AAA on Televisa: 2016-08-20 

Recapped: 08/20/2016

What happened: Pagano beat Psycho Clown again. Fenix & Fantasma are a team.

What was good: I liked the minis match and really liked the tag match.

Where can I watch it: It’s best viewed on AAA’s channel

Psycho Clown comes to the ring to start the show, talking about his mask vs hair match. Pagano interrupts before he can get to the catchphrase. He’s got a barbed wire bat. They try to fight, but security stops them.

Match 1: Dinastía, Lanzeloth, Octagoncito vs Mini Abismo Negro, Mini Histeria, Mini Psycho Clown
Gimnasio Agustín Millán, Toluca, Estado de México, 07/29/2016 
Video: ENTRE SEGUNDA Y TERCERA, thecubsfan, Lucha Libre AAA

Winner: técnicos (Lanzeloth northern lights suplex Mini Histeria)
Match Time: 8:29
Notes: Mini Abismo is wearing an America jersey, but has the sponsorship logos covered up in front. (The Corona one is left alone on the back.) Arturo Rivera, perhaps not aware of the current political situation in AAA, praises Jhonny Gonzalez for his recent boxing win for a moment. The other announcers have nothing to say on the subject of Sexy Star’s husband.

Review: [good] very fun minis match, with both sides getting so much in that it felt like they went a lot longer than eight and half minutes. The rudos worked hard when they took over the match. The zoomed out camerawork did them no favors, but they were hitting high impact moves before the técnicos came back. Lanzeloth is a nice addition not just because he’s good, but he fits well alongside Dinastia’s face paced action. Dinastia’s mixing up his normal sets, or at least not doing the same moves every match, which makes the matches feel a bit fresher. Mini Histeria doesn’t physically look in great shape, but he kept up with everything and Mini Abismo had another good showing.

Match 2: Angélico & Jack Evans vs Fénix & Hijo del Fantasma
Gimnasio Agustín Millán, Toluca, Estado de México, 07/29/2016 
Video: ENTRE SEGUNDA Y TERCERA, thecubsfan, Lucha Libre AAA

Winner: Fenix & Hijo del Fantasma (Thrill of the Hunt on Jack Evans)
Match Time: 10:50
Notes: Angelico & Jack’s opponents are listed as mystery people. Fantasma enters first with the cruiserweight belt, explains his concept of mixing técnicos & rudos to have the best of both strategies, and introduces Fenix as his partner. Crowd seems surprised. Fenix is at first reluctant to shake Fantasma’s hand, but does so.

Review: [great] Another instance of letting four really quality luchadors have a match without any AAA angles getting in the way, and those guys totally delivering. This was total Lucha Underground style, with guys exchanging big spots and building to bigger ones. They kept on getting bigger, and they all worked well against each other. Fantasma does not look at all like a guy who’s coming back from back surgery, and the other three are in fine form. Angelico knee smashes are solid, and he really threw himself into taking Fantasma’s tope. We probably should name the straddle springboard Fenix does after him, since everyone’s going to be using it soon, just not making it look nearly as easy as he does. Jack’s equally effortlessly good at crazy stuff. One really bad botch at the end doesn’t wipe out the rest, but it does make it hard to give full grades. Fantasma & Fenix needed a few more teamwork spots to sell the idea of them being a new great unit, rather than two guys thrown together because there was no other space for them on TripleMania. All that said, this was yet another outstanding match involving four people on an AAA TV in Toluca.

Noti AAA is a “A Fondo” segment looking back at the history of TripleMania and selling the TripleMania Cup as a big deal.

Match 3: Psycho Clown vs Pagano in a bull terrier match
Gimnasio Agustín Millán, Toluca, Estado de México, 07/29/2016 
Video: ENTRE SEGUNDA Y TERCERA, thecubsfan, Lucha Libre AAA

Winner: Pagano (touch all four corners)
Match Time: 15:22
Notes: As with every AAA bull terrier match, the técnico puts on the collar and the rudo does not at the start of the match, using it to his advantage. (To be fair, Piero just handed the collar to Pagano and dumbly expected him to put it on himself; Pagano immediately threw it down.) Pagano takes over by hitting Psycho with a chair as Psycho tries a top. Psycho’s mask is ripped quickly and Pagano cuts him with the bat. Pagano beats up Psycho Clown for about 5 minutes and then touches every corner, but it doesn’t count because he’s never put on the collar. Psycho takes over with the same spot as before, Psycho hitting Pagano with a chair as Pagano tries a tope. Psycho beats Pagano in the crowd the same way Pagano had done before, and they brawl into a closet (which the camera can’t follow.) Pagano later fights back and tries to go for a pin on a (awful) springboard moonsault, but it doesn’t work. It does take them 12.5 minutes to finally figure out the rules to the match, then they do big moves, then they get up fine and Psycho touches the corner with Pagano doing the same behind him, and Pagano simply pushes Psycho Clown out of the way for the fourth one.

Review: [below average] This feud in a nutshell: Pagano nearly paralyzes Psycho Clown with an atrocious powerbomb, and the next spot is Psycho Clown getting up like nothing’s happened and hitting Pagano with a chair. It’s all so dumb. It’s kind of trash. All the “big spots” mean little, because they’re ignored a moment later – there’s not even the rest break you might see as a dive, neither really bothered to sell anything. Psycho makes a point of not even selling the loss, none of this matters. These guys are killing themselves while making it look as fake as possible. Pagano’s not great shakes to begin with, and his performance goes downhill the longer the match goes, which is going to be a real issue for TripleMania. These guys need to go nine minutes, they went fifteen here, and they’ll probably go twenty at TripleMania. The bull terrier stipulation was barely used in this match, clearly there just to give them something different to do (which they didn’t really take advantage of) and to save Psycho Clown from taking another pinfall. I didn’t like this at all.