I figure, the months ahead will provide me with no shortage of opportunity to mock the matches. Though – wait, I just realized a point that needs to be made…
ATTENTION: putting aside who they are or where they’re coming from, if you want to bring in better wrestlers to improve AAA, there’s definitely places where it can improve. The problem is, they’re talking about bringing in guys to be midcarders. The midcard isn’t the problem! Even if you believe Mark Briscoe is better than Night Queen Jessy, it doesn’t make the main events any less horrible! And the matches will continue to suck unless they change THOSE guys or they let the guys who can actually have exciting matches do more than sell all match.
Anyway. It’s important to remember they really don’t want to have better matches, they want to have matches that look different than the WWE stuff. So we get endless hardcore and ladder because WWE doesn’t do that on free TV (for good reason!) and we’ll get ROH style matches for the same reason. Since the emphasis is on style rather than quality, I still think it’d be easier to just buy a bunch of ROH DVDs and have their guys watch them than to buy ROH wrestlers, but this is also a subtle networking bit.
(and I think it’d be better if they just skipped ahead to buying CHIKARA DVDs, but I’ve totally digressed here.)
Getting back to the part where I actually talk about the show:
– minis match, chopped up and not especially compelling. But watch it below!
– torneo de Pena – everyone not named Mesias and Pirata (and maybe Elegido) buried 6 feet under. I know the point here is to subtly push Mesias as a tecnico and snuff out the feud with the Dark Family (he’s a main eventer, they’re a midcarder, they’re not allowed to feud) but it also kinda seemed like the point was to showcase Mesias inability to work anything but the same exact match seeing as he did it about five straight times.
Also, what was the point of having all three referees out there? They didn’t anything to stop the interference, which would be the reason to have them there. Which leaves me with no reason for them to be there.
– cage match: at least it felt shorter than usual?
What I planned on talking about was the non match stuff, but this is at a billion words already. Let’s see how quick I can do it.
* AAA would be so much better off if Octagon and Atlantis switched places. Octagon forever gets booked in these matches as the older legend of AAA, the symbol of traditional wrestling in an traditional world, the mentor to all the young guys. (Tecnico Atlantis. Or maybe Panther.) Unfortunately, he’s awful at it; he works as symbol, but he seems like he could care less. Getting his trademark spots in and taking off was such a typical moment for Octagon, that’s what he’s done for years. There’s tons of CMLL guys who can (and do) play the legendary wrestler defending his company from invaders, but AAA’s stuck with Octagon and no one really else – La Parka strength is comedy and doesn’t work as serious, so they have to bring back Latin to be the defender of all things AAA. It’s not a problem AAA can fix, there’s no obvious replacement, but the problem sticks out every time they do one of this angles.
* You’re also left with problems like “X-Pac, the man of reason”. Why does DX care about AAA going into chaos? Don’t they want a revolution? Maybe I can count them out.
* Did AAA make enough money by switching from the usual Auditorio to the baseball stadium to make up for the absolutely dead sounding crowd? I think the crowd was actually making noise and it was just audible, but the biggest memory of this show is people waving to the crowd to try and get a reaction every twenty seconds.
* The video packages they have now are better than what they had before, but they’re really not great and wearing thin. They’re trying to ape WWE here, and I wish they’d do a better job of it. WWE video packages start with one angle, follow it thru, maybe have some chaotic highlights underneath promos, and a dramatic conclusion. AAA video packages start with an angle, branch off to another angle, descend into random scenes and random promos and then just end with more random images, to the point where they have the show the graphic again to remind you what was supposed to be going on here.
* If Cibernetico vacating the title is supposed to be a big deal, maybe you’ve waited for another show where it would’ve come off like a big deal, instead of jamming it here overload. I think the people got their money’s worth with Konnan taking over, that could’ve been saved until the next taping.
(also, it would’ve been nice if Galavision aired the show in the right timeslot, so the end of the show would’ve be clipped off – like it is in my linked video. I’m sure it’ll repeat next week and five straight weeks after that.)
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The tournament was horrible. Something that’s supposed to be a Pena memorial should not end with a guy winning the trophy who has been trying to destroy AAA. They can’t just expect us to like him all of a sudden.
So now we’re seeing guys smoking up on AAA tv. Konnan is a guy who ran his mouth about drugs in wrestling and now we’re seeing guys smoking up with drug paraphenilia on
TV. But I’m sure this was Roldan’s idea. riiiiiiiiiight.
Cage match was good. We actually saw Latin Lover and Elegido stand side by side which is something many thought we’d never see. My favorite part was when Latin Lover Super Kicked the chair into Konnan’s face. It reminds me of when Shawn Michaels did it to Chris Jericho on RAW back in July 2003. Latin does it better, too bad the camera man was out of position.
@Daniel: Is there anything Latin Lover doesn’t do better?
Hosting a reality show. Abismo Negro has him beat.
Speaking of Abismo Negro, I think he’d make a great “defender of AAA.” The guy’s been around since the beginning, done practically everything, and he’d be willing to “fight dirty” if necessary. Of course, that would require him coming back and staying out of trouble, so who knows.