AAA Dark Matches (March & April 2014)

recap

 

Dinastia inside springboard twisting plancha

Dinastía vs Mini Charly Manson for the AAA World Minis Championship: (Lienzo Charro Ignacio Leon Ornelas, Irapuato, Guanajuato, 03/03/2014): Disappointing. There was not a lot of momentum to the match. It was ill considered to do so many near falls early on. There is no way a Dinastía match is going to end without him doing something nutty, so all of the pins they were trying early were tough to take serious and numbed everyone to the idea of near falls when they had so many more planned. They also did a lot of 1 on 3 with Mini Psycho Clown and Tirantes, but it didn’t add much – the crowd didn’t care when Dinastía made his comeback. This was really a Mini Charly Manson exhibition; he took what felt like 80% of the match to do show off every suplex and roll up he could think of, and then Dinastía just did his move and won in the end. There wasn’t a lot of time in between moves, and neither luchador got across the story that Dinastía was just barely surviving. It was just a series of two counts. The execution of the moves were fine, there was just not a lot to them. There’s a big sound issue here too; announcers were very quiet, ring was very loud, and the fans were very distant. There were a lot of fans in the building, but it sounded like we were only hearing 50 of them. It sounded like a match in an empty building.

 

Sexy Star broken by a kick

Alan Stone, Dinastía, Faby Apache, Pimpinela Escarlata vs Mamba, Mini Charly Manson, Sexy Star, Silver King (Plaza de Toros La Monumental, Monterrey, Nuevo León, 03/16/2014): Average mixed match, maybe a little lower than that – there’s usually cooler moments and there wasn’t a lot to remember here. Alan Stone was the same individually. Charly and Dinastía did about 1% of they did in the title match. Ref bump didn’t add anything to this, and kept Tirantes down for about 1 seconds (and didn’t seem like it affected who he was counting at all.) Pentagon demanding silence after the match caused a louder reaction than most of the match.

Sexy Star tornillo

 

doing a fine job of kicking the air right beneath Texano

Alan Stone, Electroshock, Psycho Clown vs Chessman, Silver King, Texano Jr. (Auditorio Miguel Barragan, San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, 04/16/2014): A finish which had me screaming at my television! Psycho Clown gives Texano “El Canadian!” again, and Hijo del Tirantes stalls instead of counting. Chessman spears Psycho Clown (camera half misses this), Alan superkicks Chessman, Hijo del Tirantes counts a completely normal three. HOW DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE? Completely and totally absurd.

Otherwise, this was your basic AAA trios match. The guys who are feuding somewhat feuded, but the usual pattern: rudos control early, técnicos come back to do all their offense to all the rudos, and then the finish. It was longer than any match which did air, which is probably why it didn’t (thought they might have been able to squeeze it in if they took out intros – and editing this match down a few minutes wouldn’t have hurt it.) Alan didn’t look good and maybe should refrain from trying faceslams until he gets those figured out again. This is the only one of these dark matches where I watched the match directly after the watching the taping it was from, and the crowd sound difference is amazing. It’s was significantly quieter (though not as quiet as the other shows.) Maybe it’s just how the files are going up on the internet or how we’re recording them – if they were inflated the crowd noise for TV, why wouldn’t they be doing it for the internet too?

CMLL suspensions reason for no tag title match?, Monterrey

Sin Cara, Cibernetico, Argos and Argenis defeated the Psycho Circus and Averno in Arena Coliseo Monterrey. Two questions: when Psycho Clown wins the AAA heavyweight championship, will that finally get the AAA house show booker to use the Psycho Circus as tecnicos? and what are going to call “La Mistica” when he gets a new name? Ultimo Ninja won the Copa Hector Garza in the semimain.

LA Park defeated Hernandez and Dr. Wagner Jr. in Arena Solidaridad. Attendance was not great, but fairly blamed on the venue of the show changing two days before it happened (at the direction of local authorities.)

It appears Rush, La Mascara, Negro Casas and Mr. Niebla (or some members of that foursome) were pulled from Friday’s show as punishment for their out of control brawl this Friday. This is more likely to be a CMLL internal suspension rather than a Mexico City commission one, and something that would allow them to continue their roles on En Busca de un Idolo and on spot shows will not working matches in Arena Mexico. CMLL routinely sends their internal recording of the Friday night main events – the matches which don’t air on Terra – to Tercera Caida to use on their program, but Tercera Caida was only able to show photos of last Friday’s nights weapon laden brawl. (It’ll likely be off Fox’s show as well.) CMLL’s done this before: with the LA Park/Dr. Wagner Jr. crazy brawl that ended up with both guys out of the company to this day, and a Volador/Niebla singles match in Puebla where a Volador chair shot to the back of Niebla’s head produced a lot of blood plus suspensions for both men. CMLL will allow some very limited usage of objects, but the photos of the main event indicated it was much out of the ordinary.

On their Facebook, CMLL said the tag team match was challenged for but never agreed upon. That’s weird fiction, since there was definitely a poster on CMLL’s site listing that as the main event for tomorrow’s show. It’s unclear how long any suspension would last; two weeks is normal, but this is a main event program and they may not want to keep it cold that long.

This is an over the top punishment that’s counter productive – and also why a full scale AAA/CMLL feud could never work without one of the promotions completely changing their mindset. About 70% of AAA luchadors would be suspended at any given moment under CMLL rules. We’d never see the Mexican Powers ever again! (It’s not an all bad idea.)

This week’s Observer raves about Flamita – that’s actually the important part, Flamita is awesome now – and has this line

AAA wanted him and was going to give him a mega push with the Octagon Jr. gimmick, but he said that he likes working in Japan and wants to stick with Dragon Gate.

I was very much struggling to figure out in what honest timeline this could actually be true. The best fitting scenario I could come up with was Flamita got the offer when he and Rocky Lobo returned home in December. Flamita had been trios champion, likely knew he had another lengthy run coming up, and generally knew Dragon Gate was really high on him.. Meanwhile, AAA previously had no particular interest in using him outside of an interchangeably opener, had barely moved most of his peers up the card, and was now offering him a character that had failed already. That probably wasn’t a hard decision, if it even it happened. Octagon was agitating to get out of AAA by that point, so it wasn’t a great situation to even debut an Octagon Jr. at that point – and AAA couldn’t have been really that interested in the Octagon Jr. character since they never gave it to anyone else.

Flamita was stuck in an extremely part time role once Fusion ended; he had to hustle for other jobs, and found a pretty good one. Flamita without Dragon Gate would be teaming with Ludxor and Venum as a third New Space Cadet member in the best case scenario. At least AAA would’ve used Flamita; please don’t forget CMLL had him in their school and didn’t graduate him to the main roster. This is a case where both promotions had someone talented and didn’t see that talent or didn’t get it out of them. The credit should go to Dragon Gate for seeing it – and helping him improve, because he’s gone a long way in six months (which again would not be expected in AAA or CMLL) – and for Flamita for making the move.

That’s was really two unfortunate paragraphs of me fighting against reality distortion field around AAA in the Wrestling Observer* , but I’m also concerned for the next group of Flamitas to come thru. If you have seen indy names getting mentioned as having good matches here, you should figure AAA’s probably told someone they’re very interested in bringing them in. That’s great on the surface, more work for talented luchadors is a great thing, but having a plan on how to develop and use them. Wrestlers can get over by having good matches, but if they have good matches for months and that doesn’t take them anywhere, then it kills whatever value they have. Having a plan has got to be more than throwing a new mask on them – are Venum & Ludxor much more over than Lucky Boy and Nino de Ebano? – or giving them a new t-shirt – Daga was definitely less over for after being a Perros del Mal henchman. Heck, AAA’s done scarcely more with Fantasma than CMLL did, and CMLL absolutely wasted Fantasma his last few years there. Flamita, and Eita and his crew, got over because Dragon Gate had plan for them on Day 1 of their (re)debut; they didn’t let them linger around on shows for months while waiting for an idea or a major card to come up.

Don’t brag about your plans to bring in a whole bunch of great guys. AAA has a whole bunch of great guys already! Brag about your plans to get the guys over.

I could repeat this section and use “En Busca de un Idolo” in the same way. I much would prefer CMLL had a plan to get X, Y and Z young luchador over and just booked their tournament to go that long instead of leaving it up to the internet to book for them. The unscriptedness of the format is making it more interesting now, but how much is that going to help them two months after the tournament is over and they’re back to marking time in Tuesday segundas?

* – but also it’s just AAA trying to take some credit for Flamtia. They don’t get to take credit for Flamita. Super Crazy can. CIMA can. I’d even let DTU do it, though he probably should’ve gotten more out of him and genuinely seems to be wasting him in the upcoming tour with the played out multiman matches.

Back to actual news

Last night’s Tercera Caida included interviews with Drastick Boy and Kaleth, which sounded like Flamita might be defending the Brave Gate title in a trios match on DTU’s yet to be announced Arena Aficion card.

According to Enrique Yniesta, who has official ties to AAA but just generally Knows Things, Aerostar’s booking in the UK is a fake. That means he’ll be in the Tuxtla Guiterrez six way match, and we’ll all freak out about Axel lasting longer than him in the match that night.

CMLL promotes the Peste Negra defending the National Trios Championship today in Puebla. They don’t bother to mention who’s challenging them. I like you Puebla fans more than CMLL does, so I’ll tell you they revealed in their Facebook comments that it’ll be Atlantis, Valiente and Mascara Dorada. Dorada missed last week’s Puebla bullring show and makes up for it here by replacing the injured Mistico. This is the last show of the month long special Thursday shows at the Puebla fair.

Last’s night Tercera Caida had Averno is an in studio guest. They brought up the luchadora sorpresas on Chiapas, and Averno insisted he had not signed a contract with AAA. That may be technically true at the moment. He did not seem to be a big fan of Mistico II.

Oro Jr. talks up his feud with Metalico – he doesn’t want to feud, but he’ll fight Metalico is he has to. The only problem here is Oro Jr.’s forgotten which tournament he dove into Metailico. He thinks it was the Copa Jr., it was the En Busca de un Idolo qualifying tournament. Even if Oro Jr. actually said that (and he probably didn’t; quotes in these articles are generally worked), the interviewer should’ve known enough to fix it.

Rob has highlights of late April, early May 2001.

LuchaWorld has a recap of this past week’s En Busca de un Idolo matches and KrisZ’s news update.

Chessman’s under the impression his title match against Blue Demon will be 06/07 in Orizaba.

Friday night’s CMLL show will include a male luchador dance/strip number in honor of Mother’s Day.

Rafaga speaks about almost winning the Occidente Heavyweight Championship. He feels Diamante Azul’s superior size was a big issue and will study to find an effective hold to counter someone of a bigger size before they have a rematch. (These quotes are real.)

Demus is not challenged by the rookie tecnicos and would prefer to fight international luchadors or heavyweights. You had that chance! You blew it! (No surprise any one wants out of the CMLL minis division.) He’d like to go New Japan, but they’re not interested in someone of his size, but he’s hopeful someone else in Japan would use him.

Long bio of Quintana Roo luachador Silueta del Caribe.

Pequeno Cobra talks about his mask match with Pequeno Joker. It’s a Joker Promociones show, I don’t like Cobra’s odds.

CMLL on Fox Sports (Mexico): 2014-04-12

recap

taped 2014-04-04 @ Arena México

Princesa Sugehit, the invisible rudas

Goya Kong, Lluvia, Silueta vs Dalys, Princesa Blanca, Princesa Sugheit: They’ve left the captains announcements as part of the broadcast this week. It’s much better, though it does mean they cut another 20 seconds from the match.
Average edited women’s match; actually maybe better than you’d expect given the people involved but nothing memorable at all. Less Goya Kong comedy than usual, or at least that made it thru editing. The best parts of this match where when the rudas were in control.

 

ups and downs of Mascara Dorada

Máscara Dorada, Mistico, Volador Jr. vs Kráneo, Morphosis, Ripper: Normal flying guys versus the Invasors, with the rudos getting just enough to break up the técnicos run of offense. Tecnicos were moving a million miles per hour early. Dorada looked the best the entire way, as he often does. Someone needs to figure out a much better way to film Kraneo’s running hip attack into the camera, because it’s exposed every time they show it on TV. Mascara Dorada’s biggest career rival appears to be that Cementos Fortaleza ramp logo he’s always landing on. (Didn’t keep him down for too long here. )

key to knocking down Kraneo: flips

Atlantis, La Máscara, Rush vs Mr. Niebla, Negro Casas, Shocker: This is a brawl all the way, which some of the guys can do better than others. La Mascara is the others, and can just superkick. La Mascara also sees Shocker come in the ring and attack his tag team partner Rush, and decides to just stand there and keep watching. He’s the worst. Negro Casas versus Rush is the spine, but it actually ended up as a tease for Shocker & Negro Casas challenging Rush & La Mascara for the tag team titles, provided someone in CMLL remembers Rush & La Mascara are the tag team champions. They went away from this direction the next couple weeks, so I’m guessing they don’t remember.

Niebla crushes Atlantis
the rare “thrown back over the barricade” gif