AAA UTDN: 2013-12-26

recap

taped 2013-12-08 @ Auditorio de la Gente, Tepic, Nayarit
Angélico, Fénix, Jack Evans vs Juventud Guerrera, Pentagón Jr., Steve Pain: Going to look great in the highlights, but had some noticeably not smooth parts. Guys have had better nights – Juvi seemed to be not on the same page with Jack or Angelico in particular, but Fenix wasn’t on target at times too. They’re doing difficult things and it sometimes seems like it’s unfair to criticize them because not all of them work, but when there’s not more to the match besides the difficulty in spots, then they’ve got to work. Mexican Powers got to get the big win without us actually having to see them in the match, so I consider that a victory.

Blue Demon Jr. vs Electroshock for the AAA Latin American Championship: exactly what you thought it would be. They did the technical title match they promised, except they’re not as creative or quick with the holds as the guys who are actually really good at it. It was still different from a normal AAA match, but really compelling in itself. Demon had interesting matches here in his Texano feud, but it hasn’t really worked as well with the other guys. He looked old here.

Cibernético, el Hijo del Perro Aguayo, El Mesías, La Parka vs Daga, Jeff Jarrett, Parka Negra, Psicosis: A less organized version of the match from the previous taping, only with extraneous Mesías/Jeff Jarrett bits. They were pretty much having a separate match, Mesías getting the big win (that really should end Jarrett here unless they’ve got a new idea for him, and may actually be the end even if they didn’t know at the time.) The rest of the match was all over the place, which worked for the live crowd who just wanted to see something to happen but didn’t come together on TV. The post match was a dozen angles in one, with something that wasn’t that interesting before coming back again for no particular reason. AAA spent weeks hyping an important meeting between the rudos and Jeff Jarrett, and it doesn’t seem to have actually happened or have mattered at all. That’s not the biggest problem here, but I’m struggling to see the point of all that time on backstage meetings between the heels if the meeting they were leading up wasn’t about anything and if they were always on the same side all along. Or why this happened this week instead of the previous taping. This has been a lame mystery story (why is Perro with the técnicos? Oh, wait, he’s not, he just wanted to hit Cibernético with a chair but passed up a dozen other chances to do it) with an uninspiring payoff (all the heels who were already vaguely aligned are now strongly aligned and under old and not exciting management.) I’m happy with soap opera stories in lucha libre, but this barely qualified as a story.

This is a not a wrestling thing, but there were a lot of bad camera switches on this show – either times where they switched to a worse angle, or they stuck with a bad shot when they needed to switch. There’s been talk before about AAA running thru matches prior to the show to get the camera shots right, and both Jarrett showing up late and the match being changed around would have meant that couldn’t happen (or wasn’t as effective), but whoever was switching the shots here seemed surprised by usual things. The dive sequence near the end was butchered.