Day: November 27, 2018

Recapped: 11/21/2018

Matches

Argenis beat Mocho Cota Jr.
(5:38, Argenis top rope headscissors, ok, 00:13:07)

Hijo Del Vikingo beat Máscarita Sagrada
(6:05, shooting star press, ok, 00:25:06)

Drago beat Puma King
(9:44, reversed casita, good, 00:39:31)

Keyra beat Vanilla
(13:42, german suplex, good, 01:12:05)

Murder Clown beat Samoano
(6:32, top rope splash, good, 01:40:33)

What happened:

If you thought AAA could make it four whole weeks without a tournament going off the rails, AAA proved you wrong in this episode. It was not all their fault: the Mexico airport was full of delayed and canceled flights due to fog. Those fight issues caused Vampiro and Pagano to miss the show completely. It may have also affected Killer Kross & Scarlett’s participation, though that wasn’t as clear. Konnan replaced Vampiro on commentary and took a neutral position instead of the rudo/pro-MAD character. Arturo Rivera and Australian Suicide also posted on Facebook all night.

All the matches were changed around. Máscarita Sagrada, scheduled to face Kross, faced Hijo del Vikingo instead. Vikingo’s opponent Vanilla wrestled Keyra. Keyra’s opponent Drago faced Puma King. A bonus non-tournament match between Argenis and Mocho Cota Jr. was added to the start of the show.

Most confusingly, the main event turned out to be Murder Clown facing Samoano. Murder Clown was also on Facebook for a while (as if that was the thing he was scheduled for), while Samoano had done the usual arm wrestling challenge. It wasn’t clear if the match counted at the time, but three points were awarded to Murder Clown in the standings the next day. It’s possible this counts as a loss for Kross or Pagano.

After the match concluded, Killer Kross – in his gear, as if he had been ready to wrestle as scheduled – beat up both Murder Clown and Samoano. Kross then introduced Scarlett, with both saying they’d win the tournament. There were a lot of questions left unexplained (can Scarlett enter after four weeks? Does Kross get any points for this round? What happens if Kross & Scarlett meet in the tournament? Why weren’t MAD teammates Konnan & Kross friends?), with Kross mostly concerned with threatening the life of the hosts. To make it fully awkward, La Griega insisted on the usual end of show selfie with the winners, which meant Murder Clown was suddenly fine and posing with Kross.

The show was the longest so far. There was a long interview with Puma about his career before the main event as well. It felt like they may have been trying to get the show to run long in hopes that Kross would make it to the building, but Kross showing up for the run-in in full gear made it seem like he had been ready to go.

Thoughts:

This was a weird show. The changes to the matches generally made for a better show than had been originally announced. As long as you don’t spend any time trying to figure out what this means for this tournament or why Kross was there but did not wrestle, it was a solid show. I like Lucha Capital because it has good matches and no nonsense, and they were veering into the nonsense portion by the end of the show. We will have to see how it goes once the fog lifts next week.

Murder Clown versus Samoano was better than it had any right to be. Both guys seemed motivated by the opportunity. Murder Clown apparently can do more in singles matches than he’s shown the last couple of years and is very willing to throw himself into dives. They also both looked strong with their ability to throw around each other guy for big moves. It is a bit amazing that Murder Clown and Rey Mysterio have the same finishing sequence.

Vanilla and Keyra felt like it was less reheased than most matches on this show, with them both being a little bit not on the same page at times and also a little bit going hard at other times. It made the match a bit ragged but it made it compelling. Vanilla coming thru with a hard dropkick and then having a look at fear of what Keyra would inevitably do back toward her was an amazing thing. (Vanilla didn’t seem prepared for the kick to the back of the head later.) When they were working together, they worked together pretty well and exchanges like the big forearms near the end came off impressive. They got asked to go about twice as long as they might have been asked on a normal show and managed to make it thru without losing the crowd. Vanilla’s flying is still not great – the tornillo was shaky, the pin attempt after eve more so – but this was her best match in a while.

Drago & Puma was pretty good, with Puma showing some stuff we haven’t seen from him. Drago is still obviously not 100%, but he did enough to be interesting. He also survived the accidental superbomb near the end, which seemed scare everyone. The cradle reversal sequence at the end was well done, but I still wanted a little bit more out of the match.

Hijo del Vikingo tried to have a match around Máscarita Sagrada, taking a few of his moves and selling big. It worked only slightly better than with Keyra. Vikingo’s took a few big bumps and sold big but mostly just moved slow. Sagrada is not a great inclusion in this tournament and I hope he’ll move out.

Argenis and Mocho Cota was solid even if they didn’t amount to much. Argenis rarely makes TV now, so it was a bit of a surprise to see him win but also does not matter. He did a little flying, Cota was a good base, and it was fine.