Recapped: 07/21/18
Matches:
Faby Apache, La Hiedra, Vanilla beat Keyra, Lady Maravilla, Zeuxis
(9:46, Faby pin Zeuxis, good, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Trauma I & Trauma II beat La Máscara & Máximo
(5:07, lo negro de negro on both Mascara & Máximo, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Hijo de LA Park & Taurus beat Argenis & Aerostar
(11:05, Taurus spinning Michinoku Driver Argenis, good, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Jack Evans & Teddy Hart beat Joe Lider & Pagano
(12:38, Jack Evans 630 senton Joe Lider, ok, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Rey Escorpión & Texano Jr. beat Golden Magic & Laredo Kid
(9:40, Texano chairshot Golden Magic, good, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
Puma King, Electroshock, LA Park beat Dr. Wagner Jr., Hijo del Fantasma, Psycho Clown
(20:31, LA Park pin Psycho Clown, great, Lucha Libre AAA (Twitch))
What happened:
LA Park made his return to AAA. Dr. Wagner Jr. made his regularly scheduled booking, which was also his return to AAA. Puma King made his debut as a member of Elite. (Hugo Savonivich inadvertently gave this away a match earlier, read Puma King off a list one of the debuts they’d already seen.) Park & Psycho Clown matched up in most of the main event, though it was Fantasma fouling Psycho which directly led to Park’s win. Fantasma unmasked Psycho after the fact and joined the Elite team in stomping Psycho Clown.
Elite defeated AAA 4-2 in matches. The score wasn’t really played up much. The promotional rivalry wasn’t really played up either. The main event finish was an AAA wrestler betraying a fellow AAA wrestler. A few fans wore red to support, and no more wore blue than normal. The luchadors themselves didn’t seem invested in the concept either, with many Elite luchadors wearing Red (especially Electroshock in the main event.) Many did wear red or blue armbands to signify their team. There was no Elite presence outside of the wrestlers. The referees and announcers were all the same as usual, and the differences in presentation had more to do with the sponsor than Elite.
Brian Cage & Kevin Kross ran in three separate matches to destroy everyone. They never wrestled on the show, though they oddly wore the blue armbands of Elite as if they needed to declare which side they belonged with. (It’s possible all of MAD is meant to be part of Elite since Jack & Teddy were grouped that way. It’s less clear with Konnan and Jarrett.) They attacked AAA & ELITE wrestlers regardless during their interference and seemed to have no particular goal with it.
Their first run in, after the second match, set up a MAD promo segment. Konnan and Vampiro argued, Vampiro was ready to fight Konnan right there, and MAD attacked him much the same way they did La Parka on the last show. Just like that show, OGT ran MAD off. Vampiro declared himself the biggest and best OGT of all and suggested they all team up to fight MAD. Pencil that won in for TripleMania.
Argenis was the surprise wrestler in the tercera. Parka Negra attacked Hijo de LA Park after his side won. There was no obvious reason for his attack except for the whole Parka/Park thing. It didn’t last long before Cage & Kross destroyed both of them and everyone else.
Pagano intended to take a Canadian Destroyer on the apron at the end of the fourth match, but missed and fell head and neck first towards the ground. His knees might have ended up taken the brunt of the blow, but he and the doctors seemed very concerned and Pagano was rushed to the back on a stretcher. Joe Lider also needed medical attention after a 630 senton, though it’s possible Lider was selling and trying to distract from the Pagano situation.
The third Cage/Kross run-in was in the semimain, where they attacked everyone while the match was still going. (The others had been after the match.) No disqualification was called for that, or for La Parka and random unbooked members of AAA running Cage & Kross to the entrance. Dave and Murder Clown grabbed Cage & Kross from behind, only for Taurus to save them. Taurus had earlier been attacked by those two but got over it pretty quick. La Parka, wearing a half white/half black mask, briefly argued with Rey Escorpión & Texano Jr. before seemingly being on the same page with them because they were defending AAA. That match was declared as being for the World of Warcraft championship, so AAA may be able to declare themselves winners after all.
Vignettes showed La Mascara airing his frustrations to Máximo – he’s upset about Psycho Clown not teaming with them as originally promised on their arrival – and picking Hijo del Fantasma over Psycho Clown to drive to a show. Máximo was again responsible for he and La Mascara losing. Mamba appeared to console Máximo, and everyone was destroyed by Cage and Kross.
The finish of the opener was messed up. The plan appears to have been something like Faby powerbombing Zexuis near the ropes and using them for leverage, only they weren’t close enough and things fell apart to the point of Faby pinning Zeuxis with one shoulder up. (Zeuxis still had the complaint.) Lady Shani ran in with a kendo stick to attack Faby Apache, who bled very little. Faby made a comeback to hit Shani with a chair, and one of the more obviously blading moments you’ll ever see took place, complete with the camera zooming in on the blading. We never really saw Shani bloody either. An earlier vignette showed Taurus and Faby training together, with Taurus trying to recruit Faby to the Elite side.
Thoughts:
This was what is normal for AAA right now, a crazy show with surprises, way too much stuff going on and occasionally some good matches. It didn’t have the great opener of some recent show, even though the women were pretty good. It had everything else. It had a ton of extraneous people – it seemed like Cage & Kross were doing multiple run-ins in attempt to justify the cost in flying them into a show where they weren’t going to have a match – and one extraneous promotion. The concept of Elite made for a smoother fit with what the sponsor was getting over. It doesn’t have much value otherwise; even while winning this show, no one took them seriously as some invading promotion, they were simply another group who wore some t-shirts. AAA may want to use Elite again to get their ‘revenge’ victory, but the concept of Elite on its own didn’t seem any attraction to get people to come to this show and didn’t have a strong identity going forward. It’s just another t-shirt (that’s not sold.)
If MAD come out for another promo in Ecatepec next Sunday, I hope they either mix up how it’s going to work (let someone besides Konnan talk for a while) or they just bury me and anyone else already done with this segments. Just anything different would be great.
LA Park’s chaotic style is a perfect fit for AAA’s main event style. They’re always a rudo controlled brawled, followed by a técnico brawl, followed by some near falls. No one’s going to outbrawl LA Park in 2018, and his thrashing of Psycho was well done (and well appreciated by this crowd.) The surprise is the focus of the fight; instead of being drawn to Wagner like a pair of magnets, LA Park went with Psycho Clown for most of the match. That was the right move from TripleMania, but LA Park doing the right thing for TripleMania wasn’t always a sure bet. Interestingly, Wagner worked with Puma King and not Electroshock as a backup option, and Puma came off as a top-level guy immediately for being able to knock around the former champion. Electroshock & Fantasma disappeared for stretches, though Fantasma at least got in a good dive and played a big part in the finish. LA Park’s intensity and chaos made this feel like it was on a totally different level than the rest of the show.
The semimain was going along pretty good, with Laredo & Golden Magic really on with their moves and Escorpión & Texano being good opposition for them. The run-ins and the match continuing despite it happening right in front of him made it look silly. They still took it home well enough but that hurt the match. Magic was among the Elite people most obviously trying to make a big impression with the dive off the light tower, and this was his best performance of late. Laredo seems to just be passing thru but passing thru with a few big dives. I’d still like to get the version of this match without the interruption.
The fourth match was one totally made as a match for Jack and Teddy. They took the big bumps, they had the most more interesting office – Jack’s bridging German suplex looked really nice – and the AAA team seemed prevented from doing anything hard more than catch a chair. Pagano and Lider weren’t as bad as they were just plain and slow. It was still alright, just not impressive. Joe Lider doing a table spot where he takes 100% of the table bump is to really impressive. I’m sure they didn’t expect that spot to go that Destroyer spot to go that bad, but I’m not sure how they expected it to work.
The tercera was very much an up and down match, ending trending heavily up. Aerostar nearly broke a leg trying a crazy idea, so it was definitely an Aerostar idea, and then Taurus missed Aerostar on his dive. It felt sloppy at that moment, and the crowd didn’t seem into it. They did enough and did enough right, that they got it working at the end. Hijo de LA Park isn’t great at getting into position for other people’s moves, but he has plenty of his own. Argenis remains a perfectly O wrestler who was a good launching platform for Aerostar. Taurus has added a few impact spots to his offense since coming back and the finish looks. This might have been better if they didn’t go to the near fall run quite as soon, but maybe it’ll look better as a highlight package.
The segunda didn’t last long, just enough for the Traumas to show off some holds, the Alvarados to get in some token offense, and Máximo to screw up to continue the breakup. The Traumas didn’t look their best – one went down way too soon on a superkick, another had his hold not work exactly right – but they won pretty strongly. I’d think they were going someplace with it if they weren’t just cannon-fodder for the técnicos a moment later.
AAA actually has enough women to have good women’s matches, and it made for a match that CMLL couldn’t do if they wanted to right now. These six were having fast-paced action match, giving enough to Vanilla and Zeuxis to showcase them in their debut. Zeuxis had some stumbles even before the finish – her corner double knee was about one knee short. They still positioned her as the most important people on their side and had her kick out a lot before she got beat. The finish was bad, though maybe it was so bad it may have given her out. Keyra continues to kick people very hard, and Vanilla got up and kept going after. The post match angle was totally a mess, with the cameras zooming in on the blading spots like this was some wrestling expose, and the psychological just getting people to cheer ruda Faby.
