Recapped: 12/05/2018
Matches:
Chessman beat Bengala
(5:06, powerbomb, ok, 00:13:34)
Psycho Clown beat Texano Jr.
(8:56, casita, ok, 00:24:49)
Taya beat La Hiedra
(5:45, double chickenwing slam, ok, 00:40:59)
Golden Magic beat Niño Hamburguesa
(7:20, 450 splash, ok, 01:03:28)
Australian Suicide beat Laredo Kid
(7:02, shooting star press, good, 01:19:43)
What happened:
Murder Clown & Taurus were advertised but did not appear. Golden Magic & Niño Hamburguesa, who both had been eliminated, were given a match where the winner would advance to the wild card round.
Lady Shani also appeared to take herself out of the tournament for no explained reason. Shani offered Taya a championship versus championship match should Taya win the Lucha Capital tournament.
Thoughts:
The main event was the best match on the show by a big margin, though it didn’t hit for me as much as it seemed for other people watching. It had lots of crazy action, with Australian Suicide pulling out a shooting star press variation we haven’t seen from him in action before. They started off crazy with both men diving out of the ring onto their feet before Laredo leveled Suicide with a tope, and then fought on the restaurant tables. Suicide made the bold choice of trying a shooting star press off the table onto Laredo on the floor and seemed to bang a foot on the edge of the table on the way down. He was limping around immediately after. There were moments that looked a little bit off at times the rest of the way, and that foot had to be bugging him. There were also just random bits of no-selling moves throughout. It wasn’t like they came one after each other or they were happening at a big moment, it was more like a dice roll hit 6 and so the move didn’t actually hurt. Both guys did it, so maybe it was just a thing I didn’t get. This was pretty exciting, as you’d think with these two guys involved, but they can do even better.
Golden Magic & Niño Hamburguesa fit the same description as most of the undercard. There were a few fun highlight spots and watching the highlights were more fun than watching the match in entirety. The dives looked cool, Hamburguesa landing the multiple corner smashes for once (everyone usually moves on the second one) was interesting. Golden Magic came up quite short on his 450 splash at the end, and this match was short of his previous two matches. AAA didn’t really have many options on who to use as a replacement from the eliminated people but maybe putting Niño Hamburguesa in the tournament wasn’t the greatest thing for him.
Taya versus La Hiedra was just an average match. Taya was more obviously a tecnica this time. This match felt like both were being a ruda. They had some nice spots and the stuff in between wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really string together in any interesting way. It wasn’t bad but maybe Hiedra isn’t as yet as good as he looks in the tags and multiperson matches.
Psycho had a lot of energy but his match was nothing special. Texano tired quick. Maybe Psycho missing the catch on his dive didn’t help, but Texano wasn’t moving much when he was moving. That kind of limited what he was doing to taking Psycho Clown’s surprisingly high flying offense. The Psycho Clown/Murder Clown match was Psycho’s better match. I hope he gets some fun people to work within the final because I think Psycho has a great match in him with the right mix.
Bengala tried to make up for all the offense he’s not been able to get on TV in this one appearance. It was alright. Chessman breaking out the top rope tornillo on this show was wild. It didn’t hit, and the match didn’t quite hit either, but it did make a lot of noise for the five minutes it lasted. It was just a bunch of moves until Chessman landed a hard powerbomb and that was that. This was a borderline match for me, the second best on the show.