AAA on Televisa: 2017-07-15 

Recapped: 07/16/2017

All matches were taped at Poliforum, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas on 06/19/2017 

Matches: 

Texano Jr. beat Marty Martinez
(7:59, sit down powerbomb, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA)

Big Mami & Niño Hamburguesa beat Lady Shani & Venum for the AAA World Mixed Tag Team Championship
(7:52, Mami inside cradle Shani, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA)

Dark Cuervo & Dark Scoria ©  beat Hernandez & Máscara de Bronce for the AAA World Tag Team Championship
(6:38, Cuervo powerbomb Mascara de Bronce, ok, via Lucha Libre AAA)

Carta Brava Jr., Mocho Cota Jr., Tito Santana © beat Aerostar, Drago, Raptor for the AAA World Trios Championship in an outcome later overturned (7:10, Tito Santana frog splash Raptor, good, via Lucha Libre AAA)

What happened:

In a vignette, Mocho Cota tries to raise Carta & Soul’s spirits after losing their masks. We’re shown that backstage, and then shown a camera with Jesus Zuniga coming into interview them. It’s like two different styles of interviews happening at once. OGT pop up from nowhere to reiterate their challenge for the title match. Soul Rocker is called “Tito” here and Tito Santana on the graphic – Arturo eventually explains it for those who don’t know. it stills says Soul Rocker on Tito’s Poder del Norte shirt. Poder del Norte is mostly the Milicia now, borrowing that look (which was also Mocho Cota Sr’s look for a time) as a trio. Raptor has the 3 briefcase to cash in for this title match.

Raptor gets a visual pin on Carta Brava, but Piero is looking outside for reasons not clear. Mocho Cota lips in a foul soon after and pins Raptor, and Tito adds a frog splash for the win. Poder del Norte’s music play for about 5 seconds before Vampiro’s music interrupts. He walks to the ring, and Poder del Norte walk around him to pose on the stage. Vampiro says it was an exciting match but that isn’t the way to win a title match in AAA. Vampiro announces he’s throwing out this match, and Poder del Norte vs the técnicos in a best of five series where the winning team keeps the trios titles. The tencicos do a triple dive on the rudos, which is half missed by the camera.

The new Panini Album is released July 19^th and is pushed hard as a result. Noti AAA focuses on the plane unveiling.

Mascara de Bronce looks for Vampiro before his match, and finds him with Hernandez. Neither are happy to see either, and Vamp points out Mascara de Bronce doesn’t have his briefcase. Vampiro explains they’re partners for a tag team title match tonight. He doesn’t explain why, because there is no explanation. Hernandez refuses a tag in the first minute of the match. Cuervo and Scoria repeatedly knock Hernandez off the apron anyway, which appears to anger him to enough to want to get into the match. He still can’t for a while, but does come in with a double clotheslines on the rudos when they mess up, works with Bronce for a minute or two, then pulls Bronce off a pin. Hernandez talks Bronce into continuing, and of course they mess up their next spot (in storyline and in real life.) Bronce gets pinned, then Kevin Kross comes out and throws him around for a bit. Hernandez gets Mascara’s briefcase from somewhere – and now it’s the #4 one, and Bronce definitely didn’t bring it to the match – gives it to Kevin Kross for some reason. I have no idea.

La Hiedra tries flirting with Venum to be his partner for the mixed tag title match, but he says he’s already got a partner. Lady Shani shows up just in time to pull Venum out of that mess and to their match. Announcers are still billing Lady Shani as a ruda, though she’s been on the tecnica side for months. (I haven’t fixed it either, guess I should.) Venum has a “1” briefcase, which isn’t the right number and appears to be an actual briefcase as opposed to the one they had earlier. Shani has the match probably won with a backcracker on Big Mami, but lets go of the pin and stands up because La Hiedra’s music is playing. (This is so dumb.) Hiedra is still nowhere near the ring when Shani, motionless, gets inside cradled by Big Mami.

The Marty/Texano match didn’t air on the TV show but is included on the YouTube channel. Something the announcers say is very obviously removed around at the 5:10 mark.

Thoughts: 

The main event was a little sloppy at time – a problem with all the matches this week – but had some exciting moments and these two teams have potential for a good series of matches if they get better as they go along. The Poder del Norte work much better against these técnicos in action matches than they were getting out of the main event feud and they’re obviously motivated by their recent focus. Raptor is not yet at the level of his partners but these matches will help him get there. This could’ve gone a bit longer, but it’s one of probably six, so it’s fair that they’re going to save things for other matches. It would’ve been less dramatic but less forced if Vampiro had earlier decried there would no more fouls in title matches as part of making the matches more serious rather than coming off as inconsistent by bringing it up here only after the main event was over. The general idea – AAA is going to take title matches seriously now so title should be taken seriously – makes sense as a big concept, but it’s tough to believe in when both the other title matches had silly/dumb finishes and weren’t about deciding who was the best team. Saying you want title matches to be serious on the same show where two people who’ve never teamed and are feuding getting a title match is incongruous. AAA’s track record is they’re going to ignore this push when it suits them too, so there’s no reason to buy in caring until they prove otherwise, and they didn’t prove anything on this show

The tag match was whatever.. They did try to have it make internal sense, but it was still a match which made little sense to exist and accomplished little. It doesn’t even benefit Scoria & Cuervo to get an easy win because no one took the match seriously and they were bit players in it. It’s not doing all that much for Mascara de Bronce (or Hernandez, who was so dumb that he didn’t want to win the tag titles.) It didn’t do much for storyline Vampiro commission, booking a match that didn’t make any sense. There were a couple good spots, but there was also some awkwardness and nothing worth checking out outside of the context.

What we learned about in the mixed tag title championship is that title is less important than a Shani/Hiedra feud, about the twelfth most important feud in the promotion right now. Yet, that feud isn’t important enough to actually give them the mixed tag titles to fight over (so maybe they really are going to fight for the Reina de Reinas championship.) Instead, Hamburguesa and Mami win the belts in a match where they seem much less over than usual and do not look especially good in the ring. Shani & Venum do some cool things, enough to just pull this up to OK for me, but there are some groaners of bad spots, no particular flow or story to the match since they’re both sort of tecnica teams and a terrible cliched finish. That OK is a generous grade.

There may be other weirder reasons why Texano/Marty was cut out of TV, but it comes across as easy to skip anyway. It’s not bad, but it’s a cold match – the crowd doesn’t really know Marty, there’s not much to get him over, and they don’t care about this fight all that much. The biggest reactions are to the normal lasso spots, which leads into the finish. I’m not sure what Texano is supposed to be at this point: he’s the slight técnico here and hasn’t been presented as rudo much since the turn. It’s also a little bit sloppy at times, not enough to tank it but it never gets a high level.