed to grow. No one’s denying he had a big part in it, but it seems to get a little bigger every appearance, not too dissimilar from Hulk Hogan’s stories of WrestleMania III. This time, we heard the previously untold story of how Antonio Pena actually got cold feet about leaving CMLL and was going to go back, only Konnan and Octagon told him they were going to form a promotion without him, and Pena decided to with them after all.
That story may be true – a lot of smart people seem to trust what Konnan says, and they’d definitely know better than I. Still, a lot of the stuff he says sets off every BS alarm in my head. It may be entertaining, but that doens’t mean I believe him without someone else verifying. (And then there’s stuff I couldn’t find myself believing even it could be verified – the bit where he said he’d never used drugs before WCW was a reminder that wrestlers define “drugs” a whole lot different than the average person.)
Konnan may well have been the Forrest Gump of the last twenty years of lucha libre, running into one generational importance moment into another and having big impact along the way, but I wouldn’t have believed Gump’s story on it’s own either. I need a second viewpoint…but since Konnan is the only one who talks to the likes of pointless people on the internet, it may be all we have.
(Not to mention – Konnan knows a lot about the life of Konnan. Konnan may know/care little about what happened in Lucha Libre from the day WCW stopped Promo Azteca to the day he came back. Wasn’t at all surprised he didn’t know who Path Finder – he quite likely never actually seen Path Finder. Still, very funny.)
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I posted over on F4 that I found the show entertaining, because it was. I wasn’t alone on that, but I’m thinking I may have been one of the few who found entertaining in a DDP-sort of fashion than the gospel.
Konnan would like everyone who hasn’t watched AAA in a while to give another shot. Let me know how that goes.
