AAA on Televisa: 2016-02-06 

Recapped: 02/06/2016
This is Guerra de Titanes part 2, taped 2016-01-22 in Mexico City.

What happened: Cuervo, Scoria and Zorro are the new AAA trios champions. Suicide got another win over Daga. Rey de Reyes was announced for March 11^th in Tampico.

What was good: I really liked the Jack/Fenix/Suicide vs Daga/Fly/Parka trios. I could take or leave the rest.

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

Last week: Mesias & Texano won a shot at the heavyweight title. Chessman & Averno won the tag titles, but also got challenged by Joe Lider & Pentagon and were excommunicated from La Sociedad.

Vignettes air during the show to announce Rey de Reyes on March 11^th in Tampico.

Match 1: Dinastía, Niño Hamburguesa, Pimpinela Escarlata vs El Apache, Mamba, Mini Charly Manson
Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal, 01/22/2016
Video: RUDO VISION, Lucha Libre AAA

Winner: tecnicos (Nino Hamburguesa splash Apache)
Match Time: 12:43
Review: [ok] this was heavy on the Pimpienla & Nino comedy and not enough Dinastia for my tastes. The beatdown was mostly throwing and slapping Pimpinela around, and the comeback was the same Pimpinela comeback as in every match. (I wonder what a Dinastia led comeback in one of these matches would look like.) However, Pimpinela looked more spry than usual and Nino’s offense was a bit more believable. He even got the headscissors to work! Crowd was into it and it worked for the audience they were working for, but it didn’t seem like something worth seeing out. Dinastia’s beard makes him look Not 12 Years Old. That’s disorienting.

Match 2: Australian Suicide, Fireball, Jack Evans vs Daga, Parka Negra, Súper Fly
Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal, 01/22/2016
Video: RUDO VISION, Lucha Libre AAA

Winner: tecnicos (Suicide top rope Spanish Fly Daga)
Match Time: 15:52
Review: [great] This match lived up to the hype with the names involved. It’s not the crazy move exhibition these matches have been at times, they seem to consciously start a little bit slower because they have more time to work with, but it’s pretty crazy by the end. Fireball’s spectacular tornillo is going to be the highlight of this match, and something AAA should be showing regularly for a long time, but it had plenty of other exciting moments and continued the build to Suicide & Daga’s big match with the idea that Suicide keeps finding a way to win. Even before the big dive, Fireball had the announcers (and occasionally Jack) impressed over his performance. Zuniga seemed totally flummoxed by his valagueza front cracker move. That kicked off a sequence of big moves and pin breaks up. It’s something they (and other people) overdue a bit, but it worked better than usual here because the moves felt pretty big. The chaos coming off of that, with Jack reaching towards a corner to find no one and Fireball doing an apron SSP on to his feet (!) only to be taken out by a double superkick, really took the match up. Super Fly & Parka Negra didn’t have a lot to do here, but Parka Negra starting his strut, stopping to soak in the boos, and then restarting it again anyway was great. Daga & Suicide did a good job of keeping the crowd into it after Flamita’s awesome tornillo, something pretty tough to flow. They, and maybe mostly Daga, needed to play a little bit more to the crowd in those last few minutes. They were really focused on making sure the final spot went right , and it did look great, but one moment of Daga staring at the crowd and letting them know what he was about to do to this scrawny foreigner would’ve added a bit more drama to the moment. AAA broke away from the match too much; they really needed to take a breathe, replay Flamita’s dive a couple more times, replay Suicide’s finish and show Daga getting help. They invested a lot of time, yet they still needed to spend about sixty more seconds selling the magnitude of it. It was also really hard to follow the action when they left the ringside area. That’s going to normally been the case, but it’d seem like something they should’ve been a bit more ready for if they knew Fireball was going to jump off the upper level.

A replay of last week’s main event tag match was shown on the UTDN version.

Match 3: Electroshock, Garza Jr., La Parka vs Dark Cuervo, Dark Scoria, Zorro and Hijo de Pirata Morgan, Hijo del Fantasma, Taurus for the AAA World Trios Championship
Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal, 01/22/2016
Video: RUDO VISION, Lucha Libre AAA

• La Parka tapatia Hijo del Pirata Morgan (9:57)
• Zorro el puplo Electroshock (14:50)

Winner: Zorro, Cuervo and Scoria
Match Time: 14:50
Notes: Cuervo & Scoria have new iron masks to match the one Zorro was wearing in the angle that never had a payoff, along with their denim vests. He’s back to wearing it too for the entrance. Fantasma Sr. comes to the ring to pretend the championship, but the three teams are already fighting. Fantasma doesn’t seem thrilled. Hijo del Tirantes makes the Zorro trio clear some room so Fantasma can stand in the ring with a belt, and then he leaves. This appears to be a no DQ match, with a chair and Zorro’s cane used often. Garza Jr. was taken out rather early, and the doctor rapped his left arm into his body, essentially leading him one harmed (but good enough to go on??) Rudos beat up the tecnico team and don’t fight each other. Then, the tencicos make their comeback, and the rudos just decided to start fighting. At about five minutes in, people started to actually head to a corner and it progress as an elimination match from there.

Review: [ok] A strange match and a bit of a mess at times. It’s obvious from the moment they walk out Scoria, Zorro & Cuervo are winning this match. The other trios didn’t try to dress or act in any way where to make themselves look like a team, and Zorro’s crew has a whole new special team look. The match itself felt like chaos for the first half, a disorganized brawl where the concept (two rudo teams and one tecnico team) was immediately shown to be dumb. It was also a bad setup because Garza must’ve had a shoulder injury they were trying to work around and couldn’t do much, but his team had to last to the end to avoid the rudo/rudo matchup. They should’ve replaced him, but maybe they didn’t have any one left to be a replacement. Fantasma insisting on doing a belt presentation in the ring was weird too.

They kind of did a little bit with the Pirata/Electroshock feud, but it was minor enough that it took me a while to realize it was meant to be a thing. Electroshock clearly was supposed to get the pin over Pirata with a cutter, only Hijo del Tirantes pulled a full Terror Chino and didn’t count the three. (Hijo del Pirata didn’t budge a bit on the count, and was submitting to the tapatia right after even before he got all the way up.) Not getting the right finish hurt the impact of the moment, but also hurting the impact of the moment was the three other cutters Electroshock had done moments before.

This was a match of those kind of random moments, feeling like the match was constructed first to make sure people got in their runs of offense (Parka, Electroshock) with not a lot connecting it. There was a good stretch with Taurus & Fantasma running the ring, which was effective but confusing in context – where did Pirata go? Fantasma generally looked the best guy in the match, and his very brief battle with Zorro was much better than I thought it would’ve been. Zorro seems reenergized by the new push in general. A rudo/rudo title match wouldn’t have gotten any better over, but it probably would’ve been a lot more focused than this one.