AAA on Televisa: 2017-04-01 

Recapped: 04/05/2017

All matches were taped at Arena Jose Sulaiman, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon on March 19, and aired on their TV show.

Matches: 

Ayako Hamada defeated Taya to win the AAA Reina de Reinas championship (12:55, Michinoku Driver, ok)

Johnny Mundo defeated Hijo del Fantasma and Texano Jr. to retain the AAA Latin American Championship and win the AAA Cruiserweight & Heavyweight Championship (16:27, Fin de Mundo, good)

Aerostar beat Súper Fly to keep Aerostar’s mask & win SuperFly’s hair (8:28 + 0:03 on the restart, rana, good)

What happened: 

Aerostar took Super Fly’s hair, though Vampiro appeared to be 99% responsible for the win. Super Fly used concealed knuckles to knock out Aerostar. A light show and music heralded Vampiro to the ring, where he dramatically kicked out the referee responsible (Copetes) and ordered the match restarted. Before Super Fly even realized the match was happening, Aerostar cradled him for three. Super Fly tried to leave, but Vampiro brought him back to the ring to get his head shaved. The match had been no DQ and falls count anywhere up to that point.

Johnny Mundo won all three men’s singles titles, in a three way that was turned into a title match by an off camera Vampiro. (They saved his reveal until the main event.) Fantasma and Texano had differing views on how handle this match: Texano wanted to straight team up to take out Mundo, while Fantamsa wanted it to be every man for themselves. This eventually cost Texano, who relented on hitting his friend with a chair. Fantasma repaid the kidness by giving Texano a Thrill of the Hunt on that same chair. Texano was put in a neck brace and on a stretcher and that’s the end of him for now. (This came off like an angle, though perhaps one to explain an already existing Texano injury. He didn’t seem quite himself.) Mundo only won after the second ref bump, instigated by the debuting Kevin Kross. Kross wasn’t named, and the editing made it tough to tell where he came from, but he laid out Fantasma to set up the win for Mundo and presented him with the belts after the match.

Ayako Hamada cleanly defeated Taya to win the Reina de Reinas championship.

Noti AAA focuses on a childen who tried out for La Llave de la Gloria. AAA is for the kids. There does seem to be more than 30 people here but it’s hard to get idea from what they show.

AAA was part of filming for a Ni Tu Ni Yo movie. People are drinking wine at a lucha show in Arena San Juan, which is the most unlikely thing I’ve seen.

Enterances are back this week, and the new idea is to mix shots of a video of the wrestler as they walk out.

Where can I watch it: 

This was the better show of the two Rey de Reyes and one where it felt like things were happen. The matches just didn’t totally live up to the occasion; two finishes were totally in service of new angles and the third match just never clicked.

Aerostar/Super Fly was great for the first eight minutes. I’m not sure how badly Super Fly was hurt – his elbow and arm had pads he usually doesn’t have and seemed to be protecting it at times – but it didn’t stop him from giving a full effort. Starting a match by diving to the floor to hit no one is the message, and he made the brawling really work well. AAA was better prepared to cover a crowd brawl than usual, and while they missed some points (like whatever wound caused Aerostar to lose 10% of his blood), it was easier to watch than usual. Notably, and very happily, this wasn’t the old AAA singles match where the rudo second took half the match and the tecnicos second stood around dumbly until getting in one dive. There were no seconds, and all the attention was on the guys actually in the match. Super Fly & Aerostar were on a great pace, they just lacked a few (maybe five?) minutes to do near falls to play off the drama of the moment. Instead, they got about one minute, a silly ref bump and Vampiro becoming the true winner of the match.

There was no confusion about who was the man of the moment. Aerostar was dead from the moment he got hit until four minutes later when Vampiro restarted the match, then dead again after the pin. Vampiro literally had the bright lights shined on him and played to the crowd, and it’s he who has the feud with Super Fly going forward. Aerostar was incidental to the while thing, and Super Fly was only involved to give Vampiro someone to foil. It’s hard to appreciate a match when it’s so obviously been repurposed to be someone else’s moment in the end.

The intention might have been to do something along the lines of Dario Cueto restarting the Chavo Guerrero versus Rey Mysterio Jr. loser leaves town match, with the match being restarted because the stakes were so high, but that Lucha Underground match continued for three more minutes. It gave time for the focus to shift back to the people in the match, and the statement there was they’d have a decisive winner in a big match. AAA already had a decisive winner in this match – there’s no explanation why chairs were legal but knucks were not – and ending it immediately after the restart kept the focus on Vampiro’s decision to restart it. Even if they absolutely had to do a spot where Vampiro does something positive to re-enforce it being a “new era”, it shouldn’t have been a weapon spot. Those are going to keep on happening anyway. It should’ve been Hijo del Tirantes running in, fast counting for Super Fly, and Vampiro declaring Tirantes’ antics were over to blow off that storyline instead of ignoring it. They had part of that idea by kicking out Copetes (who also has been a rudo at times), but they either didn’t execute it well. Or they executed it perfectly to make Vampiro the focus, because they feel like they need new top stars and decided to go with Vampiro. The original idea seemed to elevate Aerostar, but it did the least for him out of everywhere involved.

Texano versus Fantasma versus Mundo didn’t live up to it’s potential early, but got there at the end. They just seemed out of sorts at first, with Mundo blowing a springboard that couldn’t be hidden, then later doing a neat escape dive onto his feet on the floor but everyone being totally confused as to what they were supposed to do next. Even when the moves were going right, they didn’t seem to be landing well. The one part I did like early on was everyone pulling each out and into another cradle, something I’ve not see quite that way before. Still, I could’ve happily skipped most everything that happened before the first ref bump. (Lot of ref bumps on this show.)

Texano appeared heavier than usual and, while he didn’t take it totally easy, he seemed to do less than usual to the point where I was watching it trying to figure out if he had just come into the match with a neck strain and this was their way of writing him out. It flowed a lot better with Fantasma and Mundo, and Fantamsa’ tope on this show was his best in AAA in a long time. Mundo trying a half dozen times to cheat was a good character bit, and he seemed to be the most over rudo of the night. Kross looked impressive in his moves, especially the back suplex, and the extra-bit of Mundo still hitting his finish made a difference. This was a setup for a new direction but at least the direction looked promising.

Taya/Ayako didn’t work at all; it’s generous to call it even OK. They did a match heavily built around strikes while seemingly being cautious about actually touching each other. Every slap of the mat was super loud, and even the side kicks to chest were making no sound. I don’t know if they were both just concerned about being too hard with a person they didn’t know, but it just didn’t look good for most of the way, slightly picked up in the last few minutes and then still had those same problems. Crowd didn’t care about this at all, which isn’t too surprising: it’s a ruda versus someone they haven’t seen in years (and was a ruda then), and Ayako’s doesn’t play up being a tecnica strong enough to make it work. Taya’s work is not great but it’s more Ayako not being even as into the match as she was the goofy elimination match either and sleep walking in what should be a big match. It never feels that way, and Taya’s long title reign ends just quietly.