AAA on Televisa: 2017-07-01 

Recapped: 07/01/2017

Matches:

All matches were from Gimnasio Municipal Josué Neri Santos, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, taped on 06/04/2017.

Máscara de Bronce beat Hernandez
(5:38, bodyscissors cradle, ok)

Dark Cuervo & Dark Scoria beat El Mesías & Pagano © and Aerostar & Drago and Australian Suicide & Bengala for the AAA World Tag Team Championship

(8:42, Scoria legdrop Pagano, ok)

Pimpinela Escarlata  beat Mamba in a hair versus hair match
(10:48, inside cradle, ok)

What happened: 

Mascara de Bronce came out to cash in his title shot against Johnny Mundo to start the show. Johnny Mundo’s music played, but Hernandez appeared instead. Hernandez talked to Arturo Rivera, who translates Hernandez saying Johnny Mundo wouldn’t be here because the wrestlers weren’t any good. Hernandez said he’s take on Bronce himself, if Bronce wasn’t scared. Bronce wasn’t scared, and eventually surprised Hernandez to win a match he was otherwise losing. (The cradle is messed up, but close enough to work.) Hernandez resumes destroying Bronce after the match and walks away with the briefacse.

There’s no attempt of an explanation of why Bengala & Australian Suicide are getting a tag title shot after losing in their last match for the title shot and breaking up. They get along fine during the match, and you’d have no idea there was meant to be a split if you only watched this match.

Pagano accidently dropkicks Mesias during the match thanks to Cuervo, and then Cuervo shoves Pagano into Mesias again which knocks Mesias down. A backcracker and a top rope legdrop later, the tag titles have changes hands again. The técnicos chase Cuervo & Scoria to the back just to get them off screen for the post match.

Pagano looks at the crowd after the match, and everyone else hustles to the back to the back. Mesias, who had been done since Pagnao ran in to him, gets up, and punches Pagano as he turns around to finally break up with hit. Mesias works over Texano with a chair. (Bizarrely, there’s a couple of edits in here cutting to an angle with Chessman, Averno and Mary Apache from last year – it seems like a video editing error.) Mesias his Pagano with a padded chair to the head to cause him to bleed, and punches and stomps him a few times. It’s sold as a devastating thing though we’ve see worse with Pagano. Mesias attacks Pagnao again after he’s put on the stretcher, and he screams at the Juarez fans a lot. Mesias attacks for a third time as Pagano is being taken away.

Mamba and Pimpinela have a 10 second run in before the match where Pimpi looks nervous and Mamba says she’s going to end her repeatedly. Mamba wore a ring jacket with “Gracias Apache” on it before the match, and lost cleanly.

A local celebrity who’s name I don’t understand comes in to cut Mamba’s hair – though with regular scissors. They take Mamba to the entrance to get it shaved (guess they didn’t have a plug near the ring?) Mamba is shaved, not completely bald on TV, though messed up enough that it seems like they’d have to be shaved bald eventually to clean it up.

Thoughts: 

The finish of the Bronce/Hernandez match did work, because the crowd wasn’t expecting the upset. It just wasn’t much of a match around it, and it didn’t feel like it ended up doing much for Bronce. It made sense for Hernandez to take a lot of the match for the underdog story, but it was treated as a pointless fluke by Bronce getting laid out rather simply after the match. He got in a few highspots during the match, but Hernandez wasn’t the smoothiest guy for Bronce’s type of offense.

The four way tag match suffered for being a four way match. They were trying to be equitable to everyone, but it came off as guys taking turns during their moves and nothing really mattering except getting out of the way so the next person could take over. There was really no up or down to the match, and nothing that felt like a finish until it was suddenly over. It’s nice Bengala & Suicide picked up a pay day, but they were a distracting presence, they just added to the people who had to get their share and their breakup story being so completely ignored maybe it tougher to take the breakup they were doing here all that serious. Mesias’ attack to Pagano seemed so minor – I’ve got no doubt they’re going to do many times worse stuff than a padded chair shot to each other and still keep going at TripleMania – but they did get people to care about the beatdown at the end because Pagano sold it like he was half dead. It was a little overblown but it seemed like it worked?

The Pimpinela/Mamba match wasn’t much, and that was the intention. Some luchadors go crazy in apuesta matches and that might have been Mamba with a different opponent, but they concentrated on the things Pimpinela could do OK and avoided any embarrassment. They did find plenty of people excited about the finish; I wonder played better to the Juarez crowd, who had seen this feud for the last couple shows played out better than it had been pushed on TV and reacted strongly to the finish. (There was a spot with Pimpinela going after Tirantes, which doesn’t make sense based on his new neutral referee persona, but maybe worked if he’d been cheating her on spot shows.) It could just be they just still love Pimpi. This needed those memories of the past to make it watchable.