Recapped: 01/26/2018
All matches aired live from Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera.
Matches:
Australian Suicide beat Lanzelot © to win he AAA World Cruiserweight Championship
(11:47, F5 into a double knee gutbuster, good)
Faby Apache beat Lady Shani © to win the AAA’s Reina de Reinas championship
(8:24, Faby German suplex, great)
Dark Cuervo, Dark Scoria, La Parka beat Dave The Clown, Monsther Clown, Murder Clown
(13:45, La Parka urange Dave the Clown, ok)
Carta Brava Jr., Mocho Cota Jr., Tito Santana defeated Aerostar, Drago, Raptor and Angelikal, Bengala, Máscara de Bronce and Averno, Chessman, Súper Fly © to win the AAA World Trios Championship
(16:18, great)
Angelikal huracanrana Chessman (7:41)
Carta Brava frogsplash Raptor (10:59)
Mocho Cota Jr. pin Bengala (16:18)
Psycho Clown beat Rey Escorpión in a bull terrier match
(18:06, DQ for Murder/Monster run-in, great)
Dr. Wagner Jr. beat Johnny Mundo for the AAA World Heavyweight Championship
(19:05, Vampiro chokeslam, below average)
Hijo del Fantasma © beat Texano Jr. in a cage match to keep the AAA Latin American Championship
(13:06, inexplicable DQ, below average)
What happened:
AAA’s Guerra de Titanes was a pretty fun undercard with two bewildering matches prior to close it. Four title changed hands. Johnny Mundo appeared to finish up with the promotion, while La Mascara & Máximo debuted for the group. The entire show aired on Twitch, which was only announced a few hours before the show.
The cage match was moved to the main event spot, to save on dead time for construction. They might as well not have bothered with the cage. Hijo del Tirantes interfered three times to help Texano. Bengala came out and spat water in his brother’s face to stop him from escaping. At that point, Vampiro and the commissioner arrived to stop the match, declaring Fantasma the winner by DQ. It wasn’t clear why that happened and even the announcement of the finish was hard to understand. Fantasma and Texano made challenges, and brawled (with Bengala & Tirantes again getting involved), and Vampiro announced they’d have a hair match match in Rey de Reyes in six weeks from now.
Dr. Wagner Jr. is the new heavyweight champion, though that ended up the third most important story in his own match. His son, for reasons not explained on this show, attacked his father with a chair from behind to stop him from winning, then attacked Vampiro and tossed the chair to Hernandez to hide his turn. (Though not well; Hijo de Wagner was rooting for Mundo the rest of the way. Hernandez & Mundo didn’t seem to be part of Hijo de Wagner’s plan.) The match eventually continued for a few more minutes with a second referee before Hijo de Wagner took him out as well and revealed his betrayal to his father. Vampiro recovered, beat up all the rudos, chokeslammed Mundo, Wagner crawled on top for the pin, and Vampiro forced the referee to make the third count.
Johnny Mundo is currently listed on the Aguascalientes card, though Taya on Twitter quickly stated after the match that this would be Mundo’s final AAA show.
Psycho Clown & Rey Escorpión’s chain match also finished strangely. It was at least better received. The match proceeded normally for a chain match (in that it took nearly ten minutes and security getting involved to get Escorpión to put on his part of the chain). Psycho was close to winning when Murder Clown & Monster Clown ran in for the DQ. Two mystery men in masks made the save, and revealed themselves as Máximo & La Mascara. The Brazos are back together.
The four way trios title match was elimination style, which didn’t stop everyone from breaking up pins. (Also, Angelikal replaced Argenis, for reasons not explained.) Poder del Norte regained the titles by defeating the Bengala, Mascara de Bronce and Angelikal trio with an unseen foul. OGT immediately attacked the new champs after the match, making them the likely challengers.
La Parka got the best of Dave the Clown in their trios street fight. Parka was left alone with the Clowns after Cuervo & Scoria were put thru tables early. He managed to turn it around himself even before they got involved, and pinned Dave with an urange.
Faby Apache once again became Reina de Reinas champion by defeating Lady Shani. The match was mostly notable for being extremely hard hitting at times.
Australian Suicide won the Cruiserweight championship in the opener. Suicide twisted around Lanzelot’s mask to blind him for a moment, distracting the champ to set up the finish.
In a segment not shown on the Twitch stream, an in-ring segment was taped for the upcoming Ultima Caida show.
Thoughts:
This was another confounding evening with AAA. The undercard was generally a lot of fun. Look back it, there were a screwy finishes, but they didn’t feel like the fan got cheated out of anything. Chain match ending in a DQ was strange. Máximo & La Mascara showing up more than made up for it. There was no real problem with the other stuff, and the matches were entertaining even with a flaw here or there. The final two matches were the AAA classic disaster flicks, as we’ve come to know on big shows. Wagner/Mundo was flaws in ways expected ever since Vampiro was announced as being involved. Texano/Fantasma was an unexpected super flat ending to the show. It really cooled off what had been a hot show to that point.
The cage match ended flatter the state of Kansas. I’m very willing to believe something didn’t go right – someone missed their cue, someone screwed up the spot, some surprise no-showed and they had to scramble at the last second – because I have trouble believing anyone thought Fantasma winning by DQ in a cage match when the last thing that happened was someone interfering to help Fantasma. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter why the finish sucked, it still sucked. I’m not sure the match would’ve been all that great anyway. Fantasma & Texano were working here, but saddled with having to build the match around Tirantes getting involved to help Texano many times. Tirantes hadn’t been involved in this feud until now and his involvement felt like lame AAA crap. Texano and Fantasma seemed to know how much failed by trying to make it up with it a big brawl afterwards to convince the fans. It’s tough to be convinced about anything positive at this point. Fantasma & Texano probably can have a great apuesta match. There’s zero reason to believe they’ll have a great one at Rey de Reyes. AAA obviously has zero trust on those two guys to do it themselves and will send people to get involved a million ways in a misguided attempt to help.
Speaking of misguided: even if Rey Wagner came to AAA and demanded they turn his son so they can feud, could they have at least done in a match where the father and son breakup isn’t treated as a midmatch transition spot? Hijo de Wagner’s turn came off as useless and irrelevant by the end of the match, when his turn didn’t mean anything. The only person who’s actions got the mean something in this match was Vampiro, who got his revenge on Johnny Mundo – for Johnny Mundo being angry at how poorly Vampiro acted, I guess. Vampiro did get a pop for doing Vampiro things, but Vampiro could’ve gotten a pop for doing Vampiro things at any time, and this could’ve been used to make someone who’s actually going to be wrestling for AAA for the next decade a bigger deal by running off Mundo. In the end, the person in charge of creative for AAA went with the idea that the best thing for AAA was the person in charge in creative getting their ego fed (and the people actually in charge of AAA was totally OK with that.) Making stars is irrelevant when it comes to getting yourself wins over people who don’t like you. The match really wasn’t much of anything before the angle override kicked it; Mundo wasn’t much good, maybe checked out because of the situation, and Wagner isn’t really doing a lot any more. It was a slower pace than anything else onto to the show up to this point.
Rey Escorpión is exactly the opponent Psycho Clown needs, so the non-finish there is actually a relief if it keeps the feud going. The post match teased Murder/Monster/Escorpion versus Maximo/Mascara/Psycho, which is not entirely as interesting. Rey Escorpión can do everything Psycho Clown loves to do – brawl, play off the crowd, bleed a disgusting amount – and do it even better than Psycho. Escorpión came off as a guy who really good at wrestling while being totally hateable, the correct opposite of Psycho. Máximo & La Mascara will probably do well in AAA, though I suspect they’ll end up like Wagner and continue to do a fair amount of indie dates on their own.
The four way match was complete and total chaos. It was the mostly the good kind of chaos, with guys fighting six at a time during the portion where all four teams were involved. It was also just a little hard to keep up with during those times. There was probably too much mask ripping in this match given how much there was also going to be the rest of the show and how little any of it really meant. (It did mean Angelikal and Drago were wrestling almost totally uncovered at points.) Angelikal seemed like he knew what he was supposed to be doing there, not just a late sub for Argenis, so there might be more to that story. Cota stealing Bengala’s mask, so we’re left to think he’s gone to the back to get a new one when he’s actually also going to the upper level to set up the moonsault, was a nice way of camouflaging that spot. There were just so many spots that I don’t think a lot of it really stood out – the random técnico trio probably ended doing the best because they were still around to do them when there were just two teams left. This was very watchable if hard to follow.
The street fight – the blood and the weapons – did the best it could to cover up the weakness of the match, but it still dragged in places. The long beatdown of Parka wasn’t at all interesting. Parka sells a lot by just laying there dead. There were some really bad looking spots later on. Parka was supposed to punch Dave to the start the comeback and it didn’t come close. Cuervo and Monster had a bulldog spot go very wrong. The ending sequence went well, carried by a forced by neat looking tope/table spot.
I’m not sure if I should be evaluating Lady Shani and Faby Apache as a wrestling match or a MMA bout. Shots were very often pulled. To Lady Shani’s credit, she tried to give it back to Faby just as hard as Faby was giving it to her. Faby just seemed to be doing more; the powerbomb prior to the finish looked super brutal. This continued the trend of the (non-CMLL) women’s matches looking like the stiffest fights in all of Mexico. If they’re both OK with how it went, I’d love to see the rematch.
Australian Suicide & Lanzelot had some really good spots, though not always in a logical order. The piledriver on the apron being a spot to slow the match down for rest holds was a strange choice. They picked up back at the end and the match finished pretty well. It wasn’t a very memorable match by the time the show ended – the trios match well eclipsed it for insanity. It still was a pretty good showing.
