taped 2014-04-19 @ Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal
Aerostar, Jennifer Blake, Pimpinela Escarlata vs El Apache, Mamba, Taya Valkyrie: An very slow starting match that lost my interest before it got wherever it was going. They had Aerostar working comedy early on, which does not seem like the greatest use of Aerostar. Skip ahead to the dives (and definitely whatever missed spot precipitated them.) Crowd was definitely excited at the finish but the match didn’t come across as worthy of that reaction. About three seconds of Super Fly’s attack after the match was shown.
Angélico, Australian Suicide, Jack Evans vs Daga, Hijo de Pirata Morgan, Steve Pain: Good match. The commercial break covered up a big jump in the match, and it didn’t really get going until after the hot tag, but the last third of the match was lively. This is another match building to a hot tag, with everyone trying their hardest to build it up and sell the importance of Suicide crawling over and tagging one of his partners, and then the crowd not really responding much to the tag when it finally happens. They really need more help from someone – the announcers? – if they’re ever going to get the fans to see the drama the luchadors believe they’re putting into it. (It wouldn’t seem to be a big deal with WWE on TV for so long now, but the AAA crowd doesn’t react like the WWE crowd.) Pirata seemed fine here, but the rudo trio didn’t click as a team. This was a lot of long individual sections with a little bit of tag team moves in between. I have no idea what Suicide was meant to be doing near the end; a shooting start stomp? It didn’t look well. This was the right crowd to do the Anarquia win; Angelico might have been the biggest rudo on the show.
too many words on the Anarquia leadership change: Even when a guy becomes leader of his own group, he does not have the agency to do it by himself in this promotion – Konnan is the only one who gets to make those decisions. It wasn’t as if Daga himself decided he wanted to strike out on his own with his old friend Eterno, Daga didn’t want to leave the Perros and was treated like fool as a set up to becoming leader of a group. What an amazing way to make sure you knew this was a lackey faction. Konnan tells Daga “make your own history” while deciding on Daga’s path for him. (Much less giving Steve Pain and Eterno any choice in it!) I’m sure this is not too far away from what actually happens, but it’s not really helpful as a TV skit. Daga pulled off the personality of a rudo who’s not going to take any crap from anyone in the ring, he needs to be the same guy in the skits.
Cibernético, La Parka, Psycho Clown vs el Hijo del Perro Aguayo, Hijo del Fantasma, Texano Jr.: the pre-match run in (???) from Dave the Clown was more interesting than the match. Dave was hanging out there for a while – he was planning on going in, I’m just have no idea if anyone else was in the plan. The match itself was a Perro brawl with the técnicos getting a brief comeback. Psycho’s win got lost between the usual Tirantes stuff and the run-in. Everyone – including Faby – doings pots to Tirantes is something that would make a lot of sense if he was being written off. He isn’t being written off.
