Super Calo vs. Angel Mortal
June 10, 1995
AAA
Mask vs. Mask
** 1/4
Antonio Peña could be brilliantly clever when he needed to be.
For the third TripleMania, AAA ran three separate shows over a period of twenty days. Not just three shows but three big shows in major venues. Of course, Peña needed matches that could draw enough to fill those venues and that usually means running an apuesta match or in this case, three apuesta matches. Rather than simply build up three separate mask matches, Peña got creative in the way he set up the three major apuesta matches for the 1995 TripleMania shows.
The first step was a Relevos Increibles Suicidas on the first show between members of two feuding tag teams – Los Diabolicos (Angel Mortal & Marabunta) and the dancing duo of Super Calo and Winners. Marabunta teamed with Winners to take on Super Calo and Angel Mortal with the losing team facing each other in a mask vs. mask match that night. Only instead of stopping there, the winning team faced off the following week at the TripleMania III-B event in a mask match with the winner of the first two matches wrestling on the third show in a final mask match. By the end of the TripleMania “tour”, only one of the four would remain masked. The entire series was dubbed a Cuadrangular de la Muerte. It was a neat concept to tie all three events together.
As an aside, there was some confusion in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter about how the tag match played out. Dave Meltzer reported in the June 19, 1995 edition of the Observer that the match was Winners & Calo versus Los Diabolicos and that there was a double pin with Calo and Marabunta both being pinned. In actuality, the teams were as mentioned above and the match was a regular lucha libre tag where a fall ends only after both members of a team lose. Marabunta submitted Calo, Mortal pinned his normal partner Marabunta, and Winners submitted Mortal to send the Calo/Mortal team into the apuesta match. Something was obviously lost in translation or in the relay but in watching the tag match it is pretty clear there was no funny business going on with the finish.
Because the Calo versus Angel Mortal mask match took place right after the tag match, it is one fall instead of a traditional three fall match. The tag match – by the way – is pretty fun, particularly late when Calo and Winners both nail a pair of dangerous dives (I’d go ***-ish).
The mask match itself is more of the third fall of a match than a full match itself. Calo is already bleeding from the tag by the time the mask match starts. He opens the bout by hitting a great big plancha from the top turnbuckle of the floor which has the feel of a mid-match (or third fall opening) high spot. After the plancha, the match is essentially four minutes of near falls. Nothing is blown. Angel Mortal was a good mid-level rudo and it shows in this match with the way he bumps and the variety of offense he brings to his near falls. There is nothing that standouts about the match, however, and it is so abbreviated that it never truly gets going. I am not even suggesting they should have done anything different – the tag match got them into a position where four minutes of near falls before the finish made sense as the best course of action – but if you look at the singles match as being separate from the tag then there is not much there.
Calo wins the match and Mortal’s mask. Calo and Winners celebrate post-match, while Mortal teases leaving without removing his mask. He comes back and beats up Calo in a poor show of sportsmanship. For some reason, Fuerza Guerrera comes back to the ring with Motral (I don’t know where Marabunta went off to). After a minute or so of this, either Calo or Winners manages to rip the mask off of Mortal’s head. Angel Mortal looked a lot like circa-2000 Virus without the mask.
Not much of a match, although I am not sure it should have or could have been anything different.
