Recapped: 12/12/2018
Matches:
La Máscara beat Carta Brava Jr.
(7:00, campana, ok, 00:14:11)
Máximo beat Máscarita Sagrada
(9:12, kiss cradle, bad, 00:25:15)
Golden Magic beat Aerostar
(8:42, super powerslam, ok, 00:40:23)
Laredo Kid beat Texano Jr.
(9:14, Laredo Fly, good, 01:03:40)
Hijo Del Vikingo beat Drago
(9:21, imploding 450 splash, great, 01:19:22)
Taya beat Keyra and Vanilla
(6:09, Taya northern suplex + double stomp, good, 01:36:00)
What happened:
Taya won the (newly created) women’s Lucha Capital championship, beating Vanilla & Keyra in the final. Martha Villalobos presented Taya with the championship.
Hijo del Vikingo, Laredo Kid, Golden Magic, and Máximo join Pentagon Jr., Psycho Clown, Pagano and Australian Suicide in next week’s final. I’d still assume Killer Kross will be added until proven otherwise.
Fenix joined the commentary for the last few matches. He said he was recovering day by day and was moving around much better, but there was no update on exactly when he’d be back.
Aerostar suffered a head injury on an early Golden Magic dive. The match ceased for a couple minutes as the doctors wrapped up the outside of Aerostar’s mask to stop the bleeding, which did not actually stop the bleeding and seemed to distract Aerostar. He took it off a minute after they continued, and continually checked his head for blood.
Thoughts:
The women’s match was a strong final for the tournament, the best all women’s match of this tournament. Taya’s double slam spot seemed like it got the biggest reaction of a spot in over an hour. Keyra kicked people very hard. Taya as the strong woman throwing people around is maybe the best use they’ve come up with her so so far. Vanilla’s weakness was better hidden with two other people in the match. She seemed to best serve as a target for really hard offense. Vanilla couldn’t quite keep up with the pace, but didn’t drag the match as much down as she would’ve in a singles match. This was a short main event but it really didn’t need to be any longer.
Drago/Vikingo was Vikingo’s best singles match so far. The shooting star press to the floor was crazy, and he was impressively flying even before that. Vikingo has a deeper reserve of offense to fill out a singles match. Drago was the secondary figure, but was able to keep up with the pace. There’s a few errors noticeable in rewatching it and the imploding 450 could’ve had a better landing, but Vikingo looked top level most of the way. They keep calling Vikingo the future of AAA and he probably will be, but he’s a trios champion who’s going to the final day fo this tournament, Vikingo is the present too.
Texano hasn’t been impressive on this show, but Laredo Kid is a mental case taking crazy bumps to the floor so the match was still easily worth watching. At least Texano’s slow pace gave Laredo time to recover from taking a scoop slam to the floor, and his big spots looked really good. Glad he’s moving on and hopefully he gets a better opponent next week.
Golden Magic/Aerostar was thrown off course by Aerostar’s injury. The crowd seemed concerned it was serious and never got back into the match after the restart. They still seemed to want to do most of their planned match, but the pace was off in between the spots. This match was still much better than what preceded it, but not what you’d hope for out of this matchup.
Maximo/Sagrada was the worst match of the tournament so far. Maximo was committed to doing nothing, and they did a lot of nothing for about five minutes. Sagrada eventually getting a comeback woke the matchup slightly, but at that point I was disappointed the accidental mask pull didn’t end the match much earlier. Every tease of Sagrada advantaging in this match was like a horror movie villain coming out from behind the corner. Máximo didn’t even bother trying in the least, but it is also obvious no one can figure out how to work with Sagrada in the least.
Carta Brava tried, which put him one up on La Mascara. A rudo/rudo match was going to be a struggle, and Mascara continued his bit of not exactly being excited to be in these matches. He also looked totally gassed by the end of the match. The dives were nice but there’s no reason to watch there.
