Lucha Libre Thread - AAA, CMLL, & the rest of the masked lads

[Snitsky's back acne]

Enjoyable and easy watch.

'Iguana-canrana' is now my favourite name for a wrestling move. Never heard of Mr Iguana before but he got over great with the crowd.

Enjoyed the main event too. Not seen much of EHD Vikingo before but he seems like a decent choice for the figurehead of your new purchase. 

As a taster of AAA I thought it was good and I look forward to seeing more. 

[Ro_y Disco]

I was surprised to see Chuey Martinez as part of the presenting team. Last I saw of him he was a deathmatch wrestler in IWA-DS and XPW. Although he does have that charismatic MAGA-y vibe that I'm sure WWE loves.

[BomberPat]

18 minutes ago, Ro_y Disco said:

I was surprised to see Chuey Martinez as part of the presenting team. Last I saw of him he was a deathmatch wrestler in IWA-DS and XPW. Although he does have that charismatic MAGA-y vibe that I'm sure WWE loves.

if Cagematch is anything to go by, he literally wrestles as MAGA Chuey now.

[Snitsky's back acne]

Seen a few people online slagging off Konnan's commentary as 'the worst commentary ever' and, bless these youngsters, but I had to refer them to King of the Ring 1994 and Art 'How much does this guy weigh?' Donovan as the gold standard.

[BomberPat]

Konnan was bad, but I have no idea why they went with a Konnan/Graves two man booth in the first place - Graves isn't well-suited to play-by-play, and Konnan spent most of his time trying to tell long stories. If it had been a decent announcer doing play-by-play, Corey doing colour, and Konnan in the WCW Mike Tenay role of filling in the gaps in people's knowledge, it might have worked better. It still wouldn't have been good, but even as it is, it's far from the worst I've heard, either on a WWE or a AAA show!

I thought the show was, for the most part, pretty good. The quality of the in-ring stuff was, at its peak, excellent, but we're in a time where we're getting excellent wrestling matches on free TV on a weekly basis, so I don't know if this show would have had the sort of impact to someone unfamiliar with AAA that the original When Worlds Collide did, or seeing Rey Misterio Jr for the first time in WCW would have done.

Part of the problem with it is that it never felt like anything but a WWE show. They did a much better job than I thought they would of talking up AAA as a promotion that mattered, if not quite an equal partner with WWE, though it is WWE so there was plenty of either revisionist history, lies by exclusion, or simple mistakes throughout their video packages and talking through the history. One thing that really stood out was that they were using the term "Lucha Libre" almost synonymously with AAA, especially in the opening package, you'd have been forgiven for thinking that WWE had purchased the concept of Lucha Libre. Can't imagine why they'd be doing that a couple of weeks before AEW run Arena Mexico.

The main thing, though, was that it just never felt like an interpromotional show. It felt like a WWE show with luchadores on it. Every match was structured like a WWE match, produced like a WWE match, it was WWE psychology all the way through, so you got no sense that this was two distinct approaches to professional wrestling coming together. I had to laugh when Corey Graves, several times over the course of the show, talked about how the action was so breathlessly fast-paced and blink and you'll miss it, when the babyfaces' comeback sequences felt almost painfully slow compared to seeing it in AAA, or even seeing similar stuff in AEW. There wasn't as much as I expected, but there was still a little bit of "welcome to the big leagues, kid!" from commentary - Corey Graves talked about what a great opportunity it was for Psycho Clown to be on this show, as if he was some scrub getting the eyes of the world on him for the first time; he was in the most watched North American wrestling match this century! WWE should be thanking him for the opportunity!

Speaking of Psycho Clown, everyone's music was fucking terrible. Apparently nobody told Def Rebel that Psycho Clown was a) a psycho, or b) a clown.

 

As for the matches - the opening trios match was great. I have been a big fan of Mr Iguana for years, and have said for a while that he's someone who would get hugely over if he got a big US breakout booking like a Wrestlemania weekend GCW show, but that most US promotions weren't touching him because he didn't fit the box marked "luchadore" as American promotions understand it. For the same reasons, I thought WWE wouldn't be remotely interested in him, so seeing him become the absolute star of the weekend has been fantastic. I don't know how WWE are with comedy these days - I don't see much of it on any of the shows I've seen - so I don't know if I can still expect them to run his goodwill into the ground, but fingers crossed they work well with him.

The women's tag was abysmal. I can think of few combinations of wrestling background that would be a worse fit than a Performance Center-trained woman and a AAA luchadora, especially when you add Dalys to the mix, who is absolute dogshit. It was nice to see Negro Casas get a shout-out during this match, especially as earlier in the show they had panned right past him at ringside to get a shot of some rapper I had never heard of, right after a video package on the importance of Lucha Libre history. I would rather have seen Casas actually wrestling, but I doubt WWE will ever book him.

The four-way was fine. It was very much a WWE match and not a AAA match, particularly with Laredo Kid and Rey Fenix both having a ton of US TV experience outside of AAA anyway. The breakout for me was Je'Von Evans, though. It was my first time seeing him, but I know he was high up in Deadlock Pro, which is a seal of quality as I'm far as I'm concerned. Some of his stuff was a little hokey, in the way NXT often is, but he did several spots I've literally never seen before, and I always appreciate that.

The second trios match was another downer for me. You would never know that Psycho Clown is the biggest babyface star in AAA, and has been for years, from how he was presented on this show. I don't think he should ever be teaming with Hijo del Dr Wagner Jr, given the history between their two families, and how Wagner basically only signed with AAA because of the prospect of a big money mask match with Psycho anyway. It felt very WWE to just go, "these guys are all friends!" for expediency's sake. Pagano is a vibes wrestler - he basically coasts on aura between weapon spots and big bumps rather than actual wrestling ability, reminiscent of Vampiro, and that's a really bad fit for how tightly produced WWE is; reminded me of The Sandman wrestling for WWE. Lince Dorado being in this match was just weird. I hadn't realised he's been doing some house shows and EVOLVE, and thought he hadn't worked for WWE in years, so it's not quite as out of nowhere as I thought, but did seem odd that he was the only person they could find to fit in here. I think this match suffered for being the second trios match on the show, and not living up to the quality of the first one - maybe just a tag, even a two out of three falls tag in tribute to the original When Worlds Collide, might have been a better fit here, especially as they announced during the match that Los Garzas and Psycho Clown & Pagano will be involved in a AAA Tag Title match at Triplemania Regia.

The main event was fantastic. It's difficult to tell how much Vikingo has slowed down since his last injury compared to how much he's slowed down because he's in WWE, so he didn't have the real kinetic energy that he used to, but was still pulling off stuff that, even on a show full of dives and high-flying, stood out as uniquely insane - the inside-out Phoenix Splash from the second rope is bonkers. Chad Gable was a good opponent for him, though in terms of how AAA is presented in WWE's world, it's not a great look that the guy they're presenting as a World Title contender is a guy who's never really been more than a comedy undercard wrestler, who has never held a singles title. I assume we get Vikingo vs. El Grande Americano later down the line, possibly at Triplemania.

 

So, yeah, an interesting show that was good but could have been excellent with a few tweaks. It was interesting watching an ostensibly AAA show that was made worse by uniquely WWE flaws rather than by uniquely AAA flaws; AAA is too chaotic, but sometimes produces magic when stars align and all that chaos works out in their favour, while WWE is too over-produced but sometimes that over-production means things come out feeling big time and dramatic. In terms of my tastes in wrestling, I prefer the former, and would have liked a bit more of it here, to genuinely feel like something different for WWE.

[Arch Stanton]

20 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

There wasn't as much as I expected, but there was still a little bit of "welcome to the big leagues, kid!" from commentary - Corey Graves talked about what a great opportunity it was for Psycho Clown to be on this show, as if he was some scrub getting the eyes of the world on him for the first time; he was in the most watched North American wrestling match this century! WWE should be thanking him for the opportunity!

To be fair, Konnan was far worse for this than WWE's Corey Graves was. Konnan repeatedly made comments about how the AAA guys were all 'happy to be there', were all grateful for the opportunity and were keen to impress WWE, with the hope of securing full time contracts for themselves. It definitely gave off vibes of AAA being a bit of a tinpot promotion in comparison.

I can totally understand that kind of thing from Konnan though, he was very deferential to WWE throughout. Over the years he's always been very outspoken and opinionated and it's seen him fall out with most people that he's worked with, and I think he's learned from that. He understands the importance of this deal to AAA and I think he was being overly careful not to fuck anything up for himself, or for AAA.

[Snitsky's back acne]

Isn't the big thing now that American wrestling has, stylistically at least, become so luchafied that it is difficult for true lucha to stand out?
I'm not saying World Collide was "true lucha" rather that modern audiences are more attuned to that style than 30 years ago.

In 1994, it was so different. Wrestling, largely, still hhad very distinct and diverse styles. Japanese wrestling was different to European wrestling which was different to Mexican wrestling etc. However, in the decades since then more and more wrestlers have adopted lucha traits (headpalm shoot off, ranas, myriad dives, fast-paced action, less selling etc) either because more luchadores wrestled in America or people were inspired by that style, so it is less striking in its difference to mainstream American wrestling than it was. 

[BomberPat]

There's definitely an element of that, though I would say it's a wider problem of homogenisation rather than American wrestling become "luchafied". It's funny that discussions of the history and traditions of lucha libre have centred around AAA, a promotion formed largely out of a sense that CMLL was too old-fashioned and traditional and that lucha needed to move with the times - AAA over the years has done away with a lot of the more unique elements of Lucha; they don't do Captain's Fall rules in tag or trios matches, they stopped having multiple referees in tag or trios matches, they rarely (if ever) do two out of three falls matches, and a lot of their presentation has been very Americanised; for years, they were doing Roldan-Pena family drama that was clearly heavily inspired by the McMahons in WWE.

Something I find frustrating, and I've been fighting a losing battle on this for years, is that "Lucha Libre" has just come to mean "high flying with the odd headscissors". I know of wrestling school that run a "High Flying and Lucha Libre" class taught by people who have never worked in Mexico, or with anyone who worked in Mexico, they just use "Lucha" to mean springboards and ranas, and I guess for most people it is a shorthand for that. But Lucha is also old men in masks hitting each other very hard, brawling through the crowd, and bleeding buckets over each other. It's also Skayde, Dr Cerebro, or Negro Navarro tying opponents up in the wackiest submissions you've ever seen. It's exoticos, it's minis, it's Mr Iguana. I think the wider presentation in the US (and beyond) of Lucha Libre as just masks, flips and headscissors, does the style(s) of Lucha a disservice. To say nothing of how nobody knows what an actual Huracanrana is any more!

There's definitely much less of a stark difference between Lucha Libre as it's being sold to American audiences now, and what we see on TV every week, than there was in '94, though. There's nothing that feels quite as much of a quantum leap forward - though there was a time not that long ago that I think El Hijo del Vikingo, and to a lesser extent Komander, did offer something close to that "seeing Rey Misterio Jr for the first time" experience. The problem with it being a WWE product, though, is that everything was worked as a WWE match, and some of the luchadores struggled to be more than a square peg forced into a round hole - and it's clear that's the future of AAA, as it becomes a talent pipeline to WWE, with their wrestlers being prepped to work "WWE style". Aside from a big part of that being "slow down, work the hard cam", WWE psychology has a different approach to strikes compared to even other American companies, never mind Lucha, and in recent years they've gone (for my tastes) far too hard on "NXT face" - big mugging facial expressions selling disbelief and shock at kick-outs and big moments, and wrestlers in masks will necessarily struggle to adapt to that, because WWE's logic has always been that you make your money with your face, and audiences struggle to connect when they can't see, at the very least, a wrestler's eyes and mouth (which is why wrestlers like Rey Misterio Jr, Penta and Fenix can be the exception to the rule, based on the design of your mask). I think that plays into Psycho Clown not being positioned as a top star on this show, while also being quite insulting to one of the bigger babyfaces of his generation to suggest that audiences wouldn't connect with him.

The bigger difference, though, is that the psychology of a Lucha Libre match is different to the psychology of an American wrestling match. I know wrestlers who can't stand lucha, because they see it all as no-selling and no match structure or logic, because it doesn't follow a lot of the conventions they're used to. The way it has been explained to me is that while American wrestling works off of heat and tension, the psychology of Lucha Libre is all about momentum and exchanges of momentum. It's constant movement - whoever is in motion has momentum, and that means they are in charge of the flow of the match; when a wrestler bounces off the ropes a dozen times before hitting an arm drag or a tijeras, that's all about building up momentum, but if their opponent then rolls through that move and into a movement of their own, it puts them in control, because they have absorbed all of that momentum and are now carrying it themselves. AAA is a little more frantic and overbooked and has a lot of weapons, run-ins, and shenanigans, so that kind of psychology isn't as evident as it is in other Lucha Libre companies, but it's still there, and the difference really stands out when you see AAA wrestlers suddenly working a WWE match. 

[Chili]

So I read a little bit of chat about Mr. Iguana being zoomed up to the main WWE roster because he's pissing out merchandise and bypassing any developmental. Which if so, good for him, but also that is absolutely hilarious.

[DavidB6937]

I hope he beats Gunther.

[simonworden]

11 hours ago, Chili said:

So I read a little bit of chat about Mr. Iguana being zoomed up to the main WWE roster because he's pissing out merchandise and bypassing any developmental. Which if so, good for him, but also that is absolutely hilarious.

It would be inline with history for them to zoom him up, have him drown but be happy they sucked all the gimmick money and life out of the gimmick rather than use him as something unique to promote any more AAA things they show outside Mexico. 

 

@BomberPat fantastic post, won't quote it for space reasons. Are there any other promotions aside from AAA and CMLL you recommend. AAA always feels too "attitude" and CMLL a bit long winded for me.

[LaGoosh]

Zona 23 is good for a laugh, though you'll be watching it from in between your fingers. No idea how no one has died on one of their shows.

[Merzbow]

I'd imagine everyone is getting a tetanus shot after almost every match, I do love the whole trashed cars being used as a weapon gimmick though.

[SaitoRyo]

21 hours ago, Chili said:

So I read a little bit of chat about Mr. Iguana being zoomed up to the main WWE roster because he's pissing out merchandise and bypassing any developmental. Which if so, good for him, but also that is absolutely hilarious.

Next week on Raw:

[Kamaras-Tash]

2 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

Zona 23 is good for a laugh, though you'll be watching it from in between your fingers. No idea how no one has died on one of their shows.

Is that the 1 where they wrestle in a junkyard type of place? Remember watching a match where 1 of the wrestlers took a powerbomb through a car windscreen and I was sure she was dead.