2024 TripleMania Mexico City: a signature awful show from an odious promotion

It was a train. The light at the end of the tunnel was a train.

AAA TV (SAT) 08/17/2024 Arena Ciudad de Mexico, Azcapotzalco, Distrito Federal [AAA, thecubsfan]
1) Flammer © b Faby Apache [Reina De Reinas]
10:27. First defense (after a full year.) Moved to the pre-show, where fans had been told to not expect a match. Sexy Star seconded Faby Apache, Dalys seconded Flammer. Hijo del Tirantes pulled Faby Apache out as she has a pin, then Karen Jarrett attacked Faby Apache to set up Flammer’s win.
2) Octagón Jr. b El Elegido, Zumbido, Guapito, Mr. Iguana, Microman, Niño Hamburguesa, La Hiedra, Estrellita, Máscarita Sagrada 2000, Charly Manson, Heavy Metal, Kenzo Suzuki, Marco Corleone, Pimpinela Escarlata, Alan Stone, Jessy Queen [Copa Bardahl]
32:40. Moved to match 2. Marco and Kenzo returned to AAA for the first time in over a decade. Octagon Jr. eliminated Zumbido to win, earning a title shot of his choosing at a date of his choosing.
3) Raj Dhesi & Satnam Singh b Negro Casas & Psycho Clown © and Dr. Wagner Jr. & Galeno del Mal [AAA TAG]
15:01. Moved down a spot. Dhesi pinned Casas after Jeff Jarrett hit Casas with a guitar.
4) Matt Riddle b Laredo Kid, Komander © [AAA CRUISER]
14:07. Moved up a spot. Komander added on 08/07. Second defense, first on TV. Riddle pinned Komander. Announcers were instructed to avoid mentioning Riddle obviously not being a cruiserweight.
5) Vampiro Canadiense b Sam Adonis, Jeff Jarrett, Pagano, Mecha Wolf, Sansón, Forastero, Cien Caras, Konnan, Pirata Morgan, Octagón Jr., El Mesías, Chessman [casket]
9:35. Not truly a match, but here for a completeness. Vampiro walked around the arena and was confronted by a variety of surprise figures from his past, with tecnicos appearing to fight them off. Rudos tried to put Vampiro in a casket only to find La Parka (implied to be the deceased second one, likely his son) in the casket. Vampiro put Mesias in another casket to win, and then the casket lit on fire. Vampiro gave his eight-or-so retirement speech following the match.
6) El Patrón Alberto b Nic Nemeth © [AAA MEGA]
15:59. Ex-WWE John Layfield (doing a version of his JBL character) seconded Nic Nemeth to the ring and watched the match from the crowd. Patron won with a drink to the face and foul, as Nemeth had done in Monterrey. Latin Lover presented Alberto win the belt but scolded him for his actions. Alberto turned rudo on Latin, then revealed himself as being the Eye videos. Konnan came down as if for the save and (unsurprisingly) revealed himself to be allied with Alberto. A masked man came to the ring and (unsurprisingly) revealed himself as Dorian Roldan. Layfield got in the ring, teased helping Latin Lover, and (unsurprisingly) shook hands with the heel group. Latin was left bloodied, with no one making a genuine attempt at saving him.
7) Psicosis II L Dark Cuervo, Dark Ozz, Cibernético, El Fiscal, Abismo Negro Jr., Panic Clown, Dave The Clown, Murder Clown [dome cage, hair, mask, cage]
15:53. There was no time minimum before escapes counted; Panic Clown was out within four minutes. Order of escape: Panic Clown, Dave the Clown, Dark Cuervo, Ozz, Murder (Panic and Dave lowered a cable with balloons and a hook to pull Murder up out of the cage), Fiscal, Abismo, and Cibernetico, leaving Psicosis as the loser. Abismo and Fiscal had issues during the match, and Abismo betrayed Psicosis as he tried to leave at the end of the match. Psicosis praised Antonio Pena for giving him this mask, praised Cibernetico for helping him in his career and unmasked as Juan Gonzalez Cruz from Puebla. No age was given, and he listed his career as “27 years since starting as Psicosis.” (He’d been unmasked as Leon Negro prior.)

TripleMania Monterrey was terrible because it featured a lot of angles that fell flat, and AAA didn’t bother to book any quality matches. TripleMania Tijuana was terrible because it focused on a bunch of feuds that were not over and didn’t even seem to matter much to the people of Tijuana. TripleMania Mexico City was the worst of the bunch because it made it clear there is no hope, no reason to expect AAA to get better, and they prefer it that way. It’s a dark, depressing promotion, even beyond the big angle. Octagon Jr. won the goof battle royal, defeating irrelevant non-roster Zumbido after a badly blown spot, and there was nothing else happy about the rest. Laredo Kid failed again. Faby Apache failed again. Negro Casas failed. Alberto got built up as a national hero, so it would be more depressing when he turned heel a half hour later. I am completely confused as to who was supposed to be the tecnico and who was supposed to be the heel by the end of the cage match because of the turns, but Psicosis was the sad loser there. Even the Vampiro tearful retirement speech was supposed to make you feel sad you’ve seen him wrestle for the last time. He didn’t actually wrestle; it’s not the last time, and I didn’t feel sad about him retiring, but that was the idea.

The Eye angle played out after the Mega title match. Alberto won via foul, in a reversal of the Monterrey finish. Latin Lover congratulated Alberto for winning the championship but pointed out he awarded Alberto the rematch because Nemeth had cheated on Monterrey, and the fans were tired of title matches ending via fouls. Alberto immediately shifted to his rudo personality, taunting Latin as a retired old man. Latin said he was retired from wrestling but would still fight and started to take off his coat. Alberto jumped Latin before he could react, knocking Latin down. Alberto revealed that he had been behind the Eye attacks all along. Konnan came out for the save, then betrayed Latin to reveal he was in on it. Dorian Roldan came out to also ally himself with Konnan and Alberto. John Layfield (JBL, playing his WWE character), who had come to the ring with Nemeth and watched the match without getting involved, came to the ring and allied himself with the Eye faction. Layfield told the press he was a new investor in AAA, playing off reports of AAA looking for an investor. Previously, Konnan and Dorian had appeared in segments following the appearance of the Eye video, and there were hints Alberto was involved. Latin Lover was left bloody in the ring with no one trying to save him. 

It’s evident in the post-show interviews that Alberto, Konnan, and Dorian believe they’re the Freedbirds, and they just shut the door on Kerry Von Erich – they’ve just run the big money angle they’ve been thinking about for months, and now the territory. This Eye angle is trash. It takes AAA back to a critically despised period, where Konnan and Dorian were booked as the lead heels of a promotion with no story or direction. Like then, the only purpose is to get heat, to use the real-life dislike for those two men as wrestling characters. The big idea is this time, they’ll do it right, stick around for long enough, and let the story play out. There is no reason to give AAA that benefit of the doubt, they fail at paying things off everytine. There is no reason to be confident in AAA’s heroes; they exist to fail. Latin Lover is lying about not returning to wrestle again, but no other person on the roster is treated seriously. Hijo del Vikingo, only appearing in a post-show interview, was treated like a person of no genuine interest and didn’t seem bothered about the angle. There is no real payoff to an evil owner storyline outside of everyone involved going away, and that’s never happening unless AAA is sold. In a year built around nostalgia, this crew managed to bring back the one thing no one was asking for, and no one wanted to see, and they’re proud of themselves for coming up with it.

The Eye storyline also doesn’t make any sense. Konnan and Dorian were angry about Latin Lover’s comments on Vampiro’s podcast, so they spent half a year giving him a job with real power just to beat him up? Why not just beat him in the first place and not give him a position of power? Why not fire him now? (Because the next 12 months of storylines is GM vs GM, because the only ideas they have are to repeat ideas from WWE and WCW in the late 90s.) If Latin Lover had such a problem with title matches ending in cheating, why didn’t he get involved after the Reina de Reinas matches or the tag title match? Both were even more screwy than Alberto/Nemeth. Why does Dorian Roldan need to lead a heel group to take over his own promotion? From a heat standpoint, both Dorian and Konnan were heavily disliked by the AAA audience even before the podcast. Konnan’s attempt at repositioning himself as a legendary face was a flop, he got noosd and Dorian got it worse. AAA spent half a year, so much TV time, setting up an angle to get people already booed easily. It was an idiotic use of time and investment in two people who will never be in a money-drawing match when AAA desperately needs new people. It’s either complete distrust in anyone else in AAA or bookers complete booking for their ego.  

This eye angle is about trolling people and pretending that it’s heat. It’s from the minds of people who stopped learning two decades ago, as trapped in the past as the people Konnan mocked when he was starting, so they can’t help but book the same things repeatedly. They’re re-running WWE storylines, they’re doing the same “shock” turn three times in one segment, they’re wearing a Judgement Day t-shirt to try to connect themselves to something popular and liked instead of whatever this is (and they’re hoping you believe their hints about secretly being behind that too.) Setting up Dorian Roldan and Konnan as the led heels for ruining AAA in the storyline is a clever way to escape criticism for ruining AAA in real life. If you hate the angle or the people involved, you’re just marking out for their characters and giving them the reaction they’re looking for.

I don’t think the production crew is meant to be heat-gathering heels, but they were the worst part of the show. AAA does run-throughs on the Mexico City TripleMania, so they should have a better idea of what is happening than a normal. Yet, the camerawork was actually far worse. There were so many missed shots; big moments missed when AAA was in replays, and issues with the audio at different points of the show. The first hour of the English feed had the Spanish feed mixed in. The Spanish audio disappeared near the end of the cruiserweight title match. The reveal of Los Micros Gemelos Diabalos appearing on the show – something Latin Lover had teased for months – was nearly missed. (AAA managed to get them on-screen for 8 seconds, which was such a poor job that they had to explain what had happened a half hour later.) There were timing issues in the Vampiro, and he had an on-screen temper tantrum when he couldn’t find a chair for the planned finish. The fans who put up their version of matches on YouTube make for better viewing than AAA does half the time; by having only one camera, they can’t mess up switching to the wrong one like AAA does every single show. It never gets better, and it will never get better, because it’s part of an endemic poor culture where repeated failure is ignored.

This TripleMania also had severe timing issues. In the final press conference before the event, Dorian Roldan asked people to be ready for the show’s start but said there would be no matches there. The reason to be there was a strong history of AAA video package, albeit one that mostly focused on the familiar names. AAA then went directly into the women’s title match, with most seats still empty because the head of the promotion had told them all there would be no wrestling until 9 pm. AAA then started the Copa Baradahl as the pre-show supposedly crossed over to the main show. (More on that in a sec.) What appears to have happened is AAA got 4 hours of satellite time instead of the usual 5, and so had to start earlier than expected to squeeze everything in. They did get everything in, though it was a rather sudden ending for the English broadcast when they were informed they were out of time. Maybe the reason for the shorter window was general idiocy or strictly budgetary. There’s no defense for saying, “There will be no matches on the pre-show,” and then not bothering to say, “plans change, we’re starting early,” except pure laziness on AAA’s part.

The biggest production error may not have been AAA’s fault. Or maybe it was a result of starting action early on the pre-show. TrillerTV originally started the free pre-show at 9:30 and just never signaled it was over. The entire TripleMania show aired as part of the “free pre-show” and remained accessible on Triller’s until Sunday afternoon. It was well known that the show was for free, and AAA and Triller didn’t bother to fix the problem. If you paid to watch the show live, you paid for no reason—everyone got it whether they paid or not. Part of paying for a show is getting the show, but I believe part of paying for the show is you’re paying to get something other people don’t get. If I paid $25 for a show and it turned out to be free, I feel it’s fair to ask for a refund of that $25. I have actually done that with this show, but I haven’t heard back yet. I encourage anyone else who paid for TripleMania Mexico City to ask for a refund. (In past years, TripleMania airing for free would’ve led to a large uptick in viewership. There wasn’t much this year because AAA is what AAA is.)

Speaking of things said by the AAA management, Konnan recently explained that the reason AAA storylines struggled over the last few years is because the Mexicans were getting too much money from the US, they’d leave with his titles, and so Konnan would be unable to tell his stories the way he wanted to tell them. (Konnan portrayed it as if putting titles on people who would not be working in Mexico was a thing out of his control.) He insisted this would not be a problem going forward. Indeed, he’s addressed the situation by taking title belts off Mexicans and putting them on US-based workers who are obviously going to make working elsewhere their top priority. If another promotion did the same thing Booker Konnan just did – bad-mouthing Mexicans for making money and blatantly favoring non-Mexicans over them – podcast Konnan would raise the issue of racial discrimination. Matt Riddle, Satnam Singh, and not-Jinder Mahal are not over, and Satnam was the better wrestler. The Indians weren’t meant to get over in the tag title match; that was a Jeff Jarrett heat segment. The wrestlers in the three-way tried, but no one cared about that match or Matt Riddle. These people are over to the booking team, and the booking team is focused on stuff that pops themselves. Matt Riddle is also an avid marijuana smoker, and Konnan frequently seems to favor people who share that hobby with him. Both of the decisions seem to freeze these belts out for many months to come.

Vampiro’s match was the expected celebration of Vampiro in the strange ways that could only appeal to him. (Between the big angle and the Vampiro segment, there hasn’t been as much self-love in wrestling since Lanny Poffo passed away.) It was “cinematic” in the ways only people who don’t follow wrestling would understand “cinematic” to mean. They didn’t want to do a proper match – Vampiro made a point of getting close to the ring but never it in. Vampiro (and whoever was working with him) had some ideas for Bits but didn’t want to go through the effort to thinking how they’d figuring out how they’d work in a match (or bumping), and wanted to have the live crowd pat Vampiro on the back as he shambled past him, so they just did a bunch of bits live. The part I most dreaded about the match was going on forever, and it did not. It was a bunch of 30-second skits, with a minute or two breaks between them as Vampiro stumbled wearily from one location to another location. He didn’t sell, nothing anyone else did really affected him, and the rest of the world existed only when he needed parts of it to exist. He got to book himself as a god – a weak, diminished, broken-down god – and why shouldn’t he if everyone else here with any booking power gets to do the same? It did nothing for anyone besides Vampiro, and that was the entire point. Truly, Vampiro got a gigantic break by Penta never agreeing to do this as pitched – people would’ve had expectations of being an actual match, and Vampiro would’ve had to work with an opponent, maybe even put someone over a bit. Vampiro had no interest in any of that.

I wonder how much Pirata Morgan got paid for showing up, lightly hitting an unresponsive Vampiro for exactly 58 seconds of work, calmly brawling with Octagon Jr. (bizarrely wearing his title belt) and then disappearing.He earned every peso. His gold cape looked great.

There was some social media discussion about the La Parka cameo in the Vampiro being offensive; it was the most viral clip of the show, and people argued about whether it was respectful to his memory. It was weird to me, but I also figured it immediately was Karis La Momia Jr. in the mask – he was wearing it during the march on Thursday – and I can’t have an issue with it if he doesn’t have an issue with it. It didn’t add anything to match, but it did what it was supposed to do. A lot of the four-hour TripleMania seemed to exist to be repurposed 10-second clips to post on TripleMania. The clown balloon escape of the cage was the same way. AAA cannot monetize that clip. They can’t even monetize their TV show. they just figure “buzz->???->money” and book accordingly. The Dorian Roldan unmasking was another thing. It’s one of those moments where the wrestling promotion is saying in real-time everyone who watches their show is too big of a moron to figure out it’s Dorian Roldan under the mask from the moment he walks out, as the announcers insist it must be a surprise. The social media department can clip it down to a few seconds after the fact, and it plays fine when it’s just over an instant. It’s a show supposed to be watched via funny clips the next day; any deeper look reveals the surrounding mess.

There’s not much to say about the main event cage match. The balloon escape was cute and a new idea on a show that was not exactly flush with them. Fiscal and Abismo were having problems, but also Abismo betraying Psicosis and getting back with Cibernetico with no setup or logic left me unclear which side I was supposed to be on. AAA gave Psicosis II some dignity in his unmasking, then missed easy camera shots of him embracing his family after the match. The iconic image of last year’s CMLL Aniversario was unmasked Dragon Rojo Jr. hugging his family, and AAA cannot produce that same shot. I wonder what that split means for the AAA trios titles, though I can rest assured that this is not something AAA is considering.

There’s not a lot to say about the women’s match. Flammer is OK at this point, though not used to working hard in the match. Faby Apache would rather do spots with Hijo del Tirantes because she thinks she can get more of a reaction with him than any of the women. She may be right. Flammer turned out to be less important than Faby, Tirantes, and Karen Jarrett, and the women’s match happening in front of a quarter-full crowd only existed as a setup for an ultimately meaningless tag title match.

There’s not a lot to say about the Copa. Marco Corleone looked older facially but was still in great shape. Kenzo Suzuki looked like a man very retired from professional wrestling but happy to be in an AAA show one last time. The stipulation that the winner would get a title shot of their choosing felt bolted on at the last second to give it some stakes, though the guy who already has a belt earning a title shot is goofy.

AAA kept the arena very dark throughout the whole show, only posting their usual carefully selected photos of the attendance (which were also dark.) I have not scoured Instagram to examine the crowd; I don’t think it’s worth the effort when AAA insists they had their best show ever no matter what happened. Either AAA didn’t have a big crowd or failed to show that big crowd. The crowd sounded much better than usual – crowd audio is one place where AAA’s shown year-to-year improvement –

There were no mentions of TripleMania Mexico City on Unimas Saturday. It will air there in three weeks, which will be news to everyone watching the show. Unpleasant news, I know, but there’s at distinct chance someone might end the show to fix the dozens of shots AAA missed live, and those people will see a better show. I will say I was on AAA about missing the chance to convert Unimas viewers into PPV buyers but that was a misplaced concern; it’s better for people not to have seen that broadcast of the show because it would’ve run them off, and most of them probably wouldn’t end up having giving Triller any more since AAA broadcast the show for free.

There’s also no knowing how things will work out if people make different choices, but it’s always interesting to speculate. Watching Octagon Jr. be one of AAA’s best performers this year and relegated to the battle royal and a blink-and-you-missed-it appearance in the Vampiro “match” made me wonder where others would’ve been if they stuck around. Maybe Mala Fama would’ve ended up in the cage match, but I believe AAA loved the idea of doing the Fiscal/Abismo stuff. It would’ve appealed strongly to AAA, and those guys would’ve bumped out first. Where would’ve Aramis been? Maybe he could take Octagon Jr.’s place in the Vampiro match since he was loosely aligned with him, but AAA seemed to drop that in favor of the Vatos Locos idea. (That’s gone nowhere, but never mind.) There’s no telling how well AEW will follow up with Hologram outside now that they’re leaving their Arlington stop, but I do know that he was 5-0 and put over as a rising star on their TV. Aramis was 2-8 in AAA last year, definitely not put over.

I watched the last half of this show frustrated. Frustrated that I gave AAA the benefit of the doubt that they could put on a show that didn’t suck, and frustrated that I’ll have the entire promotion mad at me for saying their terrible show was indeed terrible. The reason why AAA people get angry at me is not even the reason they think. They believe I’m unfair; I don’t give them credit where they do, and that’s why I’m the ire of the attention. They’re mad at me because there’s no one else to be mad at. No one else bothers to cover AAA anymore; they’ve run off everyone else with their booking, with their terrible production, with them running off wrestlers people wanted to see, with their general attitude, with the obstacles AAA throws in anyone’s path to watch and learn about their shows, and with how none of this ever gets better. No one else bothers to deal with all that to find out if the Laredo Kid match was a three or four-star match. (It was 3.5. It was not 5.) If I disappeared tomorrow, the only news about AAA in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter would be whatever Meltzer politely asks Konnan when they’re gossiping about relevant US stuff. This specific day makes AAA easy to overlook – the NJPW G1 final happened later that night, and AEW just announced big news and has their Wembly show coming up, there may be no actual edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter to rate matches this week, but it’s not like people are dying to talk about AAA on any other day. No one outside of Mexico would miss AAA if they disappeared tomorrow. AAA can draw whatever they draw, claim whatever number they want on top of it, and point to some trending topic on the dying platform of Twitter, but they’re still utterly irrelevant to the rest of the wrestling world. The AAA problem is not me; the AAA problem is running off everyone else who might tell their story the way they want because they realize it’s a waste of their efforts. I’m just the final stubborn person left. There are no choirs of voices who will sing cheerful AAA songs, just waiting for me to shut up so they can be heard. It’ll just be a silence of AAA’s making.

That’s AAA’s problem. My problem is that I can see AAA is bad and will not get better soon. In recent years, I’ve gone from watching a lot of Mexico City indie wrestling to mostly giving up on it because it was bad and wouldn’t get better soon. I rarely watch IWRG because most of the wrestling is terrible – I’ll pick up a match or two if they look good, but I’m just posting results from most shows (and not bothering with even that if IWRG can’t be bothered to write them up.) After a few false starts, I think I’m generally done with Big Lucha – they gave up what made them special, and there’s not enough else to get me to stick around. I may be in the same place with AAA right now. It’s not good blog content to tell you how terrible AAA is; everyone reading this knows AAA is terrible, and they’ve long stopped caring enough about it to be concerned with the specific way off terrible. I hope those reading this blog entry today get something out of it. Still, the hours I’ve spent on this could’ve gone to discovering something new – I could’ve spent Sunday reading a Rolando Vera biography that’s been sitting in my bag for months and told you all about it. I could’ve dug into the lucha libre scenes I don’t watch enough. I could’ve picked up some of the magazine recaps I’ve been doing or started a new project going the ’90s stuff I’ve barely seen. I could’ve spent it enjoying non-wrestling content, which would have made me a more rounded person with better insights into all of this. I could’ve spent it wandering around on a cloudy summer day and been far happier than I am right now. I spent very early Sunday morning wandering around in my house, my mind racing to put together the words I would say about this show. That’s not healthy. I felt horrible on Sunday, and I felt even worse on Monday. People think I’m doing bits when I get very aggravated over AAA, but they’re not. I am very aggravated. I wouldn’t put up with this with any other entertainment – there’s too much good stuff out there, and there’s not nearly enough time to get to it all to hate-watch – and I’d handwaved AAA already if I wasn’t writing this blog. And, again, I’m not sure most people care about AAA in any detail at this point, so why am I doing this?

AAA will have one or two weeks of TripleMania recaps on Space. They’ll include a couple of minutes of new footage – the videos they taped backstage and posted for social, basically – but nothing else. They’ll follow with the second half of Verano de Escandalo, featuring Faby Apache winning a title opportunity she’s already lost. None of the matches look particularly special, and it doesn’t matter if they’re special – no one cares; it’s not really worth writing about. Rob likes to tell a story about the early days of this blog, about how I only covered CMLL because I thought AAA sucked. That’s not true; I covered just CMLL because lucha libre is weird and confusing, and there are a million people. and I didn’t know any of them, and I was learning how to swim before going into deeper waters. After twenty years of diving into it, maybe now I’ve concluded that the original theory was correct – it’s not worth covering AAA closely because it does indeed suck. I don’t know; I do know that AAA’s schedule means I don’t have to think much about any of this for weeks, and I’ll do my best to write a lot less about it when it does come up.