06/03 AAA TV Results (Monterrey, Verano de Escandalo)

AAA TV (SUN) 06/03/2018 Plaza de Toros La Monumental, Monterrey, Nuevo León [thecubsfan]
1) Arkángel Divino, Dinastía, Hijo Del Vikingo, Star Fire b Arez, Belial, Lady Maravilla, Último Maldito
9:00. Arkangel beat Ultimo Maldito. Debuts/returns for Star Fire, Arez, Belial and Maravilla.
2) Lady Shani, Mamba, Pimpinela Escarlata b Black Danger (Baja California), Keyra, La Hiedra
6:28. Shani pinned Hiedra, then was beat up and unmasked by Faby Apache post match. Keyra returned the surprise wrestler.
3) Juventud Guerrera, Killer Kross, Texano Jr. b La Máscara, Máximo, Pagano
7:28. Moved down a slot. Texano Jr. was friendly with the MAD team but didn’t seem to be part of it. Pagano had a leg taped up from Thursday’s matches and was sent thru a table here. Earlier in the show, Juventued Guerrera was attacked by Vampiro after a in-ring promo. Later in the show, the MAD members introduced their leader. They teased it as being Konnan with his music, but Kross walking around with a guitar telegraphed it was Jeff Jarrett. Jarrett unmasked and talked his way into being included in the main event in a segment with Wagner & Parka (who has earlier declared he’d not let the MAD guys get their way.)
4) Aerostar b Drago, Sammy Guevara, Australian Suicide, Darby Allin, Golden Magic
8:28. Moved up a slot. Golden Magic, as a member of ELITE, was added to the match to make it a six way. Drago was hurt during the match. Aerostar pinned Guevera with a cutter, though Golden Magic clearly broke up the pin before three and Tirantes counted three anyway.
5) Brian Cage, Hijo del Fantasma, Rey Escorpión b Extreme Tiger, Laredo Kid, Psycho Clown
15:25. Match was scheduled as Fantasma/Psycho vs Cage/Escorpion. Psycho was first announced as being unable to wrestle, then attacked Fantasma and the match started anyway. Laredo Kid & Extreme Tiger, representing ELITE, ran down to make the save and the match became a trios match in ECW fashion. The power went out in the arena (though the stream stayed up) for most of the match, with it coming up in stages during the last half of the match. Cage, returning to the promotion pinned Laredo Kid for the win.
6) Averno, Chessman, Súper Fly b Carta Brava Jr., Mocho Cota Jr., Tito Santana [hair]
17:14. Match was fought under no DQ rules, though Piero still called for a rope break on a pin and attempted to stop either team from using glass beer bottles. Piero was eventually taken out, Cota got the bottle, and his swing hit Carta Brava by mistake. Super Fly wiped out Cota with a chair shot and covered Brava for the win. Averno recognized the quality of the Poder del Norte team after the match, seemingly ending the feud. All three Poder del Norte got their heads shaved.
7) Jeff Jarrett b Dr. Wagner Jr. ©, Rey Mysterio Jr. [AAA HEAVY]
16:20. Hijo del Tirantes worked as a rudo referee, helping Jarrett. Wagner eventually attacked Tirantes and gave him a Wagner Driver, then got a visual pin on Jarrett. A man in a Parka mask and a referee shirt ran out to make the count for Wagner, but held up. Wagner confronted the fake La Parka, and was fouled by Jarrett. Parka counted the pin. Vampiro came out to confront Parka, who unmasked as Konnan. Kross & Guerrera took out Vampiro. (Rey) Fenix returned to the promotion to attack the MAD team, including Jarrett. Konnan and Fenix had a standoff which ended with both men backing off. The show ended suddenly with no more explanation. Wagner falls on his fourth defense. Jarrett is the 16th champion.

Important cleanup note: Tirantes is innocent. And so really is Golden Magic. I’m told the five turned six way had problems. Drago’s injury threw things off and they finish changed during the match. The match was changed to end on Aerostar’s handspring cutter on Guevera and Tirantes was right to count three, but Golden Magic (and others) didn’t know the finish had changed. You could argue Tirantes shouldn’t have counted after the pin was broken up but it seems like just a wrestling mishap.

This show is a lot absorb. Let’s see if it makes sense subdivided into luchadors.

Rey Fenix

Rey Fenix did a series of media interviews (MedioTiempo, +LuchaTV, Estrellas del Ring) posted immediately after the show declaring himself “the most free person in lucha libre.” He framed his appearance in AAA as not coming back full time or under contract, but instead a demonstration that he has the freedom to go to any company at any time. Fenix avoided mentioning CMLL or The Crash by name, but the idea here is specifically that he’ll be able to still work there and anywhere else and not sign a contract with anyone.

In AAA, he’ll be going as his original name “Fenix”. He’ll still use “Rey Fenix” (and probably “The King”) elsewhere and, at least in theory, there’s an agreement than AAA will no longer go after Fenix and the people who use him for his name.

Fenix explained his leaving as wanting AAA to change and his return as AAA in the process of changing. The obvious big change is Konnan, Fenix’s mentor, is back in charge. Fenix was lingering around the midcard with no direction when he left AAA and when Konnan was out as booker. Konnan’s back as booker, and Fenix is now taking out all the members of the lead rudo group to end a show. Even if that changes, he’s not tied down to a contract; Fenix has the freedom to work anywhere, and he’s got the freedom not to work anywhere.

It appears Rey Fenix at the very least told CMLL he was going to appear in AAA. He may have even been told by people in CMLL would be OK for him to do so without risking his CMLL booking. I hope that is what happens. No one should feel 100% safe that is what will happen at the moment. If Rey Fenix makes an appearance on Informa, or is otherwise still on that Friday night lineup on Wednesday night, it’s probably fine.

The issue here is CMLL already this year gave a bigger rollout to a promotion (ELITE) and a TV partner (Azteca), then made them both vanish in a snap of a finger. They can not be fully trusted. CMLL is capable of going back on their word, to reverting to the way they’ve always done things because it always works well enough for them. CMLL must be at least open to change to bring in Fenix in the first place and to use LA Park but, even with LA Park there are people pushing back because he’s not sold out Arena Mexico like he said in promos, and pushing back on Fenix because he’s just some indie guy to people who don’t pay attention to anything out of CMLL. Parts of the CMLL may want to open up the promotion. Other people in the promotion, the people Miguel Reducindo refereed as not having the best interest of the promotion in mind in his letter quitting the promotion a couple months ago, haven’t suddenly disappeared. Rey Fenix, a Rey Fenix who just showed up in AAA, is the litmus test on actual change.

Dr. Wagner Jr.

That’s it. Dr. Wagner Jr. says he’ll take some AAA dates but he’ll be independent. If you’ve been checking out Wagner’s schedule of late, you can see he’s already been doing that for some time. This is really Wagner saying he’ll be open to working TripleMania or big TVs if they want to give him big TV paydays but he’s not going to be working regularly in AAA. Wagner was done with AAA after Verano de Escandalo no matter who beat him for the title. He can at least now leave pointing out he got cheated out of the title in a match that never should’ve been a three way match.

Dr. Wagner was quite clearly champion to do a title program with his son, to make his son a big TV star. It may have been part of the deal for him to lose his mask back at TripleMania. That Wagner/Wagner title program was dropped after the Tijuana taping, the moment Konnan fully took over the creative. Hijo del Wagner hasn’t been on TV or mentioned the three shows. There’s no other reason for Wagner to stick around and it was just a matter of how or who he’d lose the title too. Wagner/Wagner was already announced for 06/28 in Arena Aficion.

The AAA heavyweight title hasn’t gone too well of late.

• Wagner quit the moment he lost the title
• Mundo quit the moment he lost the title, and both were only around long enough to lose the title
• Texano didn’t quit! but he lost the title without being pinned, “injured” in a match
• Alberto left AAA and never lost the title

You have to go back to Texano’s first reign ending in December 2014 for someone to both lose the heavyweight title in the ring and also not quit immediately after. Which brings us to the new AAA champion…

Jeff Jarrett

Jarrett’s definitely continuing that streak, right? He’s either disappearing from AAA before he loses the title, or the title change will be his last night. Jarrett’s history here: multiple hair matches built up that were never paid off and a penchant for having travel problems causing him to miss those biggest shows.

Those defending the idea of Jeff Jarrett will point at those previous runs as missed opportunities, as something built up that can be finally be paid off here. That’s again hoping that they’ll get to that payoff. It’s not even the right guy if they get there. The announcers played Jarrett up huge, though it didn’t feel like the fans saw it that way. (The last time AAA fans saw Jarrett, he was explaining that this gimmick had been just a gimmick all along and he was really a nice businessman.) Translator Juventud Guerrera was the clear star of the Jeff Jarrett’s promo segment. Sam Adonis showed that plenty of other people can do the pro-USA/anti-Mexico bit and do it better than Jarrett. Mundo just did the same pro-USA/anti-Mexico bit; AAA’s pretty well run this well dry. Jarrett was the obvious worst wrestler in the title match, including Hijo del Tirantes. You have to believe Jarrett has a singular ability to draw and get a reaction and I didn’t see either demonstrated last night. AAA had multiple evil referees in the match to try and get it over, Jarrett could’ve been replaced by anyone for the same result.

I have never been “dunked on” (quote retweeted with people noting how stupid the original post is) on Twitter as many times for anything as much as I have for the post mentioning the title change.  This was not heel heat of wanting to see someone beat Jarrett, this was “AAA is doing something dumb again and I’m glad I don’t watch them” heat.  The people reacting negatively (and 99% of them are negative) are doing so in English. The WON explanation for Konnan’s return to as head of creative is a sense he’d be better at getting the product over internationally than Vampiro. Vampiro torched a lot of bridges with international fans, but this is also a pretty terrible first impression for the new WWE era. Fenix returning afterwards was clearly supposed to take some of the sting off of it, but it’s still Jeff Jarrett as champion of your promotion in 2018.

What do you even do with Jeff Jarrett as champion? Wagner’s gone. Mysterio’s not full time and didn’t seem to be a great fit last night. Rey Fenix seemed like he might be set up as a challenger, but they’d be dumbing down all the exciting stuff Fenix to fit into what Jeff Jarrett can still do at 51. Jarrett as Alberto’s opponent is probably the best fit, as terrible as that sounds. I have no interest in seeing Jeff Jarrett do Jeff Jarrett matches even without the title, and I don’t think most other people do either, but the big problem with making Jeff Jarrett champion is now you’re stuck booking a series of Jeff Jarrett title matches. All of which are going to be bad! In an era where having a good match seems to be more important than ever, AAA’s just put themselves in a spot where all their title matches will be bad for the foreseeable future. This is not ideal.

Jarrett coming back just as Konnan is back is no coincidence, though I can’t believe Konnan can be high on the idea of Jarrett as champion. The way they immediately moved on to other things – Konnan’s unmasking was treated as more important, Rey Fenix’s return was treated as more important – suggests they wanted to move on from that part of the story as quick as possible.

This has zero change of happening, but that AAA press conference for TripleMania should start with Dorian or Vampiro or whoever pointing out Konnan is not a legal referee, throwing out the finish of the title match, and restarting with a vacant title. It’d be a lame way to get the title off Jarrett, but any way he’s going to lose that title is going to be lame. They can move Jarrett right onto Alberto or whatever other sideshow feud he’s going to have, and move title onto people who are actually build something with it.

Konnan

Konnan returned onscreen to AAA and he’s no more than the fourth most important person from this show. Konnan’s previous regimes in AAA have been built around him leading a large group of rudos against the AAA establishment, and it appears they’re they’re setting up it once again. Konnan’s previous regimes have also included a lot of exciting wrestler in early matches, and it seems like that’s back again too. The same difficult in elevating these wrestlers into something meaningful will probably be there, but at least the quality of the show is better.

Jarrett really played up Konnan’s limp when doing the fake Konnan early in the show. Actual Konnan seemed in better condition when we saw him run-in for the main event. That seems great news for him.

Rey Mysterio Jr.

True story: he was in that main event. Did you see him? You did not see him do a 619 because Tirantes tripped him up the one time he did. Heroes of Lucha Libre might have given Rey Mysterio Jr. more to do this weekend than AAA.

Even with Mysterio advertised for this show (in a dream match that was not delivered), AAA did not sell out the arena. There were visible empty sections, and it seemed less than the 2014 show in the same venue.

Everyone else

On Facebook Vampiro is teasing that Kross’ back suplex seriously damaged his neck. That suplex seemed much safer than the one Kross gave to Maximo earlier, and so this is probably a storyline. I guess it’s possible this could be Vampiro’s write out of the promotion, but it seems unlikely – they need a tecnico symbol of AAA to face off with Jarrett & Konnan for promos, and they never put someone younger than 50 in that spot.

Golden Magic, Star Fire, Arez, Belial, Lady Maravilla, Keyra, Cage, Laredo Kid, Extreme Tiger, Sammy Guevera and Darby Allin all also debuted or returned on the show. A lot of these people did really good. None of these eleven people seemed to be involved in any storylines on this show. They may get something to do eventually but they were just names on this show.

MAD so far is Jeff Jarrett, Konnan, Killer Kross, Juventued Guerrera and maybe Teddy Hart. They got the heavyweight championship by disrupting the main event, so I think they’ve already won?

ELITE so far is Golden Magic, Laredo Kid, Extreme Tiger, Black Taurus (worked an indie Sunday) and maybe Teddy Hart? There’s no explanation of what this is supposed to mean and so it’s not registering as anything but strange. They can’t go another TV taping with no information about them, there has to be something coming soon.

What’s next?

TripleMania is scheduled for August 25th. That was the only upcoming show promoted on yesterday’s stream. They haven’t announced a next taping anywhere, unless it’s on the TV show they no longer post online.