Anatomy of a Disaster: Los Villanos vs. Los Psycho Circus (Triplemania XXIII)

From left to right: Murder Clown, Psycho Clown & Monster Clown. I hope I didn’t get them mixed up during the recap (I actually had two names switched and had to edit!).

ANATOMY OF A DISASTER: LOS VILLANOS vs. LOS PSYCHO CIRCUS:
-By request, it’s an Anatomy of a Disaster on a Lucha Trios match that Dave Meltzer gave -***** to! The worst rating you can possibly get (since he hasn’t gone six or seven stars in the other direction quite yet). And it’s on a show rated the “Worst Major Wrestling Show of 2015”, too. So either a whole bunch of people saw this, or they just heard about it and dogpiled the votes in, I dunno.

This match can be readily found on YouTube- I found a version from the actual show with Spanish commentary, and a fancam version (both of which show the business being exposed in many beautiful ways!).

THE STAGE: AAA TripleMania XXIII (Aug. 9th 2015)

THE PERFORMERS:
LOS VILLANOS:
* Los Villanos (aka “The Villains”) are a somewhat legendary family of wrestlers in lucha, with five of the sons of Ray Mendoza becoming known as Villanos I through V. Villano I, IV & V once defeated Los Brazos in a trios match inj 1988 to unmask them. Villano IV & V are most well-known to fans north of Mexico for their run in WCW as jobbers. They were capable, but like El Dandy, didn’t have a good look and were best-used as guys who could wrestle lucha style but also do regular jobs, meaning they were handy in putting over the other lucha dudes actually getting some focus (as they could take the offense and Rey/Psychosis wouldn’t have to dumb it down).

VILLANO III: The late Arturo Díaz Mendoza is considered the most successful member of the family in terms of championships and accolades. Notably, he died only three years after this, at 66 years of age. Meaning he’s hella-old here. This, uh… kind of makes it clear what part of the issue with this match is. He’s the thin Villano.

VILLANO IV: A jobber in WCW, he sometimes wrestled unmasked as “Ray Mendoza Jr.” (in honor of their father). In 2022, he lost a somewhat notable match to Pentagon Jr. (AEW’s Penta el Zero Miedo), losing his mask. He’d be about 50 years old for this one.

VILLANO V: Actually the second youngest Mendoza boy, but he finished training last, so is Villano V. Notably got a bad neck injury in WCW taking a Ligerbomb/Neckbreaker from Kanyon & Raven, and missing several months. He’s actually a pretty big star, unmasking Blue Panther (a 30-year veteran) in 2008. He himself lost his mask to Ultimo Guerrero the next year, becoming “Ray Mendoza Jr.” (like his brother was in WCW) for most of his matches. He’s about 55 here.

LOS PSYCHO CIRCUS:
* Los Psycho Circus (I wish I spoke Spanish! WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?!) are a “rudo” (heel) stable. I’ve literally never heard of them before. Per Wikipedia, AAA has used clown-based gimmicks ever since their formation, with these guys being a heel variant, taking three mystery guys who were above-average in size and forming them together. They dress like horror-movie clowns, with horrific expressions on their masks inspired by the movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Their outfits are certainly wild, though- big wigs, lots of details on the tights, etc. But all three are wearing the “ECW Shirt of Shame”, hiding their physiques.

MONSTER CLOWN (formerly Zombie Clown): A wrestler formerly known as “Aliens”, who was of course depicted as an actual alien sent to Earth- when booker Antonio Peña died, that character wasn’t seen as fitting the promotion’s new direction and so he was changed. He’s around 40 years old here. His mask features rotting teeth and a blue top hat, and his outfit is a full-body covering one with black and yellow coloring like a jester design.

PSYCHO CLOWN: A wrestler formerly known as Kronus, and the son of Brazo de Plata, the supremely fat member of the Brazo wrestling family. He’s about 30 years old for this match. His mask has a giant brightly-colored mohawk on it, and he’s about 30 years old here.

MURDER CLOWN (aka Killer Clown): An unknown wrestler (seriously, lucha keeps this tight enough nobody seems to know his real name or prior identities). He’s billed as being huge, like 6’5″ 289 lbs., and is definitely way taller than everyone else, but doesn’t have much of a physique. He was trained by the legendary Canek. His mask has a balding multicolored afro and vampire-like fangs on it.

-This match is apparently promoted as Villano III’s retirement match, teaming with his younger brothers against the big rudo team. As the youngest Villano is 50 years old and the oldest is about 62-63, hopes for this one shouldn’t be high.

LOS VILLANOS (Villano III, IV & V) vs. LOS PSYCHO CIRCUS (Monster, Psycho & Murder Clown):
* Trios matches in lucha are allowed to count “hitting the floor” as a tag, and there are two referees in the ring, but this one is apparently just a tornado tag with all six guys allowed to hang out in the ring. The Villanos at least have three distinct body types at this point so despite wearing identical pink gear I can tell them apart- one is rather thin (Villano III), one fat and one REALLY fat. Not sure which one is which on those two. I was watching what was apparently a fancam version at first but found the official one- the former actually makes the action look WORSE.

We start with Psycho Clown & a Villano doing the “grapple around the ring along the ropes” spot, leading to two slow armdrags. The Villano is SUPER slow to get up and is chopped down, falling like an old man as the skinnier Villano III runs in and “chops” Psycho’s chest and gets chopped by Murder Clown, and the fattest Villano knocks him back and gets clotheslined by Psycho Clown. Everyone starts “trading shots” and Murder obviously dumps himself in unconvincing fashion after missing a punch. Monster & Skinny Villano have a long chat in the corner while pretending to do stuff, then Fattest Villano pokes him on the sides of his hips and they double-team him, and Monster & Psycho get thrown into each other, Monster being particularly ungainly and awkward with his running. Immediately the problems are apparent, as everyone is in “wander around and not knowing what to do” mode and Monster Clown looks like he doesn’t even know how wrestling works or how to do it. The singular unmoving camera in the fancam version is only making it worse, as camera cuts are pretty good at hiding the fakeness of wrestling, and here you get stuff like “Fattest Villano chops Monster Clown, who then very clearly leans back and rolls out through the ropes on purpose and in complete control”.

Psycho Clown is left alone, taking a back body drop and twin elbows, then two Villanos gently hold his arms while the other starts tearing at his mask from the eyehole. They arbitrarily stop and he tries to escape, but gets caught on the apron and Fat Villano has issues getting over the ropes to greet him, and all three slow-walk him into the post and he hits the floor. Monster Clown comes back in and gets a three-man beating, and they do a double-elbow & forced splits into a dropkick as they’re doing established lucha spots but at 1/3 speed (cuz they’re OLD). The other two clowns are just wandering around ringside either talking shit or talking to ringside people (Psycho appears to be talking to a stagehand or something). Monster gets “posted” (missing by about a foot) too and now Murder is being beaten up by the worst punches ever from Fattest Villano, then gets dumped and slowly carried into the post (and another Villano’s feet) in one of the worst-looking spots in wrestling history. That had no favors done by the close-up (and amazingly looks even WORSE in the fancam version!).

Three Villanos “pummel” the other two clowns with shots so weak they’d make Eddie Kingston blush, but two get tripped up by Monster on the floor and then eat tope suicidas! ACTUAL MOVES! At least Monster looks like he knows how to wrestle now. Villano III is left alone against Murder and takes a press slam (Murder very carefully guiding him down the whole way and gently putting him on the mat vs. the Warrior-style “let them drop and c’est la vie” one), and two clowns pile onto the other piggyback for a “triple splash” (though both harmlessly roll off the other before impact to the point where it looks like they slipped off, also ruining the spot… Murder also clearly lands on all fours with six inches between his gut at Villano III). Fattest Villano hits the ring again and slowwwwwwllly shuffles off the ropes into a double-slam & flying headbutt to the nuts, and Fat Villano takes a triple-team leapfrog move after being stomped down. They repay the mask-tearing spot on him and similarly just arbitrarily stop and pose (some throwing shots to Villanos that reek of “well the camera’s not on me so I’m not gonna try” on the fancam version).

Psycho “measures” a Villano and “charges”, appearing to just casually step through the ropes and to the floor when he misses and Monster boots Murder by mistake, but he slams Villano III and climbs up, getting caught by the fat ones, but the clowns grab COOKIE SHEETS and whack them on the asses, then hit powerbombs that allow the Villanos to double superplex Murder in a “tower of doom” spot. VIII attempts a pin off that, but his brothers get rolled up- all get two-counts, and Psycho gets double-clotheslined to the floor. Psycho tries a dropkick but the fattest Villano “ducks” and it thus misses (because it was 2 feet off anyways) and Pyscho deliberately rolls to the floor, and Monster gets backdropped onto Murder. It’s DOUBLE FATASS TOPES from the Villanos (the fattest one’s being like a running push). This all leaves Psycho Clown in with Villano III- he uses a neon yellow strap (?), which is no-sold, then threatens him with a chair but drops it out of respect (the fancam picks this up better than the actual version does) so they just slug it out, won by Psycho with a clothesline, and he hits a weird falling variant of a headbutt off the top, getting two, but telling the ref to stop counting, bowing out of respect to the retiring legend instead. He then brawls with Fat Villano while both refs for some reason prevent Fattest Villano from interfering (WHY?), but Psycho gets kicked in the nuts, and Fat Villano pins him at (11:13) to end the disaster. Afterwards, the Clowns & Villanos start hugging, then the refs get hugged and more. Thus ends the career of Villano III!

Oh, this was bad. Business-exposing bad. It was three dudes who could barely move slowly shuffling in and out while the other guys just tried to sell for them and get into position, which they did very unconvincingly. Monster Clown looked totally amateurish at first, shuffling and looking very gawky, but the more I watched the more I think he was trying to be careful not to hurt his much older opponents. A lot of the match had that “gentleness” to it, guys babying spots or very deliberately getting into them to make it easier to take or get ready for. The shot into the post looked positively terrible, with the Villanos slowly carrying their opponent over to the post and lightly pushing him into either that or the outstretched feet of their brother, neither making contact. Never mind the two preceding “run them into the post” spots, which were all done in slow-motion and made it very clear the Clowns weren’t resisting and were just gently walking into things for non-bumps like it was an inverse Sammy Guevara match. The selling was all over the place, too- guys would take a single weak dropkick or something and sell on the floor for 2-3 minutes, then arbitrarily hit the ring and do slow-motion stuff.

The match really had no story- it was just the Villanos lightly tickling the Clowns, then themselves being lightly tickled (at some points guys just kinda delicately put their forearms against each other while looking the other way). Nobody really got much heat outside of the mask stuff because there wasn’t any energy to any of it- no concentrated beatdowns or anything. I’ve seen a lot of lucha stuff, and it tends to have this flow to it- like the technicos beat up the rudos and embarrass them early on, then the rudos fight dirty and take over, doing mean stuff, then they start getting REALLY nasty and the finish is teased a lot, then the technicos rally and it’s this big deal. Instead, we get this weird match full of feather-light offense with no rhyme or reason, and no extended selling or even ATTEMPTS TO PIN. Like it’s almost completely over before anyone goes for a single pin attempt, so there’s never a sense of urgency or “this could finish it”. Then you have the clown suddenly deciding he doesn’t want to win- the only story of the match is that he now respects his opponent too much to pin him on the way out. So he just gets up and starts punching again while another Villano is arbitrarily being kept out of it, and then the Villano kicks him in the dick (an illegal DQ-worthy move in lucha) and THAT gets the pin?

The match almost seemed in danger of having a good spot or two- they at least had some double-teams, and double topes from each team, plus a Tower of Doom. But of course all had that slow set-up that made the payoff pretty weak, and were obviously too gentle. If you’re gonna distill it into one gif, though, definitely make it the two Villanos harmlessly walking Murder Clown into the outstretched feet of Villano III on other side of the post, hitting none of the three. At least nothing botched or nearly killed a dude or anything.

Rating: DUD (horribly business-exposing, with out of shape old men shuffling about, the most feather-light offense in wrestling, big heels babying their opponents so as not to hurt them, lazy bumps, and no psychology or selling)

The Fallout: The whole Triplemania XXIII show is considered an unmitigated disaster, with technical issues throughout, bad commentary (Matt Striker was considered to be particularly terrible- thankfully I didn’t get that version, which has him saying “the technical issues make it more special” and pretends that a buzzing noise means he’s commentating on a Killer Bees match), and more. Dave Meltzer and others ripped on it, and suggested AAA not try this kind of thing again for a very long time. This match was “awarded” -***** by Meltzer and considered one of the worst matches he’d ever seen. However, Los Psycho Circus seemed to do okay for themselves afterwards.

Mitigating Factors: THE VILLANOS ARE GODDAMN OLD! Like the youngest one if FIFTY and the eldest (the skinny one) is sixty-fucking-two years old or so. So they can be largely excused for being horrible-looking, flabby, out of shape and way too slow to be wrestling. Lucha tends to be a low-bumping, softer style as a rule (they fight in legit boxing rings sometimes, hence the “rolling bumps” instead of flat-backing), which definitely extends careers, but it can’t work miracles and you’ll not find many wrestlers over fifty who can still rule it in the ring- Chris Jericho looks like crap these days, and “Minoru Suzuki is awesome” is actually just a private lie wrestling fans tell themselves because we think the idea of “Murder Grandpa” is awesome as he clunkily and stiffly goes around the ring and everyone has to sell like he’s scary (THAT’S RIGHT I SAID IT!). And one of the guys here is seven years older than HIM! Genichiro Tenryu was good at 50-ish, but he’s one of the best ever, ya know?

And I dunno how good the Clowns are normally, but a lot of the cases of bad stuff here look like them being super-gentle and delicately pushing their opponents about, or slowing down to match their pace. Which of course just makes this look fake and soft as hell, but it’s probably better than just bullrushing in and leaving them behind, or exposing them as old and slow.

Overall: It’s possibly overstated just how bad this match is, but the fact that it’s fairly long in addition to horribly-wrestled, slow, and soft just compounds its sins. The fact is, just looking at the ages of the Villanos makes it clear this match couldn’t possibly have been good, so the worst thing is this showing up on a big show meant to showcase AAA to American fans and stuff like that. They’d almost have been better off just having a comedy match or something. I mean… a DELIBERATE comedy match.