AAA Triplemania XXX - Tijuana

Note: As a rule, “recap” posts like this are - for the time being - likely to bypass the Patreon site altogether, and just get uploaded straight to the blog. As these will be more or less stream of consciousness thoughts on shows I’ve watched, rather than requiring any research or forethought, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to even temporarily hide them behind a paywall, and the immediacy of commenting on live events (he says, picking this one up a week after the fact) means just going straight to the blog makes the most sense too.

AAA, then. For those of us who follow Lucha Libre, a source of near constant frustration and bemusement, and to those who don’t, little more than a meme of a promotion. I don’t pretend to be a Lucha Libre expert, but it’s a style and a scene that is close to my heart, particularly the mid-to-late ‘90s era that I voraciously consumed during my tape trading days, and which AAA is currently mining for precious nostalgia. Because of that, it can be annoying to see major AAA events being the only Mexican wrestling events to really breach the collective consciousness of the broader wrestling Twitter-sphere, and rarely for good reasons - 2019’s violent, surreal and incredible dad-fight of a Mask vs. Hair match between Blue Demon Jr and Dr Wagner Jr made few people’s match of the year list (shout out to Voices of Wrestling, where it at least breached their top ten), despite being arguably my favourite of that year, and certainly the most visually striking, yet every audio miscue or production mishap invariably ends up all over social media. Missed or overly extravagant dives, from time to time, fall into the usual “snitch tag Jim Cornette” quagmire of wrestling being reduced to GIFs and taken out of context - particularly egregious where Lucha Libre is concerned, as it’s a form that differs significantly in both psychology and match structure to what is conventionally accepted in North America, and shouldn’t be subject to criticisms on those grounds; something Cornette, in saner moments, begrudgingly admits, so long as it doesn’t provide him with an opportunity to berate his perpetual objects of disgust, Kenny Omega or the Young Bucks.

AAA are a promotion that don’t make it easy for themselves. Their booking varies dramatically from the extremely short-termist - filling a match with swerves, run-ins and drama to get momentary gasps of shock from the live audience, with no thought given to what follows from it, or matches announced only to never be mentioned again - to the excruciatingly long-term, where matches are set up a year in advance, and almost never come to fruition. In recent years, there have probably been fewer Triplemania main events that went ahead as originally planned than were changed due to injury, politics (for “politics”, often read: “L.A. Park reasons”) or some arcane explanation known only to the Lucha Gods. Blue Demon Jr., in the aforementioned 2019 main event, was hastily turned heel to substitute for L.A. Park, the original planned adversary for Wagner Jr., while the previously announced Loser Leaves Mexico match between Vampiro and Konnan for that same show never took place, without explanation, and was summarily never mentioned again. The shows themselves are often chaotic, shambolic, and counter-productive given that one stated aim of bringing in talent better known outside of Mexico is to bring international eyes to the product. On one level, all of this is part of their charm, but on the other, it limits AAA’s international reputation to something of a joke, and in spite of all those flaws, I think it’s ill-deserved, and does a disservice to what are often wildly entertaining events.

This show, the second of three Triplemania branded events (and, of the three, seemingly the most “Wrestlemania Backlash” in terms of cynical marketing) suggests that, once the final Mexico City chapter is out of the way, we’ll be talking about 2022’s run of Triplemaniae in much the same sense. Through no fault of AAA’s own, they have been robbed of a number of planned matches - Tijuana’s scheduled main event of the Hardy Boyz vs. Hermanos Lee was curtailed by the DUI arrest of Jeff Hardy just a few days earlier, prompting a scramble to find a replacement, and a number of typically unhelpful and uninformative press announcements by AAA management. The replacement ended up being Johnny Caballero - the former John Morrison, in my favourite post-Johnny Mundo incarnation, and a name I’d be happy for him settling into everywhere - but only announced on the night, and allowing for speculation to run wild that it might be anyone but someone who is likely to become a AAA big show regular regardless. Matches set up or heavily teased on the Monterrey branch of the Triplemania triple-header went unmentioned here - after Dr Wagner Jr and Andrade El Idolo joined forces to attack Psycho Clown last time around, there was no sign of either man in Tijuana, while NGD, Cien Caras and Mascara 2000 all aided Rayo de Jalisco Jr. in taking out Blue Demon Jr. in Monterrey, Demon was the only part of that equation to show up in Tijuana, and worked heel when he did. An altercation between ‘90s stand-out (and WWF Royal Rumble 1997 entrant) Latin Lover, Vampiro, Jeff Jarrett and Rey Escorpion is unlikely to amount to anything thanks to Jarrett returning to the WWE fold in an executive position, and a possible injury suffered by the long-retired Latin Lover, but received no follow-up whatsoever on this show. Wrestlers eliminated from the Ruleta de la Muerte tournament - Canek, L.A. Park, Rayo De Jalisco Jr and Ultimo Dragon - were promised to appear on every Triplemania-branded show this year, but none made the trip to Tijuana. Canek - a wrestler so old he once won the World Championship from Lou Thesz - and Jalisco, it has to be said, were not missed.

On, then, to the event itself.

The “pre-show” match was a seven-woman cage match, in an approximation of the men’s Ruleta de la Muerte tournament - in which the losers progress to an eventual mask vs. mask final in Mexico City - made for a confusing affair, where victory was achieved by escaping the cage, and the last two remaining women would progress to a separate match later in the evening with their masks on the line. The relative lack of stakes - knowing we would only see someone unmasked in the follow-up, and that this was a match taking place while the audience still filed in, and before the pomp, circumstance, and impossibly giant flags of the opening ceremony - meant that it was a match difficult to get inspired by, particularly as AAA’s women’s division is rarely a focal point, and none of the women they routinely present as actual stars worth caring about were present in this match. To add to the confusion, three of the women in the match - Flammer, Lady Maravilla and La Hiedra - were stablemates, all representing Los Toxicas, and made only the clunkiest and most confusing gestures toward having that count toward the overall story. There was some attempted ultraviolence when a shard of glass was introduced to the match but, given that all seven women wore masks, the bloodletting went all but unseen, a wasted risk on a match that few will remember in a week’s time. Ultimately, it came down to Flammer and Chik Tormenta, who brawled briefly after the fact, setting up for their Mask match later in the show.

A thought now on El Hijo del Tirantes. I have a soft spot for the big goof, and his preposterously over-the-top and done-to-death heel referee antics. It’s a role that has its place in Lucha, but is all but unknown outside of Mexico in the extent of his obvious, and frequently unchallenged, bias. He is a bad referee, in the sense that he is a referee who frequently works to benefit villains, but he is also a bad referee in that he is genuinely, legitimately not very good at his job, as evidenced by a now infamous failure to count a three count in the Young Bucks vs. Fenix/El Hijo del Vikingo main event of Triplemania Monterrey. He is almost invariably assigned as referee to women’s matches, where he gets up to his most blatant of antics, some of which were on display here, as he helped Rudo luchadoras climb the cage and actively worked to prevent Tecnicos from doing so. I find him entertaining, but his involvement ensures that the majority of women’s matches in AAA tend to be played for laughs, and in many ways it was reassuring to see him take a much smaller role on this show than he ordinarily would, thanks in part to the AAA debut of the excellent Marty Alias. Even Tirantes Sr. got a booking, though, with no follow-up on a now tortuously long-running feud where the elder Tirantes, himself a heel referee of old, has sided with the Tecnicos against his over-reaching and villainous son. Given that El Hijo has been growing out his long top-knotted hair, I had assumed that we were heading towards a Hair vs. Hair match, likely with El Hijo del Tirantes on one side and perhaps a Tirantes Sr.-managed Faby Apache on the other, but that’s neither here nor there.

The show proper began with Copa Triplemania, the great traditional “cram every fucker on the card” match that inconsistently makes the cut for Triplemania events, sometimes under slightly different names (i.e. Copa Antonio Pena) and with variations to the rules; it’s often somewhere between a gauntlet match and a Royal Rumble, and this year eliminations over the top rope were counted, likely to allow for a number of Luchadores to be taken out of the equation without having take a pin or a submission and lose their heat, brother. That was particularly apparent in the double elimination, Cactus Clothesline-style, of Cibernetico and Pagano, who are likely on track for a match in Mexico City, possibly with hair on the line. Cibernetico’s stated goal since arriving in AAA has been to rid the company of Konnan, which led many to suspect he would be crashing this show’s ceremony celebrating Konnan, but no such thing occurred, and it looks like he’ll be mixing it up with Pagano for the foreseeable. Surprises in this match included locals Mecha Wolf and Bestia 666, with Bestia’s father Damian 666 confusingly entering the ring but not formally being part of the match, while ‘90s legends Heavy Metal, Charly Manson and Vampiro all made appearances, as did the usual midcard comedy troupe of the excellent and criminally underrated Mr. Iguana, exoticos Dulce Kanela and Mamba (who looks to have been elevated to the token Exotico star spot since Pimpinella Escarlata parted ways with the company) and eventual winner Nino Hamburguesa.

It was a briefly fun, but often dragging and uneventful match. As is the bane of televised Battle Royals everywhere, much of the action went unnoticed by the cameras - including Vampiro’s elimination, which remains a mystery. For a man who has repeatedly made claims of extraordinary physical injury, disrepair and illness, Vampiro busted out a top rope superplex and a number of high spots that doctors likely wouldn’t recommend, yet all for naught when whoever eliminated him got no “rub” for doing so. Battle Royals can be tremendous live entertainment, particularly for casual fans, as the visual appeal of seeing a ring fill up with outlandish characters, and action everywhere you turn, is obvious and immediate in a way that a more conventional match isn’t - add in the timed entrances of a Royal Rumble or Copa Triplemania, and the added appeal of being introduced to a new character every two minutes is clear. That doesn’t always translate to TV, when cameras and directors not primed to keep up with key spots are likely to miss big moments and eliminations, and the match can seem like an unstructured mess. The opposite can be a problem too - some of WWE’s weaker Rumble matches have resulted by an over-conservatism of action, where a camera focused on an entrance or ringside shenanigans prompts everyone in the ring to simply stop bothering to put on a show.

Arguably the match of the night, and one that would be winning plaudits across the board were it held outside of AAA, was the five-way title unification bout for the AAA Cruiserweight and Latin American Heavyweight Championships, which also included El Hijo del Vikingo, though his title was not on the line. Competitors were Fenix, Bandido, Laredo Kid, El Hijo del Vikingo and Taurus. Taurus is more than just a great look; a superb all-rounder, and probably the best base in the business, he’s capable of working absolute magic with some of the flippy boys and high-flyers in a match like this, not least of all Vikingo, who is currently neck-and-neck with Komander in conversation as the greatest lucha high-flyer of the current generation, and almost certainly the most innovative. Vikingo - also in possession of a fantastic look - is capable of physical feats that defy explanation; whether his imploding 450 Dragonrana on Taurus, outside-in springboards from the middle rope, or all manner of rope walks and jumps from the ringpost itself; aside from the short-lived careers of some of the stars of China’s OWE, Vikingo represents the greatest quantum leap forward in what audiences might perceive as possible in mainstream wrestling since the days of Rey Mysterio Jr and Ultimo Dragon on WCW Monday Nitro, and is long overdue the American breakout appearance he deserves. That makes it all the more frustrating that, despite putting their ostensible top title, the Mega Championship, on Vikingo, AAA seem reluctant to view him or treat him as the potentially generational talent that he assuredly is. In Monterrey he took the pinfall to the Young Bucks - and, due to the incompetence of Tirantes pausing and then restarting his count, was visually beaten for at least a seven count - whereas here he once again came up short, albeit not involved in the finish. In both instances, the plan seems to be to build toward an eventual match with Fenix in Mexico City, and AAA are likely holding out hope for a big match with Kenny Omega when he returns from injury, but given their track record, I’m not sure either match bears fruit. Omega is key to all of this - it’s likely that it’s only because of highlights of Vikingo’s performances going viral outside of Mexico, and Omega reacting to them by requesting a match with the young luchadore, that he was given the championship in the first place; without that carrot to dangle, it’s likely Vikingo would still be in opening match scramble territory. Even here, he was an afterthought in another story, until the belt-waving aftermath suggesting the direction is still Fenix/Vikingo. We await with bated breath.

Blue Demon Jr vs. Pentagon Jr next, in the Ruleta de la Muerte match. Demon Jr is a constant source of frustration; usually a dull and pedestrian worker, but capable of fleeting moments of greatness, as in the aforementioned 2019 bloodbath against Dr Wagner Jr. While Demon didn’t go to quite such extremes here, it was clear that match set the blueprint, as Demon utilised some of the most shocking weapons he’d put to use in that classic - a hammer, and a series of glass beer bottles - in a match full of the mask-tearing and bloodletting you expect from an elder statesman Lucha brawl. Pentagon Jr - always a more compelling worker on his own than when playing against his dramatic strengths in the Lucha Bros - dragged a better than expected match out of the old man, which alongside the aforementioned weapons, ended up involving tables and chairs, with Blue Demon surprisingly picking up the win with a top rope Canadian Destroyer through a table. That means Penta moves on to the final of the tournament - Blue Demon Jr feels like a naturally better fit, with 2022 marking a hundred years since the anniversary of the original Blue Demon’s birth, and the prospect of him defending his mask under those circumstances feeling a bigger deal for a Mexico City show, and a Triplemania anniversary. With Fenix seemingly accounted for in the Vikingo match, keeping a Lucha Bros match off the table (I had expected a Lucha Bros/Hermanos Lee/FTR match-up in Mexico City, for the record), it remains to be seen what part, if any, Pentagon Jr will play at Chapter 3.

Speaking of masks, Flammer and Chik Tormenta returned for what was apparently the first women’s Mask vs. Mask match in AAA history. While a sometimes rough around the edges match, it delivered on the expectations of a match of that magnitude - both men’s husbands, The Tiger and Reycko, got involved, as did their stablemates, Los Toxicas and Los Vipers, for a chaotic, messy and dramatic match, becoming of the stipulation. Chik Tormenta was unmasked in the end, emotionally allowing Reycko to remove her mask, while Flammer celebrated with her family.

Back to the Ruleta de la Muerte, Psycho Clown faced Villano IV in a match with familial consequence - Villano IV is the last of his generation of the Villano clan to remain masked, and took part in a legendary Mask vs. Mask match in the 1980s, defeating Los Brazos, the father (perhaps better known to some as Super Porky) and uncles of Psycho Clown. Since the announcement of this tournament, Villano IV has been seen by many as the clear fall guy, and while little has changed to alter that view, plenty has changed to make people appreciate his inclusion. Far from the washed up old man that many expected, he’s shown himself more than capable of the kind of drag-out brawl that is AAA at its best; mask ripping, blood spilling, weapon swinging lunacy. While this didn’t reach the heights of Villano IV’s incredible brawl with L.A. Park at the previous event, Psycho Clown - who deserves to never be off anyone’s Hall of Fame ballot after dragging an impossibly old Canek to a watchable match - brought a different energy to the equation that made for a really enjoyable fight. They used thumbtacks at one point - always hilarious when wrestlers use tacks with coloured tips, making it look like they raided the primary school notice board en route to the Lucha - and did a fun (albeit not for Psycho Clown) spot where Villano IV drilled him with a typically stiff punch, and Psycho dropped to the mat, instinctively putting his hands down to cushion his landing, only to end up with a palm full of tacks.
There’s a psychology to using everyday objects as weapons in wrestling - for one, I want it to be plausible that a wrestler has gone out and sourced this stuff off their own back and hidden it under the ring, or else that it might be on-site anyway. Chairs, tables, ladders, toolboxes, and so on, are all things that conceivably would be on hand, or stored under a wrestling ring - kendo sticks, wooden doors and elaborately constructed combinations of table, barbed wire and whatever else, not so much; so at least allude, whether on commentary or by having it made explicit by the wrestlers themselves, to the story of how those objects got there. A nondescript bag full of tacks is something that could easily be hidden away. The other aspect of this is that we can relate to everyday objects. To look at the more absurd of deathmatch gimmicks, most of us could only hazard a guess at what a barbed wire circus net might feel like to land on, but we all have a pretty good idea what getting pricked with a pin feels like. We can relate to Psycho Clown getting pins jabbed into his hands more than we can relate to the sensation of him taking a bump on to them - so starting there, and escalating up to the bigger spots; the eventual finish being an Air Raid Crash on to thumb tacks, has a logical build and progression of violence that’s often lacking in the Lucha approach to wrestling psychology, which deals far more in ideas of exchanges of momentum than in escalation, tension, and “heat”.

That means Villano IV, as expected, is through to the final, against Pentagon Jr. It feels like a foregone conclusion, and not the match I’d have predicted, but makes a kind of sense in appealing to different demographics - younger fans, and international fans who know Penta from AEW but don’t ordinarily follow lucha, will be more intrigued by the idea of him losing his mask, while older fans will be drawn in by Villano. If the match had, as expected, come down to Villano and Blue Demon, there’s a risk that you only capture half of that equation. That said, it doesn’t feel like the best use of Pentagon Jr, who hasn’t been one of the stand-outs of this tournament, and who arguably could be better used elsewhere on a big Triplemania finale. This also leaves Psycho Clown, currently, without a major match on the books - the events of Monterrey suggest some kind of match with Andrade could be in the works, but frankly, who knows?

The main event pitted Hermanos Lee against Matt Hardy and Johnny Caballero - introduced as Johnny Hardy by Matt, but never referred to as such by AAA. I’m a fan of Caballero, particularly in this latest iteration, but it’s difficult to argue that he was a fair replacement for Jeff Hardy in terms of USP in this match, and arguably AAA should have conceded that point and not had this match headline; without the appeal of the Hardys, or of this as a match between brother tag teams, or the possibility that at one point the AEW Tag Team Titles may have been part of the equation, it wasn’t a main event-worthy match, and it wouldn’t have hurt to have bumped either the Villano/Psycho Clown match or the five-way to the top spot. That was only more evident in the early going, which involved a lot of stalling, though more in the holiday camp comedy sense than in terms of allowing a big match time to breathe and build anticipation. Hermanos Lee are a great team, but not a great fit with Matt Hardy, who at this stage in his career just can’t possibly keep up with young luchadores, in an unfamiliar style and environment - I had been under the impression that this was Matt’s first time wrestling for a Mexican promotion, but a quick check of Cagematch tells me that he worked a handful of matches for AAA back in 2015, so I stand corrected. This wasn’t a memorable match, with the highlights coming from the antics of Caballero mimicking Jeff Hardy’s signature dance moves, taunts and spots, looking like he was having the time of his life and quickly moving from endearing to annoying through repetition. That eventually paid off with Caballero - who was never really a babyface in the first place - turning on Matt to cost his team the match. There was no sense that this was a match with any thought given to the follow-up or any forward progression for the men involved, they just wanted to give the regulars a win, and let them stand tall with Matt Hardy the guest babyface to send the fans home happy. That’s the sort of finish that belongs on a B-show, not a Triplemania, and the drama of the Villano/Psycho match would have definitely afforded the show a better sense of closure. Just to get some last minute AAA shenanigans in, the finish involved the Lee Brothers screwing up a pinfall/moonsault combination for no discernible reason. Hermanos Lee feel stuck in a similar rut to Vikingo; AAA recognise that they are talented, and draw attention from elsewhere, but having now failed to deliver on two promised tag team “dream matches” for the pair, seem to have no real vision for where they actually belong in the grand scheme of things, even when they’re ostensibly the main event.

The show was good - genuinely entertaining, with the weakest matches being by no means bad, and plenty of diverse fare, with little in the way of AAA’s most egregious booking disasters. But those disasters often go hand-in-hand with a sense of unpredictability and drama that was sorely lacking for most of the show; this felt like a bigger than usual AAA event, but not one that merited the AAA name, and the lack of focus or follow-up on major stories only exacerbated that. Hopefully they’ll pull out all the stops for Mexico City.