Recapped: 02/17/2018
All matches aired live from Salón Rojo del Club Toluca, Toluca, Estado de México.
Matches:
Big Mami & Lady Shani beat Ashley & Faby Apache
(12:29, Lady Shani northern lights suplex Ashley, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Dave The Clown beat Niño Hamburguesa
(5:20, beal off the top rope, below average, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Joe Lider & Mr. Águila beat Histeria & Psicosis
(12:07, Mr. Aguila moonsault Histeria, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Angelikal, Hijo Del Vikingo, Lanzelot, Máscara de Bronce beat Australian Suicide, Averno, Chessman, Súper Fly
(7:05, Angelikal torito Averno, 7:05, good, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Dark Cuervo, Dark Scoria, La Parka beat Carta Brava Jr., Mocho Cota Jr., Tito Santana
(9:19, La Parka inside cradle Carta Brava Jr., ok, via Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. & Hijo del Fantasma beat Texano Jr. & Villano III Jr.
(9:03, Fantasma Thrill of the Hunder on Villano III Jr., ok, via Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Psycho Clown & Vampiro beat Dr. Wagner Jr. & Rey Escorpión
(17:51, Psycho Clown foul and small package Rey Escorpion, below average, via Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
What happened:
In the main event (which is treated as a dark match), Wagner is on the rudo side but is reluctant to fight the técnicos at time. He’s really a tecnico at this point and definitely going forward.
Psycho bleeds heavily after a chair shot the head. Vampiro is run into the post, loosely body slammed onto the floor, and stretchered out. It does seem severe enough to need him being taken out of the match when Psycho is covered in blood. Vampiro’s exit by Rey Escorpion attacking the medics, and the medics later accidentally dropping Vamprio off the stretcher. After a ref bump, Maximo and Mascara came down to make the save, clearing out the rudos. Rey Escorpión does mange to foul Psycho Clown, but Psycho returns the favor, following and small packaging him for the win. Rey Escorpion took Psycho’s mask anyway.
Prior to the match, Vampiro and a frail looking Villano III come to the ring to remove Tirantes as referee. He needs the help of both Vampiro and Copetes to get down the steps, which really is what makes him look old. He’s relatively fine otherwise, but those steps are the first impression. Copetes stays to replace Tirantes.
Wagner attacks his partner Fantasma out four minutes into the match, and hands him over to the rudos to beat. Wagner walks out. Fantasma continues fighting, including kicking out of the Tornado Texano that was his finish. (He doesn’t often win with a move, so I’m unsure if it’s suppose dot be his finish)The referee gets taken out moments later, and Tirantes runs in to attack Fantasma. Bengala runs out to make the save, with Copetes being out for 90 seconds before recovering just in time to count Fantasma’s pin. As with every técnico win, Fantasma is immediately beaten and unmasked.
It’s announced before the match the winning person will get a title shot. The stipulation has no affect on the match. The finish of the match is Carta Brava fouling La Parka (missed by the cameras), Carta Brava covering, and Carta Brava stopping covering because Averno is on the apron. Averno spits at Carta Brava, and Park rolls up Carta for the pin. Mocho Cota Jr. appears to be injured after taking a dive.
Argenis appears before the match, in his outfit but limping. He can hardly put weight on his right foot and apologizes for not wrestling tonight. OGT & Suicide come out to confront him, but Argenis holds them off with his giant sword. The técnicos eventually make the save, though everyone’s standing around for a few moments before it happens. (They seem to be waiting for Tirantes to make it to the ring, since it happens two seconds after he gets there.)
Dave the Clown attacks Nino’s legs after the match. He doesn’t seem to know how to do the worked version of that spot (where you hit the mat a little past the foot so you don’t actually connect) and actually hits Niño in the foot repeatedly. Niño needs help getting ot the back after.
Big Mami has her AAA Mixed Tag Team championship back. Last time we saw it, La Hiedra & Villano III had stolen it from her and given it Hernandez. Faby berates Ashley after she takes the loss in the match.
Thoughts:
The main event was a slow paced action less brawl, where Psycho Clown was the only one who didn’t know they were mailing this in and bleed a dramatic amount. I’m never particularly high on psycho Clown as being the cornerstone of the promotion, but he was a great representative of the promotion in this match, trying to make something out of another match by blood and effort alone. It still wasn’t any, a boring trying affair to get thru that was twice as long as it needed to be and an unimpressive way to end a show.
Just like in Guerra de Titanes, the Fantasma/Texano match here was more of angle to set up Tirantes & Bengala’s participation than an actual match. Bengala is fine but his and Tirantes inclusion in this is really forced. The rudo post match attack and unmasking is so common place that it means nothing any more. Hijo del Wagner’s suplex on Villano III was the most impressive thing he’s done. He needed to have a bigger impact on the match if he was going to be part of the main title feud past this.
Poder del Norte continue to be miracle works because they made Escoria & Cuervo seem exciting for the first time in their técnico run. Escoria came off as a good high flyer. The biggest success was how heavily they fed into La Parka’s offense, just making him look super destructive while also enabling him to stand in the same place for the entire bit. These rudos would be really helpful in CMLL, even if they were still stuck on the Puma/Tiger level. I wouldn’t strongly recommend this match but it’s about as good as a trios match between these two teams with a dumb finish is going to be.
The atomicos was a lot of fun. The young guys were flying all over the place and getting better as the match went along. The dive sequence was as wild as anything, with Mascara de Bronce’s rough landing on the barricade only tope by Angelikal’s rough landing right on the floor. Angeliakl’s missed dive was insane and planned to be crazy and played into him coming back for the finish well. I normally like a longer comeback, but I can’t deny the crowd went nuts when Angelikalk snuck in the torito for the surprise win (and only wish the técnicos got to run off before they were attacked to let it sink in.) This was a hot, easy to enjoy match.
Dave/Hambruguesa didn’t have any tragically blown spots. It was largely boring, and featuring a finish where Niño Hamburguesa took a chair shot to the head and sold it by climbing all the way to the top rope so he could get tossed off. It was dumb and so was this match. The new Dave The Clown idea seems to be a scary methodical brawler. It asks him to do less. I’d like to see him nothing.
Women’s match was alright. There were some iffy moments (Shani stopping and starting halfway to the corner was not good) and Big Mami doesn’t fit in the style of match the other three are going for. Still, it’s worthwhile because the character work is great. Faby’s now fully committed to the ruda role the entire match, and great at it. The sarcastic war cry was awesome, the taunting and her other antics were good, and berating Ashley for losing the match afterwards was played just right. They even got the fans to boo Faby by the end. Ashley is going to be so over as tecnica if AAA lets this play out and does the split right. You can tell on day 1 that this is going to work great. It’s also greatly foolish to expect something to play out right in AAA so I’m going to be vastly disappointed when this all just gets dropped by April. If anything, they do risk at making Shani a small player than she need sot be in this, but she did get the pinfall win and they can get there in time.
