Psycho Clown beat Texano Jr. (8:56, casita, ok, 00:24:49)
Tayabeat La Hiedra (5:45, double chickenwing slam, ok, 00:40:59)
Golden Magicbeat Niño Hamburguesa (7:20, 450 splash, ok, 01:03:28)
Australian Suicidebeat Laredo Kid (7:02, shooting star press, good, 01:19:43)
What happened:
high flying star Psycho Clown
Murder Clown & Taurus were advertised but did not appear. Golden Magic & Niño Hamburguesa, who both had been eliminated, were given a match where the winner would advance to the wild card round.
Lady Shani also appeared to take herself out of the tournament for no explained reason. Shani offered Taya a championship versus championship match should Taya win the Lucha Capital tournament.
Thoughts:
The main event was the best match on the show by a big margin, though it didn’t hit for me as much as it seemed for other people watching. It had lots of crazy action, with Australian Suicide pulling out a shooting star press variation we haven’t seen from him in action before. They started off crazy with both men diving out of the ring onto their feet before Laredo leveled Suicide with a tope, and then fought on the restaurant tables. Suicide made the bold choice of trying a shooting star press off the table onto Laredo on the floor and seemed to bang a foot on the edge of the table on the way down. He was limping around immediately after. There were moments that looked a little bit off at times the rest of the way, and that foot had to be bugging him. There were also just random bits of no-selling moves throughout. It wasn’t like they came one after each other or they were happening at a big moment, it was more like a dice roll hit 6 and so the move didn’t actually hurt. Both guys did it, so maybe it was just a thing I didn’t get. This was pretty exciting, as you’d think with these two guys involved, but they can do even better.
Golden Magic
Golden Magic & Niño Hamburguesa fit the same description as most of the undercard. There were a few fun highlight spots and watching the highlights were more fun than watching the match in entirety. The dives looked cool, Hamburguesa landing the multiple corner smashes for once (everyone usually moves on the second one) was interesting. Golden Magic came up quite short on his 450 splash at the end, and this match was short of his previous two matches. AAA didn’t really have many options on who to use as a replacement from the eliminated people but maybe putting Niño Hamburguesa in the tournament wasn’t the greatest thing for him.
Taya versus La Hiedra was just an average match. Taya was more obviously a tecnica this time. This match felt like both were being a ruda. They had some nice spots and the stuff in between wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really string together in any interesting way. It wasn’t bad but maybe Hiedra isn’t as yet as good as he looks in the tags and multiperson matches.
slide scissors
Psycho had a lot of energy but his match was nothing special. Texano tired quick. Maybe Psycho missing the catch on his dive didn’t help, but Texano wasn’t moving much when he was moving. That kind of limited what he was doing to taking Psycho Clown’s surprisingly high flying offense. The Psycho Clown/Murder Clown match was Psycho’s better match. I hope he gets some fun people to work within the final because I think Psycho has a great match in him with the right mix.
Bengala tried to make up for all the offense he’s not been able to get on TV in this one appearance. It was alright. Chessman breaking out the top rope tornillo on this show was wild. It didn’t hit, and the match didn’t quite hit either, but it did make a lot of noise for the five minutes it lasted.It was just a bunch of moves until Chessman landed a hard powerbomb and that was that. This was a borderline match for me, the second best on the show.
On this week’s TV, AAA aired a vignette with Johnny Mundo and Vampiro arguing over Vampiro taking the AAA Reina de Reinas championship from Taya. Among other things, you get to learn how AAA translates douchebag to Spanish.
The backstage segment appeared along side the matches AAA taped on June 30th in Puebla. There’s also a skit with Hijo del Fatnasma & Vampiro in that same room. I had assumed that, AAA had actually taped the vignettes later, to work off Twitter feuds and fill in storyline gaps, and then edited it back into the older taping. I assumed wrong.
A couple weeks ago, AAA aired twoskits of Johnny Mundo calling Kevin Kross (as part of a storyline where Kross is splitting from Johnny Mundo.) Let’s look at the room
via AAA
It’s the same walls and the same duct work. I know, you don’t want to hear about duct work on Monday mornings, but here we are. These skits and the one with Vampiro telling Johnny Mundo he was taking away the Reina de Reinas title from Vampiro look to like they were taped in the same place. The Kross/Mundo aired on the July 22nd episode of AAA TV, the Aguascalientes TV was taped on July 27th, so it’s impossible they were taped in Aguascalientes. The previous time Mundo was in Mexico before that was – the June 30th Puebla show, which this skit aired along side. They had to be taped on June 30th.
The story actually dates back to when Johnny Mundo was being brought to Mexico for a photo shoot with all three of his belts. They said they were doing shoots with all the belts and asked Mundo to bring Taya’s belt with him when he came in. Then when he was there, they said they needed to shoot more photos with the Reina de Reinas belt, so asked him to leave the belt there so they could do that. Then, when they had possession of the belt back, they announced that Taya had been stripped of the title because she used a choke when she won the title from Ayako Hamada (which was back on 4/21 in Tijuana in what has been called the company’s best match of the year) and that the title could only change hands via pin or submission.
That can not be true if AAA taped those both the Vampiro & Kross vignettes in Puebla. Puebla was taped on June 30th. AAA didn’t announce the title was vacant until July 1st. Mundo taped a skit talking about AAA keeping the Reina de Reinas a day before he claims he knew AAA was taking them away. It does not add up as the truth, so it has to be a storyline.
What I think was supposed to happen is Taya was going to drop the title in Nuevo Laredo to set up the Sexy Star title win, couldn’t because of the car accident, couldn’t make it to another show to do it, they came up with this storyline to handle it, and it blew up way more than they were expecting. But don’t take my word for it, I’ve been wrong on this one – LOUD wrong on this one – from the start. It didn’t make sense to me why they would do some of the stuff they’ve done if it was a storyline and it still doesn’t really, but it looks to me like it was one from the start.
if I’m right, the practical things we can take from this
Johnny Mundo’s on much better terms than AAA than we thought and isn’t a certainty to drop the titles at TripleMania by any means
the foreigner that’s been hinted at added to the Lady Shani/Sexy Star title match at TripleMania might be Taya after all. That’ll make for a really heated match.
everyone in LU doesn’t really hate Vampiro and Vampiro isn’t as bad at his job as it seemed; he actually took a bullet on this one to get it over.
don’t tape all your vignettes in the same room if they’re supposed to happen in different cities
Faby Apache (and presumably Mary Apache & El Apache) are the new AAA Trios Champions. Faby won the titles for her team all by herself, defeating Ricky Marvin in an impromptu one on one match. Announcer Jesus Zuniga, as part of many moments on the show where he spoke for Vamprio, explained the scheduled Apaches vs OGT match was off because Apache was away with “personal issues” and Mary had been hurt in an accident. (One very short clip of Mary in ambulance was shown twice; it appeared to be something filmed from a previous angle being reused.) Averno – not Vampiro – proposed Faby put up her and her families’ career for a shot at ‘their dream’, the AAA trios championship. Faby accepted without hesitation, and won when Chessman accidentally hit Marvin with a chair. OGT seemed slightly upset with each other after the match, but not to the point of breaking up (at least yet.)
Super Fly defeated Bengala in another match announced by Announcer Jesus Zuniga as being a decision of Vampiro when Aerostar was ruled unable to compete. Super Fly earlier said he’d been looking all around for Vampiro to ask him about this match and could not find him anywhere. Everyone was certain Aerostar would still compete at Rey de Reyes, though Super Fly believed Aerostar wasn’t as much hurt as scared of him.
(AAA hyped both of these matches as if they would happen as scheduled during the show, a break from times where they’d give away the changes in the lineup screen.)
Texano Jr. visited the AAA offices in his own search to find Vampiro. He did not find him, but found a closet marked as Vampiro’s office. Inside was a note and a candle. The note explained Texano would have to defend his heavyweight title against Psycho Clown & Dr. Wagner. Texano was displeased to read that, and more so when the light mysteriously blew out.
More La Llave de la Gloria footage was shown, with Villano coaching and in-ring highlights shown. Some of the eventual ‘winners’ in this round (Papillon, Douki, Hanaoka) got interview time, though the winners haven’t been announced on the show yet.
The Lucha Retro segment was on the first Relevos Mixicos de Locura match, as an innovative match part of AAA’s 25 year history
Carta Brava Jr., who talks to the son of the original who accompanied his fathers to all his matches. Calls out Argenis.
The técnicos won an atomicos opener.
Thoughts
moonsault looked better than the landing
Vampiro! Vampiro! VAMPIRO! Not five seconds afrer the opening mentioned, the announcers screaming about an announcement Vampiro made. Super Fly’s promo was tangentially about Aerostar ducking him, but pointedly about Super Fly not being able to find Vampiro. Bengala doing well in the match was about Vampiro putting him into that position. Vampiro was put over in the NotiAAA. Vampiro was specifically the one for knowing the Apaches weren’t there. Texano had to find Vampiro’s office and it was another Vampiro mystery, with Vampiro’s non appearance the real biggest story of the show. Vampiro!!!
This was way too much Vampiro. It would be way too much anyone. They sure seemed to set up Vampiro as the biggest and most important person on the show, which might even work in the short-term but doesn’t address any of their long term issues. There hasn’t been any show domination like this on AAA TV since Konnan and the Roldans were at their most visible, and even then it seemed to be split among them. This was all a lot of attention one one guy, including in some parts (like announcing the people who were missing the show) were it didn’t seem to be needed.
Vampiro not actually being on-screen, but being refereed to as some all-powerful Oz, doesn’t make it better. And Vampiro as a mysterious shadowy guy doesn’t work when we’re seeing him as just a normal wrestling dude in the La Llave de la Gloria segments. I’m guessing they purposefully lead the show off with that segment to get it as far away from the spooky message at the end, but those two concepts can’t really work on the same show together.
Maybe this was one just one weird taping and it’ll get better on a more normal show (or after they actually watch this show.) There are more changes on there than Vampiro. Both the Super Fly/Aerostar and Apaches/OGT feud got video packages to make it clear how things got to this point, and Super Fly got an actual in ring promo before a match. I’m sure this isn’t right, but it feels like Super Fy hasn’t done a promo since season 1 of Lucha Underground (and he seems much more confident in his role here than there.) The Apaches/OGT video package even made a note of Secta’s win last week, so it doesn’t just feel like a random outcome that was never mentioned again.
The Hijo del Tirantes deal deserves it’s own space. It’s clear this week that not only has he been told not to do rudo referee spots, everyone’s been told to treat him like he’d never done one. The announcers stay away from the obvious Faby/Tirantes issues and even Faby’s in the same spot. There was a moment in the Marvin/Apache match where the crowd that Faby got a three count. It was two, a fair two, the crowd was just a bit anxious to see her win, but any count where the fans disagree with Tirantes is usually a moment for Faby to get in Tirantes face for a reaction. She just moved right along this week. I’m really fine with no more rudo referee spots, it’s what I’ve wanted all along, but I still feel cheated there’s this years long story about Tirantes cheating Faby and the payoff is everyone agrees to never talk about it again. I’m cautious at asking for even more Vampiro, but there needs to be some in front of the camera bit where Tirantes is told to knock it off to mirror whatever’s clearly happened behind the scenes. Right now, we’re mostly expected to forget something that’s been a focus of the promotion for years.
Bengala sliding headscissors
The Super Fly/Bengala was the most effective match of the show, with Bengala looking good in a rare singles chance for him and Super Fly getting the clean win he needed. It lacked a bit in drama; Super Fly won on the first big move he tried, and Bengala never felt that close to winning. (A problem here is even I can’t remember what Bengala’s using as a finisher, it doesn’t come up much.) Super Fly seems much more comfortable as a rudo now than he even did a few years ago, and there’s reason to have hope for the mask match.
Faby/Marvin had drama, but the stakes didn’t mean anything. I don’t believe the fans really thought for a second Faby was at risk of losing her career, because she didn’t spend a second thinking about it herself. OGT freaked out about losing their trios titles for minutes, selling the idea it meant a lot to them. The crowd got into the idea of Faby defeating a man in a singles match, but the idea of winning titles for her not present family members didn’t mean anything. Remember, this match was never supposed to be a title match – it was a lumberjack match of all things – so everything about the stipulations for this match was strange in the recap and just as strange on TV. The one difference on TV is it came across like they were opening the door for the OGTs to be done soon. That’d be quick, it’d make sense to take the titles of them while they could, but I’m not sure. The match itself was alright and helped by the energy, with the short time making it feel like a midstoryline Lucha Underground match than anything AAA usually provides.
Super Fly/Bengala also felt different from what normally airs on TV, which was a nice change from the opening atomicos. That followed the same formula as usual, including the super rushed heel beatdown segment in the middle of the match. Everyone seemed motivated to work really hard, but that didn’t mean it looked all that good. Elegido was the leader in doing a lot without doing much well, but Argenis ending moonsault looked particularly poor. Big Mami seemed to get a lot more attention than Dinastia, a worrying development. Mami even got to do her comedy back bridge spot while didn’t get to do his cool one.
AAA announced their international trios tournament, now officially known as Lucha Libre World Cup, will take place on Sunday, May 24th at the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City. Tickets are on sale immediately and run between $185 to $2152 Mexican Pesos ($12 to $139 US).
The press release named the promotions participating. The Ticketmaster site also lists some names of wrestlers appearing. This is what’s known so far:
Mexico 1 (“Dream Team”): Alberto el Patron, Rey Misterio Jr., Myzteziz
Mexico 2 (drawn from AAA’s roster): winner of Fenix/Electroshock/Fantasma, winner of La Parka/Texano Jr./Cibernetico, winner of Psycho Clown/Zorro/Averno
Mexico 3 (“outsiders”): Blue Demon Jr., Dr. Wagner Jr., TBA
US 1: a team representing Ring of Honor
US 2: a team representing TNA, including Matt Hardy
Japan 1: a team representing Pro Wrestling NOAH, including Taiji Ishimori
Japan 2: a team representing All Japan Pro Wrestling
Rest of the World: TBA
The Ticketmaster info lists Johnny Mundo as participating, so perhaps he’s on the Rest of the World. The press conference announcing this competition highlights Jack Evans (and Fantasma) as a possible participant, but there’s no obvious spot for him unless one of the US groups is not sending a full trio. I’m surprised there’s no specific Lucha Underground team.
As far as guys not mentioned, Super Crazy seems like he might fit in here – either as an other outside Mexican, or as a NOAH rep. This date is right in the middle of a NOAH tour, but would require missing only one show. It’s a few days after an AJPW tour. It’s the off weekend after the NJPW shows and before another set of events for ROH and doesn’t conflict with TNA’s schedule, so both should have many people available.
There’s always the chance that Victoria will try to force El Hijo del Santo and AAA to work together. I’d bet someone’s brought it up. It’d be hilarious for about five seconds and then just bad.
Assuming TNA runs more shows (seems likely, one never knows), this also might mean AAA wrestlers could show up there in the future. Dave Meltzer had mentioned GFW and TNA were both negotiating with AAA as part of this deal, with GFW wanting to use some of TNA’s wrestlers for their summer tour. That would seem unlikely now.
(If you’re catching this late: AAA and sponsor Victoria asked CMLL and CMLL turned it down. Out of loyalty to CMLL – and to the money NJPW makes on the FantasticaMania tour – NJPW also turned down participating.)
Palacio de los Deportes could seat up to 20,000, but it’s likely to be cut down a bit if they set up a stage. It’ll still be a big number to fill, and a trios tournament featuring international stars the fans may not be familiar with. They’re going to look for familiar to Mexico names to fill this out. Victoria beer will be helping out as well.
There’s a ripple effect on TripleMania: if they get the fans to turn out for this show, will the DF fans want to spend to come back again in three months for TripleMania, especially with AAA obviously lacking a huge TripleMania match now. Or does AAA shoot some big angle on this show specifically to set up that big match and return? I expect TripleMania to be in Mexico City every year until it’s not, but there’s at least a reason why it might not be this year. (Whatever they’re doing, this May 24th show is a hard deadline to decide it so they can announce it.)
There’s still a lot to announce here: the people on the teams, the actual format – presumably single elimination but one shouldn’t assume – and if there’s any other matches on this show. It’s only a month away now, so more info will be coming soon enough.
Maybe? Kind of? Only if you have obscure latino package channel AYM Sports.
AYM Sports’ programming guide lists “Lucha Libre AAA” as airing this Thursday night at 7pm. It airs again on Saturday at 9pm, another 2 hour show. AYM’s listings can be incorrect – Sobre el Ring is on when listed about half the time – and so there’s a chance this is some mistake and no show will air at that time. However, these same listings have cleaned up IWRG’s schedule (now listed with an 3 hour timeslot, with a rerun scheduled on Wednesday. If they’re fixing the schedule for Sundays, they’re probably fixing the schedule everywhere. Still, I’m questioning enough about that I needed to take a screen shot for proof.
A two hour AAA show is likely the show we’ve been calling AAA “Regional”. I’m not sure what AAA calls it, but we have given that name because it’s only aired on regional affiliates of Televisa (and not on their main feed.) If that’s what it is, this Thursday should be last weekend’s recent regional show, with matches from Ecatepec. Going forward, it could conceivably be the same show that airs in Mexico that weekend.
(It’s also possible it’s a wildly mislabeled indy show, or the new FUSION show – though TVC Deportes letting another sports channel airing their show is the most unlikely outcome.)
AAA has said nothing about a show a new AYM Sports (which airs in both Mexico and US.) AYM Sports has no active web presence, though they’ve left littered the internet with corpses of websites and socialmediaaccounts. AYM Sports is so small time, they don’t have a wikipedia page. At the same time, AYM is often bundled with two dozen other channels on latino channel packages. Few know the channel exist, but a lot have access to it or could good access to it.
In the US, AYM Sports appears to have no actual advertisers – the breaks are just old PSAs from the Church of the Later Day Saints and promos for other shows on the network (which just recently have started revealing when the shows are on!) I have no idea how this network makes money or exists in the first place, which makes it unlikely they’ve paid AAA to be on their AAA. (IWRG has said to be paid by their main sponsor for getting their logo on TV, perhaps that’s how AAA is making money here.) In Mexico, AYM has a slight relationship with Televisa’s biggest rival – TV Azteca – as they piggy back on their digital channels for over the air transmission.
Not The Only New Show This Weekend. Albert noted this in the comments, and Dr. Lucha had brought it up last week: if you get the new Time Warner (TW) Deportes channel, there’s a Lucha Libre on the schedule. It’s on tomorrow afternoon, 1pm, for two hours, and no one has any idea what is actually airing. Not a clue! Two hours makes me think it’s either the CMLL C3 show or the new Puebla show that’s been airing on Estrella TV, but your guess is as good as mine.
As noted in the lineup post for today’s taping, AAA’s recent behavior indicates they’re having some finical difficulties. They’ve cut back on bringing in outsiders (1), they’ve cut back what they’re paying those outsiders, they’ve been unable to sign Wagner or Park to long term deals, they’ve moved from the expensive Arena Monterrey to the not expensive Orizaba bullring. There is a reason behind this.
On this Tuesday’s Figure Four Daily, Steve Sims explained AAA had issues one or two TV tapings in February. Dr. Lucha explained it’s common for AAA (and others) to have to pay a sort of protection fee to the local drug cartel and/or mafia to prevent problems from occurring on the show. On one of those tapings, there wasn’t much protection – AAA was robbed of the entire gate. No specific taping was revealed, but you can look at the listing of tapings from February and probably make a strong guess.
AAA normally pays it’s wrestlers straight out of the gate they receive (2), so they’ve been cash poor since this incident. Much of the belt tightening has come as a result; while they’ve got money from the movie and other things, they apparently did not have deep enough reserves to easily take this hit and things had to change. (3)
The cutbacks are part of the reason for the double tapings in March and April this year. The other reason was to reconfigure the taping schedule. AAA has decided to run all tapings within two hours of Mexico City, feeling there’s not near the same mafia/drug cartel control that close to DF. Arena Naucalpan, which is much smaller than the usual tapings locations, becomes an option when they’re looking in the small area. Arena Monterrey, far away from Mexico City and in an area surrounded by drug violence, is not. Dr. Lucha didn’t speculate on this situation changing any time soon. My guess is, if they were cutting a pay a month after TripleMania, they’re still struggling and may have not started to recover.
This may have far reaching affects; Perro Jr. showing up in no condition to perform is one problem, and being a costly guy at time where they can’t afford a costly guy is an extra problem. With most of the members of the Perros either in AAA or CMLL full time, going on his own seems less viable by the day. At the same time, AAA may be offering Wagner and Park more benefits and freedoms (like working their own schedules) in place of stronger money offers. Homegrown talent becomes even cheaper relative, because they’re driving two hours max and not being flown anywhere.
(1) – though, oddly enough, Jack Evans is listed as working a spot show tonight. And the WON said Hernandez got the last TV taping off to visit his family.
(2) – which better explains the periodic “AAA may fold” rumors we heard about every eight months when Pena was running the promotion; just a down gate or two could start a bad set of dominos.
(3) – cut backs, yes, but easy ways to make more money – like an online store – not so much. In a world where I still get people asking me where they can buy a Perro del Mal shirt, where every small promotion in the US and Japan is at least able to put together some merchandise with their logo on it, and where everyone involved could very much use the money, it’s appalling how far behind the curve the Mexican promotions are in this.
