MAD invasion: what happened in the big angle on AAA’s Tijuana show Friday night

The AAA taping in Tijuana featured vignettes thru the show chronicling a violent attack by unseen mystery people. The vignettes revealed the logo of the “MAD” faction, a group lead by Konnan who had been invading Monterrey’s MDA group this year. More MAD signs were seen around the ring before the main event. After the match ended, the lights went out and a shot from behind of Konnan walking thru a Auditoro de Tijuana tunnel was shown. Three men in MAD masks were in the ring when the lights came back up, destroying both técnicos Vampiro & Dr. Wagner Jr., and then rudos Hijo del Wagner & Hernandez. Teddy Hart, who had returned to AAA earlier in the night, & Kevin Kross, who was part of the MAD faction in Monterrey, unmasked themselves. A MAD video played, and Juventud Guerrera revealed himself as the third man. Guerrera talked about wining all the titles, masks and money to a bewildered crowd. Dr. Wagner Jr. got up, seemed to shrug it all off, and talked with the crowd on his way out.

AAA’s social media made a point of showing a still of Konnan from the video. However, he was never in front of the crowd and never mentioned by name – only by the shock that he would be back in AAA. The announcers treated the whole thing like they had no idea what was going on, and the fans seemed equally confused. Juventued Guerrera had the Mega championship in his hands when the show came to an end, though it wasn’t clear if he was meant to be keeping it going forward.

In reality, it seems like Konnan’s back – except Konnan never appearing before the crowd and Guerrera doing the promo that would go to the leader of the group was odd if Konnan was actually there. Vampiro still is very much in AAA and was positioned on screen as if his role had no changed, even doing the Vampiro in a box segment early on the show before the angle kicked in. Vampiro didn’t wrestle after all, but they didn’t write him out as they have on the previous tapings. Wagner walking off undersold the seriousness of the angle. The fans seemed to better understand this was a big deal, but had no idea what to make of it as most of them hadn’t seen MAD before.

The backstage were absurdly billed “as live”, which was funny when Joe Lider was running around scared backstage one moment and then walking out for his match fine ten seconds later. There were numerous production glitches during the show; some may have been intended pieces of the story, but it was more than that. It would’ve brought down a show a lesser show.

This show did have some really good matches. The card was changed around a bit, leaving a 2v2 tag team match which would’ve been the best match on a lot of these Twitch shows. The four way #1 contenders match was also very strong. Those matches were blown out of the water by the opener. The Crash (or maybe the ex-Crash) wrestlers had one of the best match of the year. Do whatever you have to do to watch it. It’s on AAA’s Twitch channel for subscribers. The whole show was worth watching. It was AAA’s best show of the year, even if you can’t make any sense out of the big angle.

I’ll write more about this – and the other big story of the night, Dragon Lee’s injury in Arena Mexico – later on Saturday.