Tag: TxT Recap

taped 2013-11-30 @ Gimnasio Juan De La Barrera

I think the best part of the show might have been dramatic coin tossing music.

 

Villano III & Villano IV vs Hijo de Pirata Morgan & Pirata Morgan in a Ruleta de la muerte semifinal match: Hijo decided to work over Villano IV with moonsaults and his father took an amazingly leisured trip out of the ring, so there’s this match. Villanos generally move in slow motion, and it seemed like C3 couldn’t even get up for some spots. He was also super obviously calling spots at points. The double tapatia crawl thru looked amateur. Finish was great, in that it got the match to end.

Cien Caras Jr. & Máscara Año 2000 vs Angel Blanco Jr. & Höruz in a Ruleta de la muerte semifinal: I’m being repetitive, but these shows make no sense when watched together; Angel Blanco is used differently on every single show. Every other team is a team of normal partners except for the Angel Blanco & Höruz team, and there’s no real attempt to explain it. Angel and Höruz work técnico in a match too simple to get met create a gif. Big new star Höruz jumps into his own doom.

 

Angel Blanco Jr. & Höruz vs Hijo de Pirata Morgan & Pirata Morgan in a Ruleta de la muerte final match: Match picks up with Angel Blanco bleeding heavily, which is really poor editing and probably unnecessary for this tournament. The story of Todo x el Todo, as much as I can figure, is about Hijo del Santo being hassled by evil Angel Blanco Jr. and Solitario, so this is really a tournament about making Angel Blanco Jr. sympathetic. Höruz, who’s supposedly here to be a new técnico star, is just the other guy who happens to be here. It’s so weird. Second straight match where Höruz attempted to do something, failed, and lost soon after (though they missed the move that set it up live.) Pirata beat both guys; no one under 40 can get a win here. Match OK for a TxT tag but nothing I’ll ever think about seeing again.

Angel Blanco Jr. vs Höruz, mask vs hair: and so Angel Blanco immediately turns back rudo here. This seemed like it would’ve been the moment for Höruz to look good in a loss, but instead it’s six minute turn taking match with rudo winning absolutely clean (and Höruz never really having a moment where he was going to win.) Crowd didn’t react to much until the valagueza. Höruz has lost every single match since joining TxT, seeming less like a guy excelling when he got a chance and more like the guy brought in to ‘prove’ this promotion is much better than other.

 

El Hijo del Solitario vs LA Park vs Dr. Wagner Jr.: Solitario is treated like a non-entity by both Park & Wagner in large portions of this match. Park and Wagner worked stretches of the first half just against each other with Solitario limited to being an annoying fly to be swatted away. They later did normal Park comedy tag spots, where Solitario was just a generic opponent. Even before the match, Park asked the crowd if they were behind him or Wagner, ignoring Solitario. No one would’ve cheered much for Solitario if asked, judging how now one really cheered for him during the match, but Solitario still ended up winning despite how irrelevant he was treated. It was usual TxT garbage finish action – a mask toss DQ on LA Park (where the C3 replay exposed Solitario’s mask in slow motion) and a foul on Wagner – but it’s weird to treat Solitario as not on the level as the other two guys and have him win anyway. They were probably just screwing around, and maybe setting up new opponents for Solitario to face in a mask match if Santo can’t return, but it was another instance of weirdly laid out TxT matches. Match itself was low intensity for the part with all three, and Solitario and Wagner didn’t do anything interesting when they were they were on their own. This whole show dragged for me.

In 2013, I said I’d recap every TxT show I could, and achieved that. I’m definitely not making the same promise for 2014. There are occasional interesting matches, but a lot of long matches I have trouble caring about, and not great prospects going forward. I’ll pick and choose going forward.

taped 2013-09-29 @ Feria, San Felipe, Torres Mochas, Guanajuato

 

Centvrión vs Imposible: Liked this one much better than the previous show’s match. They did a better job of saving the bigger spots to the end and building to them. They still did the big spots but did them at times where they felt like they mattered more. Centviron crashed and burned hard right before the finish. There were a few spots that didn’t look good, but this was largely OK.

 

Esther Moreno & Lady Apache vs Diosa Maya & Rossy Moreno: A basic tag match, possible more basic because of the size. They got the crowd into it the first fall, then kind of lost them until the finish. It was not a long match but it felt that way with the little crowd noise. Diosa Maya looked better in other matches and struggled here. It was a match, it was fine, not much to say.

 

Bobby Lee & Rayman vs Heddi Karaoui & Zumbi: Bobby Lee on the show because it’s Leon. Karaoui & Zumbi came off more like rudos in the prematch promo than they had in any of their matches so far, and were playing up their rudo antics more in the match. Going with slow mat wrestling in front of an already dead crowd was an unlikely tactic. The match was pretty ordinary for the first two falls, then turned in mimsa of the stuff you see at bad lucha libre in fall three. There were okay moments, but a lot of random stuff thrown in a belated attempt to get someone to care. Karoui fouling Rayman in front of the referee (though on the floor) probably should’ve ended the match as should’ve Rayman making a random comeback with chair shots, but rules are what they need them to be. Finished appeared to a blown spot, and it was totally unclear why (or if) Zumbi was eliminated

 

El Hijo Del Santo, Höruz, Huracan Ramirez vs Angel Blanco Jr., Cien Caras Jr., El Hijo del Solitario: Complaining about TxT booking seems fruitless, but it’s quite something to go directly from the last TV show to this one see Angel Blanco and Soliatrio switch right back to being rudos. The problem is probably more with the previous show. Meanwhile, when Höruz is the tallest técnico, it’s a small crew. It didn’t seem to matter much when Santo was chopping Cien Jr. around. These ultra long very TxT matches do not keep my attention the whole way thru. It was very much the generic match – técnicos control fall 1 on the mat, rudos attack in mass to take the fall, rudos dominate fall 2 until the técnicos turn it around (and this goes on for way long in this match) and the técnicos get in all their spots in the third fall. It was an insanely long way to for a mask pull DQ (and Santo basically overturning the finish after the match.) Höruz was treated not like a big new star, but like he belonged, which is better than usual.

 

Dr. Wagner Jr. vs LA Park: The match the crowd cared the most about, but the previous match fed off a much larger crowd and they didn’t have that here. This match had a lacking first few minutes, with LA Park grabbing the microphone to rant at Wagner in between hitting him to build to a moment where Wagner talked and fought back, and a crowd brawling segment which wasn’t as much as other ones they’ve had. They picked up the intensity towards a finish, then slowed it way back down to stretch it out for ten more minutes. It’s really hard to care about traditional near falls in a LA Park/Dr. Wagner match when every finish involving them requires a ref bump and a foul, so the long bit of move two count kickout didn’t work at all for me. (There was a ref bump much earlier which didn’t make any sense, except maybe they wanted to pretend they got the ref bump out of the way already. Still didn’t believe it.) Usual convoluted finish so everyone could their a participation ribbon.

taped 2013-07-27 @ Gimnasio Juan De La Barrera
Centvrión vs Imposible: I like both of these guys, but I didn’t like this match at all. The first half of the match was highly annoying, with guys doing big moves at random in no particular order, as if they were shuffled in a card deck. It only got better later because they switched to your move/my move kickouts, and at least the big moves fit in better there. It still wasn’t good and stuff didn’t go right. The match felt longer that it needed to be or what they were ready for. I don’t know if the one fall format threw them off, but this wasn’t up to their capabilities. The dark arena really didn’t do much to hide the emptiness (especially the seats right across from the hard camera) but did obscure one of the bigger dives.

 

Rossy Moreno vs Esther Moreno and Lady Apache: Essentially two matches in one. The first ten minutes of this match felt like the best women’s match on a TxT show yet. It was good action, the three way fight worked well and the crowd got into both Lady Apache winning and the Moreno sisters costing each other the match. This was much better than the opener. It was a good build to Moreno vs Moreno on another show – except they just did it here for some reason, and it wasn’t much good. They changed the tone a punching submission fight. There were some people loudly chanting for them (mostly Rossy, who seemed to be the ruda), but most of the crowd seemed to check out until the very last couple of near falls. The your move/my move stuff bugged me here, but more because I was done with this and really wanted them to go home. I guess this was essentially what they had planned to do for the hair match (though maybe with a different winner), but there didn’t seem any point to do it here.

 

El Hijo del Medico Asesino vs Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr.: A slow, but more solid match than I figured. I don’t have high expectation levels for a singles match with these two guys, but they kept it together better than I would’ve guessed. It was again way too long; they don’t have 15 minutes of stuff to do and were moving at a snails pace by the end, but they didn’t fall on their face either. Nothing you need to watch but somewhat promising. Strange finish of Medico Asesino clearly fouling Wagner, referee Terry watching the foul and seeing the foul but counting the three count anyway. You’re not really protecting Wagner by having him lose to a foul if the referee sees it, you’re just making the match look dumb. (And you really shouldn’t need to protect Wagner at this point.)

 

Brian Cage, Heddi Karaoui, Oliver John, Zumbi vs Angel Blanco Jr., Blue Demon Jr., El Hijo del Solitario, Rayman:  A half hour half long match, so everyone did everything they do just to stretch it out even farther. Three straight hot tags was the funniest instance of this. It didn’t hold my attention for that long and it didn’t seem to hold the crowd. They’d still cheer for the técnicos but were totally uninterested in anything the rudos had to do in the second half of the match. John beating Solitario seemed really weird in that context, but the finish did look killer. Cage did some good goofy selling but was totally unmemorable; they probably should’ve given him some strong guys spots somewhere in here.

 

Cien Caras Jr., Máscara Año 2000, Universo 2000 vs Canek, LA Park, Rayo de Jalisco Jr.: I was really hoping there would be a good gif to prove I actually watched this match and didn’t just fake it. This’ll have to do. It seemed unlikely this lineup would produce a match I’d like, and the unlikely did not happen. Strangely the only three fall match on the show (though the other matches weren’t worked much different.) So many chops as comedy, with the rudos being less the Dinamitas and more the three stooges. I didn’t get much into it and neither did the crowd, by little how they were reacting to the late stages of the match. A really long way to go for a mask pull DQ finish, and a weird show where the rudos win all the meaningful matches.

taped 2013-05-11 @ Gimnasio Juan De La Barrera
Bobby Lee Jr. & Poseidon (TxT) vs Imposible & Maquina Infernal: Wrong team won, that’s for sure. Posiedon really came off as too green for this show (to the point where you start to wonder who he’s related to in order to be on this show.) The TxT fans are the nicest in the country and they were turning on him in the second fall. Bobby Lee Jr. is old but okay. The rudos seemed better though not enough reign in the looseness of the tecnicos.

 

Esther Moreno & La Chola vs Diosa Maya & Violeta in a tournament quarterfinal Ruleta de la muerte torneo match: This was horrendous. Violeta seemed barely trained, not prepared and despised by Esther Moreno within in a couple of minutes. Violeta came off as as a morning show host player luchadora, but in a sort of arrogant way. C3 never got the right angle of it, but it looked like the Esther flying axhandle cracked Violeta in the head full force at the end of the match. It also looked like the planned finish was Esther hitting Cholta by mistake on that axhandle and Violeta/Diosa taking advantage to win, but the veterans decided they were not losing to Violeta under any circumstances and they’d make sense of it later. It didn’t really ever make sense that Esther & Chola still advanced in the tournament and that’s as good as any.

 

Chik Tormenta & Lady Apache vs Cristal & Rossy Moreno in a tournament quarterfinal Ruleta de la muerte torneo match: This was sedate compared to the other match, comptent luchadoras having a professional match. Cristal may be stretching that but had a better match than most of the people in the last one. Lady Apache is still great and should really be the Dr. Wagner or LA Park of women’s indy wrestling, used by every single promoter wanting to put on a show. Lady Apache is also a rare person I’d be totally fine with carrying around a random title belt, because she carries herself like she is the best in the world. (Or, alternatively, book her like Chilanga Mask uses Ricky Marvin.) She didn’t get to do a lot here but was good with what she had.

 

Cristal & Rossy Moreno vs Esther Moreno & La Cholita in a tournament semifinal Ruleta de la muerte torneo match: Announcers did not really try to explain why Esther & Chola were here. They were sure they saved their mask and hair the last match, so they’re doing the commentary live. They’re also probably not told finishes, becuase they didn’t seem surprised at that outcome. None of these matches had clear ruda/tecnica side, just the Morenos doing theri sptos and the other people nto being very good. Kristal was worse here, which was just some moves and then a finish.

 

Esther Moreno vs La Cholita, mask vs hair: Esther, earlier playing the Tougest Woman In The World, goes down to a light tap from Chola. It depends on who’s doing it. Crowd went completely silent when Chola beat Esther – any ring announcement was cut off from TV, bt the fans sure thought the match was over in 2 minutes with Esther losing her hair. The bit with all the other women coming to the ring was cut out, though the announcing does reference it. Announcers suggesting Esither was going to give Chola a Spanish Fly was the funniest thing ever, closely followed by the huracanrana which followed it. They must’ve really wanted to get Chola a payday but three matches was asking way too much from her and even one was iffy. On the other side, Esther went all Teddy Hart with an extra moonsault just to do an extra moonsault. This was nothing special.

 

Huracan Ramirez, Rayman, Villano IV vs Angel Blanco Jr., El Hijo del Medico Asesino, El Hijo del Solitario: a regular semimain indy veteran trios match given some more time. Everyone was fine but the first couple of falls didn’t do a lot for me and the finish came off as weak (and I’m not really sure why since it wasn’t any different than any other foul finish.) Rayman still looks really good.

 

Dr. Wagner Jr. vs LA Park: EXCELLENT. The reactions and situations around this match were great by themselves – the flaming chair, the guys in the crowd losing their minds when LA Park and Dr. Wagner were fighting among them, the security completely unable to contain them and trailing behind like the world’s largest posse, the doctor frantically trying to wrap Park’s gushing skull (and immediately taking him away after the match) – it was amazingly dramatic. Even the production was really good; this is a tough matchup to film sometimes as they drift into the crowd, but they did a great job of keeping up with them (and the shots of the flaming chair again were awesome. ) Dr. Wagner and LA Park exceeded everything going around them; they bring out the best of each other. LA Park destroyed Dr. Wagner in the first fall, which was good for Park’s destruction and better for Wagner selling it like nothing he normally does. There second fight in the crowd was a near riot, and their third fall could’ve been a match all on it’s own. A brutal match that ends in a typically indecisive matter.

taped 2013-04-27 @ Gimnasio Juan De La Barrera
Hijo de Pirata Morgan & Pirata Morgan Jr. vs Golden Magic & Poseidon (TxT): GOOD. Really strong opener early; Golden Magic and Hijo del Pirata were really fun on the mat and near the end. Poseidon didn’t look as good, but he was sure up for taking whatever crazy move the Piratas want to have. Piratas have terrible moonsault aim. Pirata Jr. was just okay, as usual. Turnaround spot being from a reversed headscissors cradle is at least different, but the tecnicos needed a hotter follow up on it to get the crowd back. The crazy Pirata offense kind of lost the crowd because it went so long, and the tecnicos really didn’t get in much before it was even and then rudo dominated again. Crowd didn’t want to see these guys do a ton of near falls, but did cheer after the finish.

 

Esther Moreno & Rossy Moreno vs Chik Tormenta & Diosa Maya: OK/GOOD. Much better than than the average CMLL’s women match this year; solid and actually gooda t some points. I haven’t seen a lot of Chik Tormenta and maybe no Diosa Maya, but they were enjoyable in this match. Maya didn’t seem as used to being a ruda as Tormenta, but adapted okay. Morenos really ought to be rudas at this point in their careers, but they wanted to do to tencica spots so they did tecnica spots. You could tell this is a different crowd than AAA or CMLL shows, because they would’ve booed the heck of the match after the missed Rossy Moreno bottom rope springboard spot (and resulting confusing.) TxT fans actually cheered here. This turned into everyone just doing Moves at the end, which is not a complaint I usually have in women’s matches.

 

Súper Muñeco, Súper Pinocho, Súper Ratón vs Black Terry, Scorpio Jr., Shu el Guerrero: OK? I had trouble staying interested in this. Trio Fantasia in 2013 are hard to take seriously, and Scorpio Jr. and Shu el Guerrero were both slowed by injuries (or life.) I think the crowd would’ve been perfectly happy with the first fall being the entire match, but did still care when it came to the finish. This was also the third straight undercard match with lots of near falls; they belonged more in this match, but I was ready to move on. The finish really didn’t make sense – Super Muneco pins Shu el Guerrero, rudos claim it was a two count, and so this gets them a title match?

 

Rayman & Saruman vs Dinamic Black & Imposible, Trofeo Angel Blanco tournament semifinal match : only go the last few minutes of this one but it looked exciting, as should be expected with thru (then) IWRG guys who were working together a lot.

Angel Blanco Jr. & Cien Caras Jr. vs Fuerza Guerrera & Pirata Morgan, Trofeo Angel Blanco tournament semifinal match: Fuerza Guerrera and Pirata Morgan as outgunned tecnicos is an odd look. Both have been around for long and thought of killed as so long that they crowd should automatically root for them, but they’re also still some very hateable rudos and this match set up didn’t play to them at all. It would’ve worked better if their comeback at least was them both being old ornery jerks, but instead Pirata did tecnico spots and looked old. This was just a match to establish the Cien/Angel team as more important and definitely did that.

 

Rayman & Saruman vs Angel Blanco Jr. & Cien Caras Jr., Trofeo Angel Blanco  tournament final match: Both the complete matches still were joined in progress of a fight, which felt odd (and like they didn’t have enough time.) This also felt shorter than the other complete semifinal. The match itself was about 8 minutes of annoying move turn taking – I rarely notice it in tag matches as long as it happened here, but it was non stop taking a move, kickout a two, and giving the other guy a move. It annoyed me, but the TxT crowd is the least jaded audience in Mexico and was totally good with it. Finish felt like it came out of nowhere.

 

Dr. Wagner Jr., El Hijo Del Santo, El Hijo del Solitario vs Derek Sanders, Oliver John, Shaun Ricker: I could see this file was listed as 37 minutes before I even started watching it, and I was hoping for a 15 minute commerical break had been left in for some reason. This is actually closer to 30 minutes and actually fine for the time – they just worked a normal trios match slower and longer than usual. It would’ve been completely fine for me if it ended after one fall and La Migra really never got a lot in considering the length, but the the tencicos did get to do everything they could do. You could definitely find matches which would be better per minute but there was nothing wrong with this. Despite doing this long, C3 edited cut out almost all of La Migra attacking the tecnicos after the match, but left all the tecnicos talking post match.