[1996-03-16-AAA] Psicosis vs Ultraman (Mask vs Mask)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Psicosis may have been top five in the world in a year where that meant a lot. In terms of making other guys look good and timing his bumps in a way to get a maximum crowd reaction, he was the second coming of Ric Flair. Plus I like the booking here, as he actually wins a match! This match is like a cleaned up version of the January one. It doesn't have the props that the January match did, but that is to its advantage, as it is a better wrestling match and is just as dramatic. I think I like this better than the more acclaimed Rey/Juventud match on the same show, but this was still a hell of a card. Ultraman is required to unmask here.

[Childs]

This was just awesome until all the run-ins midway through the tercera caida. I loved the handheld work here; it made me feel I was a few feet away from (and sometimes in the middle of) a nasty, nasty fight. The reckless topes came across particularly well. Ultraman was also eons better here than in their January match. The last few minutes dragged, in part because the multiple run-ins and elaborately set-up highspots had become cliche in AAA. I wanted to watch these two crazy fuckers finish their fight. Konnan clearing the ring with a bat and a bunch of rudos helping Psicosis find a functional table just distracted from that. Anyway, I was still happy to see 3/4 of a great match.

[Tim Evans]

Not a big fan of the match. It had some good points early and Piscosis was good but the run ins and booking just killed it for me. That seems to be the norm of these AAA matches.

[rainmakerrtv]

Not a big fan of the match. It had some good points early and Piscosis was good but the run ins and booking just killed it for me. That seems to be the norm of these AAA matches.

IMSMR, these were Tijuana matches where Konnan had the booking. He had just gotten back from ECW, so he injected a huge amount of ECW style booking.

[PeteF3]

*wakes up* Hey, it's 2015, so is this match over yet? Christ. Ultraman looks better than he did in the January match, but for the love of Christ...he goes through two tables (one of which is on fire), takes a somersault legdrop off the top with a chair, AND a tombstone, and kicks out of all three of those and more. And the run-ins were okay in the first match but here it's just overkill and more of the same, just with crazier stunts. Eventually both guys kick each other in the groin, and I guess Psicosis gets up first or something. jdw's review lists this at 24:09, but it felt more like 4 hours.

[soup23]

Much improved over their January effort but I'm still not getting the Psicosis WOTY vibe. He is tremendously entertaining and I appreciate that he goes for the "brass ring" but his execution and building to the finish have left me cold. While I enjoyed the excess of run-ins in the last match, I thought this really subtracted from the overall match here and only served to make Konnan look stronger overall. Ultraman continues to be pretty poor overall. ***

[tim]

The third fall here was a pretty awesome, violent fight until the interference. Agreed that the camera angle helped the atmosphere of this match a lot, especially the dives which go right toward the camera. But then the interference came and it was just long and totally uninteresting. At least the interference in their first match added to the chaotic ridiculousness of the thing. Post-interference, if you can just pretend it never happened, the match goes back to being good with Ultraman surviving a couple huge moves and the crowd rallying behind him. They do the double low blow spot twice, for some reason, with the second one resulting in victory for Psicosis -- delayed DQ? If the interference never happened and they just kept on with the third fall, and maybe the ending made more sense, this would have been my pick for best AAA match including the ECW ones on the set.