Matches
Vanilla beat La Hiedra
(8:17, huracanrana reveal, ok, 00:10:45)
Pagano beat Taurus
(7:39, Volador Sprial, ok, 00:29:20)
Psycho Clown beat Murder Clown
(7:31, Code Red, good,00:55:20)
Pentagón Jr. beat Puma King
(12:37, Factor Miedo package piledriver, great, 01:20:33)
Thoughts
Lucha Capital for more like a late night variety show that had wrestling matches than a normal wrestling matches. La Griega was taking photos with fans between matches, they did a surprise arm wrestling bit with Máximo, they had a song break between a match – this was a pitch to someone who likes entertainment who might also be into lucha libre rather than a focused lucha libre show. The track record is people who are looking for general entertainment don’t watch these sort of hybrids, and all you get are wrestling fans who just want to see more wrestling, but I guess you’ve got to try it and see. The venue looked a lot different anything usual for AAA, a warehouse restaurant with maybe a couple hundred of fans standing just past the mats and watching the action. They stayed interested in the show the whole night, though I think this is going to work a lot better if it remains free attendance. It sounded like they may start charging next week, and we’ll see if there’s interest in that with more than a single day warning.
There’s no real need to watch this live. It ran about 1h50m total. You can cut that in half if you watch it later and skip thru the breaks between matches. You may be able to get your Facebook comment mentioned if you watch it live, but that’s about the only advantage.
Pentagon Jr. versus Puma King was just both guys doing their increasingly big stuff for a dozen minutes. It started off as if they were going to take it easy, do some comedy, and that was it, and it just kind of picked up intensity after a few minutes. There was a big slip by Pentagon on a springboard, and this lacked the creativity of the Son of Havoc/Killshot match over on Lucha Underground. It had more emotion to me; I’m not sure it was the crowd or because I was just looking forward to this match more. (The outcome really wasn’t in any more doubt that the mask match, so that wasn’t it.) There was nothing really unique about this match, and people who get bored of Penta doing similar stuff in every match probably should pass, but it just really was fun as a package to me. This was a match I hadn’t seen, wanted to see, and enjoyed seeing.
Psycho Clown and Murder Clown felt like the most complete of the first three matches. Murder Clown looked more impressive than usual, trying things we don’t see from normal and looking dominate enough that Psycho Clown had something meaningful to overcome. The top rope splash felt like Murder could’ve actually won, and Psycho did well to come back and win. The limitations of the setting were shown here though, with both guys seemingly afraid to knock people over by falling backward on impact for a dive, making neither those seem more impressive.
The Taurus/Pagano match had good parts, though it didn’t really come together as more than an exhibition. Pagano looked better than usual and Taurus was still much sharper on everything he did. He was there to get Pagano over. Pagano was way over before it and the finish looked great because Taurus was there to make it work. This will look cooler in highlights.
The women’s match was just a match. I guess months ago, it would’ve been a sure bet to be not good, and so having a match that was just alright is a relief. They did some moves, but it never had a lot of momentum or direction. The rana reversal bit for the finish worked, but came along slowly. It was a solid but not a hot match.