Recapped: 07/03/2019
All matches took place in Auditorio Miguel Barragan
Matches:
Dinastía & Iron Kid beat Arez & Látigo
(13:28, Dinastia cross armbreaker Latigo, great)
Eterno beat Villano III Jr. and Dave the Clown
(7:08, Sueno Eterno Villano III Jr., good)
Drago beat Golden Magic and Chik Tormenta
(8:34, Inframundo DDT, good)
Daga & Keyra beat Puma King & Star Fire
(18:10, Daga knucks→double underhook facebreaker Puma, below average)
Aerostar, Lady Shani, Nino Hamburguesa beat Taurus, La Hiedra, Monsther Clown
(11:37, Aerostar splash Monster Clown, good)
Averno, Chessman, Súper Fly beat Hijo Del Vikingo, Laredo Kid, Myzteziz Jr.
(14:49, Averno super Devil’s Wings Myzteziz, good)
Blue Demon Jr., Rey Escorpión, Texano Jr. beat Dr. Wagner Jr., Pagano, Psycho Clown
(16:12, Demon pin Wagner, ok)
What happened:
In some classic AAA over-dramatics, a bloody Dr. Wagner was given a lethal piledriver by Blue Demon and rushed to the back by his older son. Wagner heroically returned in a neckbrace but was ultimately beaten by Blue Demon. Demon was not satisfied with Rey Wagner’s blood as he also busted open Galeno del Mal and spread that blood on his father as well.
The OGTs cleanly defeated Los Jinetes del Aire. Averno demanded a trios title shot so they could demonstrate that they’re the better team, Laredo Kid accepted, and the OGTs ended up laying the champions out. It wasn’t said if this title match would happen on Saturday’s taping, but everyone involved appears to be scheduled for that show.
Daga continues to use a hidden set of brass knucks during his matches to get victories, knocking out Puma here. Daga was much more visible in showing off the knucks in this match to make it clearer what was happening, though he was also clearly punching Puma with them while Tirantes was watching at the finish.
Chik Tormenta versus Golden Magic versus Drago was made a Latin American championship, making it the first time an AAA luchadora had challenged for a nominally male only championship. This was noted by commentary before the match but it wasn’t treated as some big broken barrier. Daga attacked Drago with the knucks after his successful defense, saying he’d win the title in Guadalajara. Drago repaid Daga by blowing mist in his face after the following match.
Perro Aguayo was announced as having passed away a few hours before the show began. There was a moment of remembrance before the show started.
Taya was advertised and didn’t appear. Dave the Clown more or less replaced her, though the matches were changed around slightly.
Thoughts:
This was a strong AAA show. I’m not sure how many people ended up seeing it live – this was a 9 pm start on a Wednesday where the pre-show had streaming issues, giving people a reason to pass. It’s easily worth watching later. Most of the matches were pretty good, with one disappointment. Nothing huge happened on the show, but they do have some non-TripleMania things moving along.
It is possible this will end up being the final show the day before TripleMania on TV Azteca. (They’ve got five episodes, which might just cover these last three tapings.) Blue Demon badly blooding Dr. Wagner Jr. and giving him a near neckbreaking piledriver would be a strong way to lead into the mask match. They might not have a chance to do any more than in front of a massive audience and they might not need to do any more. There’s the slight problem that the piledriver looked Terrible and Demon can’t really do much, this match isn’t going to get any plaudits on a technical nature. It’s going to get over great anyway, these guys have their match down, they’re going to take the same sort of shortcuts they took in this match, and the crowd is going to care because it is the Blue Demon’s mask on the line. I am suspicious that all these Blue Demon rudo heat up angles are only for the lowly AAA diehard’s edification and that most of the Arena Ciudad de Mexico crowd is going to cheer for him anyway because that’s the mask they’ve known for the entire existence and Wagner is a guy just defending his peculiar hair. If it is even possible to get Demon booed by a TripleMania audience, they’ve worked as hard as possible on the TV shows to make it happen. It may just not be possible. It also may not matter at all if the match is just over. This match was over even though it as a lot the same as usual. Pagano did give us his one very botched spot of the night, but the cameras did a much better job of hiding it this night.
OGT versus Jinetes gave us a great deal of Averno and friends destroying people instead of the comedy foils they’ve been more often this year. The press slam into the totally unsuspecting crowd was a strong rudo moment in a match with a lot of them. The tecnicos did a lot of synchronized flying and everyone seemed to have a much better night than Verano de Escandalo. I thought this was really good, a positive including to the Jinetes year, but kind of felt like they were holding back a bit. It’s really dumb that a post-match challenge for a match I want to see downgrades how I rate a match, but this was a borderline match for me and it’s easier to rate it good and leave space for the (theoretical) rematch to be better than for that to blow this away and both of them be great. This is all very dumb. Was the OGT/Jinetes match what you’d want to see out of both teams? Yes, it was. Did the OGT do the triple swandive headbutt spot? Yes, yes they did.
The Aerostar/Monster Clown trios was a professional midcard match, not the most memorable thing but done well in the moment. Taurus reminded me of that early Lucha Underground match where Pentagon convinced people Sexy Star was a spectacular wrestler because of his basing. Lady Shani is better than that Sexy Star but still was helped out a lot by Taurus. So was Aerostar. Taurus didn’t get to help himself out as much, with this more being an exhibition for the tecnicos and the rudos just getting in what they needed to get the heat. The Aerostar/Monster Clown feud isn’t dead but it doesn’t feel much alive either.
Daga/Keyra vs Puma/Star Fire was the true disappointment of the night. The match started slow, took a long time to pick up, and had a bunch of iffy moments. There were enough impressive spots to turn this into a short highlight video. That’d be the better idea than airing it fully. Puma didn’t have a good night. I was excited to see Star Fire back and she got one suplex that woke up the match but seemed off at other times. Keyra didn’t make a strong impact and her entire deal is making a strong impact. Brass Knucks Daga isn’t making much of an impression. Whoever came up with this idea (Tessa, one would assume) probably saw this bit done in a context where it makes a lot of sense. Great. It doesn’t work in AAA. The following matches including people using cookie sheets and trash cans. Trying to push the idea that Daga is doing some despicable act by using a weapon in a promotion where everyone uses weapons and every match is functionally no DQ is just not going to work. Daga doesn’t come off as a cheater for using the knucks, he comes off as dumb for not using it all the time. To their credit, they did realize most of the fans had no idea what was meant to be going on when he used the knucks on the last couple of tapings and had Daga be really obvious about them this time. To their discredit, he was so obvious about using them that even Hijo del Tirantes saw him use them and didn’t call the DQ. Maybe they could someone actually got DQed for using it because it was so violent to explain the idea of why Daga needs to be sneaky, but this was the same show where Blue Demon tried to break Dr. Wagner’s neck with the oh so illegal piledriver. It wasn’t illegal. Nothing in AAA is illegal beyond a mask pull and maybe a foul. Stick with those.
Drago’s title match was good when Chik Tormenta was around to suplex people. It was less good when she vanished after (sort of) catching a Golden Magic dive. Magic & Drago were fine together, Magic took the finish impressively, it should help with Saturday’s title match. Still, Tormenta was the start of this match for the first half and it left a void without her. There do feel like missed opportunities here to get characters over – Chik Tormenta talking about challenging for a male title, Rey Escorpion/Daga/Star Fire’s feelings about being left off TripleMania at the moment – but there wasn’t much time for talking. Then again, the show went for three hours, so maybe no more talking is fine.
Villano III Jr. thought spearing two men to the floor was a good idea and that’s why I enjoy watching him wrestle. I may not get to see him wrestle much pass the age of 30 but there are tradeoffs everywhere. Dave had some Dave moments trying to get over the top rope but didn’t handicap things too much. Eterno didn’t quite fit into this as well as he has with against flyers in his AAA return. He still made an impression with the new look and him getting the win over a regular TV guy was totally unexpected.
My cowardly rating of the Jinetes/OGT match leaves the opener as my match of the night. It wasn’t perfect, it was just very creative and super energetic. The three guys who aren’t regulars worked very hard given the chance. Arez showed off spots that everyone in CMLL is going to continue to steal, Iron Kid did his fearless highspots and Latigo made everything look good. The crowd saw these as four guys who didn’t matter much. They hooked them in by the four-way submission spot and everything worked well from there. There’s probably better in them, but this was pretty good.
