Recapped: 09/14/2017
All matches were taped at Palenque de la Fiera Nacional De San Marcos in Aguascalientes on July 27.
Matches:
Angélico beat Joe Lider
(6:31, Fall of the Angels, below average, via Lucha Libre AAA)
Lady Shani defeated Big Mami, Goya Kong, and La Hiedra to win a spot in the Reina de Reinas title match at TripleMania
(5:56, Lady Shani backracker La Hiedra, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA)
Carta Brava Jr., Mocho Cota Jr., Soul Rocker beat Aerostar, Drago, Raptor
(0:49, Mocho Cota cradle suplex Drago, n/r, via Lucha Libre AAA)
Pagano & Psycho Clown beat Dr. Wagner Jr. & El Mesías
(14:56, Psycho Clown Code Red Dr. Wagner, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA)
What happened:
Even though every other AAA tag match is first pinfall for the win, and even the multiwoman match was first pinfall, the main event suddenly became an elimination match after Pagnao was pinned. Everyone was confused, but they mostly wanted Psycho to be handicapped and get two pins in a row to win. Mesias beat Pagano, Psycho beat Mesias, and Psycho beat Wagner after a few minutes more. Wagner attacked and unmasked Psycho to end the show.
Raptor landed a plancha on one of Poder del Norte, but the others snuck in thru a ground exit. They laid out Aerostar & Raptor with moves on the steps, then Cota quickly beat Mocho Cota. The post match attack lasted about as long as the match. Ratpor was treated as injured, but he was on TripleMania, so who knows. The técnicos now lead two matches to one.
The four way match was for the title shot that already happened at TripleMania. Goya attacked everyone on the way to the ring, which didn’t mean anything but started everyone attacking everyone else. Shani seemed to be back to being a ruda here.
Thoughts:
The AAA shows feel more like something to endure than enjoy. This particular lame duck taping is the worst – this is where the Hard Rock show needs to go, even though it’ll never happen – but this hasn’t been a fun show in a while.
The main event was explicitly a preview of TripleMania, as hyped by the announcers. It’s unnecessary and beside the point after the fact, outside of the oddity of Psycho & Wagner running thru the TripleMania finish. It looked better here, as did Pagano’s dropkick off the apron. The crowd was way into this, but I could find a reason to care.
The best matches on these shows have been the Poder del Norte/tecnicos match, so this one was scarely more than an angle. I guess the idea is not to make sure all the matches feel different, but I would’ve been happy with five about the same.
The woman’s match was just a lot of moves. The tried to set up sequences but it was mostly the women betraying each other repeatedly with no direction. It ended and that was good, the moves generally look OK, and there wasn’t enough here to hate. It did feel a lot longer than six minutes, maybe just because Goya was attacking before the whistle, maybe because it was just a lot of stuff.
Someone totally forgot the finish in the opener. Either Angelico forgot, or Lider went to the top for it far sooner than then he was planned. Both men spent a lot of time waiting for each other to do something, and I spent time wondering why AAA couldn’t have made an edit. This was a boring match with a really bad looking moment, not exactly the return to TV you’d hope for Angelico. It’s also not a super logical build for Joe Lider, who’s only been on TV three times since April, lost all those matches, and will somehow be main eventing the next card. Did AAA not know Lider was main eventing the next show at this point? Were they trying to do something to convince Angelico to stick around? Does it just not make any sense because it’s AAA? Probably.
