Review: AAA Triplemania XXXII - Tijuana
For the past two years, I have been writing reviews of the three shows that, collectively, make up AAA’s flagship extravaganza, Triplemania. For whatever reason, these reviews, and other occasional bits of writing about Lucha Libre, tend to perform better than most of my writing. When I started this blog, and this website in general, it was with three things in mind - to provide somewhere to keep the old writing muscles working, to build a body of work to support my book, and, somewhat more ambitiously, to carve out a little nostalgic piece of the Old Internet, a reminder of how things where back before everyone was permanently and terminally online, and before the internet consisted of three or four websites that everybody uses yet nobody likes.
In service of that latter point, this blog was always intended to be almost wilfully esoteric, to pursue topics that interested me rather than whatever was dictated by the fleeting discourse of the day - above all else, it was to take a lonely stand in a sea of Monday Night RAW recaps, gossip and rumour-mongering, and top ten lists that make up most of wrestling writing online today. In doing so, I may not be making that sweet WhatCulture money, but I have cultivated a small and discerning audience for Whatever It Is That I Do, for which I am immensely thankful. It’s an audience that were happy to follow my niche interests down unlikely backroads in my recent pseudo-psychogeographical writing about an old friend and Soho’s connections to professional wrestling history, something I initially thought would be a patchwork quilt of niches within niches taken several steps too far into the realms of self-indulgence, and that has allowed me to collaborate with writers whose work I have admired for many years, and fellow travellers in the world of the obscure and the absurd and the last bastion of real internet comedy, when I appeared on Dogg Zzone 9000 to discuss the Argentinian pop-culture-eating-itself wrestling show Rambo y sus Titanes.
In light of all that, a commitment to reviewing or recapping every Triplemania because those posts did well felt like a betrayal. Everything I have set out to do here was to avoid the shackles of working for The Algorithm. As a rule, I only write recaps of contemporary wrestling shows if I feel they provide me with something worthwhile to say, generally about my philosophy towards wrestling as a whole, over the vagaries of who did or didn’t or should or shouldn’t have won any given match. Above all, this is a star rating free zone.
“Thankfully” - and I say that reservedly - the first of this year’s triple-header, the Monterrey wing of Triplemania back in April, was so unrelentingly dreadful that I couldn’t bear to write about it. I tend to balk at the suggestion that Triplemania is a show to be enjoyed ironically, to be watched for the chaos, lack of logic, and inexplicable decisions, like a Lucha Libre Ed Wood picture. In reality, those are the things that make Triplemania a frustrating experience, and you need to hack through the undergrowth of badly mixed sound, inexplicable finishes, and dismal refereeing, to find the real gems underneath. With matches built around aging old-timers, thoroughly washed ex-WWE stars, and horrendous booking, but no shining star like the currently injured former Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo waiting at the end of it all, Monterrey had almost nothing to recommend it for. Algorithm be damned, I wasn’t going to write about that.
But there was a slight problem. In a moment of hubris, I hadn’t just purchased Triplemania Monterrey. I had been a crafty customer, a savvy consumer, and embraced the discount that came of paying for all three shows in one purchase. I was locked in. So roll on June 15th, Tijuana, and Triplemania all over again.
A recurring theme in my criticisms of Triplemania since AAA switched to a three-show model is that there hasn’t been enough effort to treat them as a connected series; often, in typical Lucha Libre fashion, a match will be set up or teased on the first show, which might reasonably cause you to expect that match to take place by show three, and almost invariably, it never does. At least in previous years, the three shows have had a tournament running through them - 2022’s unexpectedly brilliant Ruleta de la Muerte reverse-mask tournament, and 2023’s “Rivals” tag team tournament that didn’t reach the same heights and was marred by lucha politics, yet still presented some fantastic matches. This year, there’s no such through thread. There is no tournament, no direct continuity between the matches of night one and the matches of nights two and three.
Instead, there is a theme. That theme is “Origenes”, an exercise in ‘90s revisionism, bringing Luchadores from AAA’s earliest days back into the mix - it was initially the theme for a one-off non-Triplemania show, but was so well received that AAA, with typical lack of restraint, extended the branding to the entire year of shows. Parts of it are almost tailor-made for someone like me, who cut his Lucha Libre teeth on grainy third-generation videos of ‘90s AAA, or anyone who’s first exposure to the Lucha style was through WCW and ECW in the ‘90s - appearances by names like Super Calo, Super Crazy and Charly Manson are like nostalgic catnip to the likes of us. Yet it still falls flat, because it’s difficult to see how indulging in 1990s nostalgia constitutes anything other than business as usual from a company that, in recent years, has afforded marquee Triplemania matches to Nicho el Millionario (better known to fans of American TV wrestling as the original Psicosis), L.A. Park (likewise, the former La Parka of WCW), Ultimo Dragon, Chessman, Cibernetico and so on and so forth.
The other theme running through the three shows is the retirement of Vampiro, another legend of the ‘90s, whose retirement tour has headlined the first two Triplemaniae of the year, and whose “final” match will likely be the main event of the third and biggest show in Mexico City. Lest you wonder why the scare-quotes around “final”, Wikipedia claims that Vampiro “officially came out of retirement” in February 2011, despite having wrestled in January 2011, throughout 2010 and the preceding years. He has, even by the standards of professional wrestlers, claimed to have been “retired” a spectacular number of times, yet he has wrestled multiple matches every single year since his debut in 1991. Perhaps this time “retirement” will stick. It should - I’ll get back to that later.
That lack of coherent theme only serves to highlight how the booking that does exist has been shoddy and illogical in the extreme, without the lode-bearing foundation of a tournament structure to keep AAA honest. Whether through slow ticket sales, or a desperate search for some kind of identity, this show had an additional gimmick, a real hat-on-a-hat, as Tijuana promotion The Crash got added to the mix for a series of interpromotional matches. Some of them involve people who actually regularly wrestle for The Crash, some of them involve wrestlers arbitrarily designated as Crash wrestlers. It adds some new faces to the mix, but it does little to make the show feel bigger or more coherent.
Lucha Libre is an unlikely and unusual position. For years, for all its chaos, AAA has been the more visible promotion on the national scale - their titles and top stars featured on AEW and TNA TV, while big name American stars making appearances at Triplemania ensured it at least made for a fleeting clickbait headline or two. In recent years, it seemed like no major US independent show was complete without a multi-luchadore scramble, usually structured around AAA wrestlers like El Hijo del Vikingo, Komander, and now former AAA stars like Taurus and, for the discerning sicko, Arez. Lucha libre has been having a Moment in wrestling outside of Mexico to a greater extent than since the height of Lucha Underground, itself a promotion largely built on the back of AAA talent. Until very recently, when American fans spoke of Lucha Libre, it was AAA they had in mind. But today, the ordinarily isolationist and stubbornly traditional CMLL is on an incredible run of form, with AEW appearances making overnight sensations of the likes of Hechicero, and Mistico is finally being given the opportunity to exorcise the US TV demons of his past. As CMLL’s star is on an unlikely ascendance, AAA is all but teetering on the edge of destruction, losing key talent at an alarming rate, reliant on ‘90s gimmicks, and by far the poorer partner in a relationship with AEW. While CMLL gets Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, and Claudio Castagnoli, AAA gets Jeff Jarrett, Satnam Singh, QT Marshall, and Parker Boudreaux.
Note: Shortly after writing the above, news broke of a potential WWE partnership with a promotion in Mexico and/or Puerto Rico. AAA seems the most likely candidate, but this is still all in the realms of speculation.
The show itself began with a ceremony to honour Damian 666, a lucha libre, hardcore wrestling, and Tijuana wrestling legend. Officially, this was to honour both Damian and his tag team partner Halloween - both of whom made unlikely appearances running interference at April’s Triplemania in Monterrey; unexpected, because Damian had suffered a heart attack a little under two months earlier, and the GoFundMe to help cover his medical bills is still ongoing, eliciting sizeable donations from the likes of Chris Jericho, Atsushi Onita, and the Lucha Brothers. One hopes that his involvement at two consecutive Triplemanias has at least paid well.
Without the benefit of anyone on the English language announce team that can translate promos, it’s hard to find much to say about what was said in a language I don’t speak, but it didn’t seem complicated - someone from AAA was there to honour La Familia Tijuana, but Damian’s son Bestia 666 and representatives from The Crash took exception, as Bestia wanted to do the honours himself. This drew the ire of Konnan, and of Bestia’s one-time tag team partner Mechawolf, who are involved in a match later on the show.
From what I could gather, this played into an ongoing feud between Konnan and Latin Lover - Latin was recently brought in to a creative role with AAA, which puts him and Konnan at odds both on and off-screen, and they’re milking it for an on-screen struggle for authority; a well that Konnan and AAA have gone to perhaps even more often than WWE over the years. On top of that, this added a narrative wrinkle of divided loyalties - Mecha Wolf is angry at his former tag team partner for representing The Crash rather than AAA; this would have been great motivation if it had ever come up before, but beggars can’t be choosers, this is already a tag team break-up storyline where AAA seems to have forgotten to book the part where the team actually broke up. The two partners get into a pull-apart brawl, everyone else gets out of there, and we move on to our first match.
Also, at some point in this segment, a mysterious eye symbol appeared on the screen over a field of static. This has been popping up on AAA shows for some time, and is clearly heralding something. If I were a betting man, I would say it’s a giant heel stable led by Konnan, but only because I’ve watched him book exactly that about three dozen times.
As a note on the mysterious eye, I was surprised to find myself praising the internal logic of AAA, particularly in light of recent trends in WWE. It’s not a dissimilar trope to WWE hyping the debut of the Wyatt 6, and the return of Bray Wyatt before that, with cryptic messages and QR codes, though in WWE’s case they never made any effort to actually explain why Bray Wyatt was communicating via QR code, or what any of it meant. They just knew that fans who would swallow up the tiniest hint of Lore would jump at the chance to play along with a treasure hunt, and in the process convince themselves that this was the same thing as depth.
The same night as Triplemania, WWE held Clash At The Castle in Glasgow, and I saw the finish of the main event of that show being praised on Twitter for the production - there’s a reveal that is kept off camera until the opportune moment for maximum shock value. But this only served to highlight what it is about WWE production that leaves me cold - that reveal only makes sense if you accept that WWE is a TV show and only a TV show, and that the camera is the only valid point-of-view. The commentary team, if they had so much as glanced up from their monitors, were looking straight in the eyes of the mystery man involved. There were thousands of people in the building who got a clear sight of him because wrestling is, above all, theatre in the round. It’s far from the most egregious example, but it felt like a distillation of how WWE present wrestling as a TV show with a live audience, rather than a live event that happens to be filmed, and I think it’s a hugely important distinction, and that many of wrestling’s inconsistencies can be traced back to how you reconcile that difference. Put simply, either the wrestlers are aware of the cameras or they are not, they are either characters within a self-contained TV drama, or they are characters who continue to exist outside of that drama, and are able to watch the TV show themselves.
By contrast, AAA of all promotions, showed a clip in one of the video packages on this show of the mysterious eyeball flashing up on-screen and Konnan storming the production truck to demand to know what was going on. Because we’re supposed to believe that nobody in AAA knows that the symbol means, yet it’s airing on their TV show. Recognising, as almost all wrestling television prior to the late 1990s did, that cameras and production techniques aren’t just a means to bring the action from live events into the home audience’s living rooms, but can be storytelling tools in their own right, and that almost all the logical consistencies of wrestling television can be tidied up with just a moment’s thought about how the constraints of the TV show work, is actually additive.
A wrestler I once trained under famously used to ask why wrestling had to be seen through the lens of sport, and why wrestling can’t be seen through the lens of comic books, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or any other genre. It’s a valid question, but one has to remember that it is still a question - sometimes, when asking “why not?”, you have to be prepared for an answer, and the answer to why wrestling is still tied to the lens of sport is because that’s how wrestling works. You can incorporate science fiction, horror, or any other genre you like, and many have, but the trappings of wrestling are of simulated competition, wins, losses, referees, and rules - strip all of them away, and in what meaningful sense is it still wrestling? One of those trappings of sport is the live event itself, and the recognition that the camera and production crew are there to document the event, but they do not constitute the extent of it - things happen beyond the camera’s lens, and anything that appears on-screen is there by design or by acknowledged and explainable accident. You can create a contained “TV show about wrestling” world, as Lucha Underground did, or you can create a wrestling show filmed for TV, but the halfway house that WWE (and all those who follow their lead) made the default format for wrestling TV in the late ‘90s has, to my mind, been to the immense detriment of wrestling production and of wrestling storytelling.
When people talk of Vince Russo’s contributions to wrestling in the late ‘90s, they talk of short and inconsequential matches, offensive gimmicks, of swerves and twists and turns, of a crash TV mentality, and of an approach to wrestling TV that has aged like milk. What they don’t talk about, and what has had a far longer lasting impact, is the tacit acceptance that wrestlers will talk backstage in full view of cameras they don’t acknowledge are there - heels and villains will scheme and plot, authority figures will take narratively significant phone calls, crimes will be committed, married wrestlers will flirt with others outside of their relationship, all caught on camera, with nobody in the audience questioning why the camera was there, or why the production truck cut to a backstage camera moments before an important conversation was about to take place, or why none of the wrestlers affected in these soap opera intrigues ever seems to think to watch back the wrestling TV show they are a star of to see what their colleagues are up to behind their back. The show either exists within the boundaries of the TV product, or outside of them, and I strongly believe that wrestling is better when it plumps for the latter, or at least when it makes a firm commitment either way.
That on the same day AAA seemed to understand that better than WWE at the height of their post-Vince McMahon powers should be cause for alarm - but then, I appreciate that to many viewers, these simply aren’t questions to concern ourselves with; to them, WWE has always done what they’ve always done, and having internalised the criticism that Kevin Dunn’s production relied on too many camera cuts, they now see even the simplest of shots, or approaches to filming wrestling that were commonplace in the 1980s, as revolutionary and cinematic, simply because they don’t fit the box marked “too many cuts”, and therefore must be good. And that’s fine. People who enjoy how WWE make wrestling have their thing, and I have my thing. The difference is that their thing makes millions of dollars, so what do I know?
Amusingly, after I wrote the above, the WWE’s latest spooky faction the Wyatt Six/Sicks debuted in dramatic fashion to close Monday Night RAW. They are an extension of the late Bray Wyatt, and I’ve made my feelings on Bray Wyatt’s brand of grab-bag genre clichés clear in the past. This was little different, and a perfect distillation of the argument I was already making here - this was a by-the-numbers horror movie scene that stood out only for how unusual it was for a wrestling event. But simulated murder by a (possibly magic?) evil cult is a hell of a place to start a wrestling story that ultimately has to end in the ring - how do you go from that introduction to making an in-ring victory feel remotely like a narrative escalation? How do other wrestlers on this show logically interact with this group? We’ve seen spooky nonsense in wrestling before, we’ve even seen kayfabe murder in wrestling before, and it creates an absurd situation where a commentary team has to treat Bron Breakker attempting to earn an Intercontinental Title shot as something of equal worth and significance as mass murder of their own colleagues, and where the existence of magical powers and apparent demons doesn’t seem to phase any of the wrestlers or other performers on the show, all of them content to carry on their petty squabbles and wrestling feuds seemingly unfazed by evidence that their entire understanding of the world has been upended. Demons are real, and wrestlers don’t care, is the best possible explanation.
Douglas Wolk wrote that the best thing a comic book adaptation of a movie could be was a movie that doesn’t move - that is to say, something pointless and inherently unsatisfying, playing to the strengths of neither medium. The best thing genre fiction can be in pro-wrestling is a pro-wrestling version of that genre fiction. A horror story within the confines of a conventional pro-wrestling show will always be, at best, worse than a standalone horror story - and, if The Fiend was anything to go by, will also produce bad wrestling. It is neither one thing nor the other, and less than the sum of its parts. Sooner or later, the bell has to ring.
Team AAA (Faby Apache, Mr. Iguana, Nino Hamburguesa, Pimpinela Escarlata & Microman) vs. Team The Crash (Anubis, Keyra, Mamba & Toto)
The first thing you might notice is that there’s one extra person on Team AAA than on Team The Crash - Cagematch has Microman down as accompanying AAA, rather than being on their term, but he seemed to act as an active participant, inasmuch as that distinction means anything in a AAA multi-person schmozz, so I’m listing the 3’3” megastar as an official member of the team.
The other thing you might notice is that Team AAA’s Microman doesn’t really work for AAA, while on The Crash side of the things, Keyra is no stranger to AAA, having worked there for years until recently, while Mamba has been a regular fixture in this sort of AAA opening match fare for years, so hardly a standard-bearer for a rival promotion. But let’s not get hung up on such things - if only because there are worse offenders later.
I actually really enjoyed this match - Anubis is a luchadore I’ve seen very little of, but I’m a big fan of his Ancient Egypt-inspired look, and he was a solid high-flyer throughout this match, not looking remotely out of place among more seasoned Triplemania veterans. Mr Iguana is a particular favourite of mine, a superb character with a gift for genuinely funny physical comedy that precious few wrestlers can match, but has been improving steadily since his AAA debut, now able to boast some impressive and mind-boggling high-flying techniques as well as an underrated submission and ground game; his comedic gimmick means he’s unlikely to get the kind of American bookings that a more “conventional” masked luchadore might, which is a shame, because he has everything he needs to have a breakout comedy performance in the vein of a Danhausen or an Orange Cassidy at a Wrestlemania weekend show or similar. On my “if money was no object” booking wishlist, he’s pretty near the top.
Faby Apache is oddly wasted in a match like this one, presented as a major star and flagbearer for AAA, but reduced to a zero stakes opening match with independent wrestlers, and tagging with the resident motley crew of oddball comedy acts, while resuming an interminable feud with heel referee El Hijo del Tirantes. Pimpinela is somewhat starting to show their age - after more than 37 years in the ring, the cracks are starting to show, and they don’t move as well as they once did, but they still look fantastic, and the old exotico comedy spots are still good for a laugh.
Nobody is going to be sticking this in any best of compilations, and I’d be hard-pressed to recommend that you go out of your way to track it down, but it was a lot of fun, featuring talent that should be on more people’s radar. As a show opener, you can do a lot worse, and AAA often have.
Jeff Jarrett and company were out next - that is, Jarrett, Sam Adonis, Parker Boudreaux, and Satnam Singh - to rile up the crowd with some lazy but always effective anti-lucha and anti-Mexican rhetoric, with Jarrett doing his once-infamous and now largely satirical routine of hurling tortillas into the audience.
If you’ve seen one American heel promo in AAA, you’ve seen them all, and you know the drill - America is greater than Mexico, American wrestling is better than Lucha Libre, wave the flag around, soak up the heat.
Jarrett then took particular aim at a run of people - Vampiro, Faby Apache, Nick Nemeth (the absentee AAA Mega Champion, who won the title from Alberto el Patron at the previous Triplemania and has yet to make another appearance with the company), Latin Lover, and AAA in general, protesting his lack of a shot at the Mega Championship, and generally being under-appreciated by AAA.
Jeff Jarrett isn’t actually in tonight’s main event, nor was in the previous show’s; he is strictly the manager for his faction, and hasn’t wrestled for AAA since 2019. Ordinarily I would complain of the manager doing little to put his faction over and putting all the focus on himself, but with the exception of Sam Adonis, who got his own promo time, Jarrett’s faction is an extension of himself, a couple of mostly-silent monsters to be vanquished en route to getting your hands on Jeff Jarrett. I assume that the eventual pay-off will be a match featuring Vampiro against Jarrett himself, but I learned a long time ago not to assume anything at all about AAA booking.
Las Toxicas (Flammer, La Hiedra & Maravilla) vs. Team TNA (The Decay (Rosemary & Havok) & Tasha Steelz
Just to confuse things more, on a show with an interpromotional rivalry gimmick between AAA and The Crash, here’s a consequence-free match pitting a AAA team against a team from a third promotion.
The biggest shock in the announcement of this match was Rosemary making her return to AAA, having last been seen at Triplemania XXV in 2017, where Sexy Star made a pariah of herself in any right-thinking wrestling promotion by, acting out her frustrations with the other women in the match, purposefully injured Rosemary’s arm in a violent, unprofessional and ultimately futile act of rebellion. That Rosemary would return to the scene of the crime - even granting the passage of time, the departure of Sexy Star from AAA, and the turnover in AAA management since then - was a surprise I certainly didn’t see coming.
Perhaps it was with that in mind that Team TNA won this perfunctory and perfectly acceptable trios match, ending a Toxicas undefeated streak that had lasted for several years. Maybe it was an effort in buttering up TNA as a more substantial future partner, an attempt to rewrite the wrongs of the past, and show themselves as a more trustworthy partner than they had been in the past. Maybe TNA’s new relationship with WWE meant there was political pressure for the TNA triumvirate to come out on top. More likely, I just put more thought into this decision in one paragraph than AAA did when they were booking this.
Team AAA (Laredo Kid, Octagon Jr. & Komander) vs. Team The Crash (D’Luke, Destiny & Noisy Boy) vs. Team Rest Of The World (Kyle Fletcher Blake Christian Willie Mack, CIMA & Nick Wayne Dinamico)
We return, once again, to a “AAA vs. The Crash” match with zero actual stakes, and the addition of a “Rest Of The World” team to muddy the waters.
Thus far, the only “lol AAA” moments of dysfunction on this show came from the usual production snafus - incorrect name graphics, poorly mixed audio, inexplicable cuts to the wrong camera (sometimes catching sight of people milling around backstage, spoiling surprise appearances), but here’s where the complications and machinations of Lucha Libre politics came into play. Team Rest Of The World originally featured Kyle Fletcher, but he was pulled, presumably due to complications surrounding the relationship between Fletcher’s employer AEW and their relationship with CMLL and NJPW preventing certain wrestlers from appearing on AAA shows or interacting with AAA talent. Those rules have loosened recently, though not in time to catch this one out. His replacement was Blake Christian, until he too was replaced, presumably when someone at AAA realised that Oliver also works for a CMLL partnered organisation in NJPW. Willie Mack, a AAA semi-regular on shows like this one, was the final and actual replacement - the fact that Willie Mack also works for a CMLL-aligned promotion in ROH (and occasionally AEW) probably doesn’t warrant thinking about. Nick Wayne, who was pulled from this show for a Christian Cage Father’s Day segment on AEW Collision the same night, was still advertised for this match up until the moment his team appeared on-screen. Said replacement on Team Rest Of The World was Dinamico, a Mexican wrestler who is not only a regular member of the AAA roster, but recently formed an alliance with Team AAA’s Laredo Kid. I’m sure it makes sense to someone, even if that someone’s name begins with K, and ends with Onnan.
There’s not a lot else to say about this match - the AAA trio is comprised of some of the best young luchadores on the planet, so of course there were some impressive dives, and the best of The Crash’s team clearly realised they had the opportunity of a bigger stage to wow some first-time viewers and more than held their own in that regard, Noisy Boy in particular busting out some indescribable lucha offence in the way that only indie luchadores desperate for a viral GIF can. Rest Of The World were the odd team out, despite Willie Mack always being good value for money, it’s diminishing returns in AAA once you realise they only really book him for the obligatory dance-off segment, and they got that out of the way before the bell rang. CIMA, meanwhile, was a great fit for AAA a decade ago, but time hasn’t been kind to him - I’m a huge fan of his work, and he’s adapted well to aging out of the style that made him his name, but at a little south of fifty, the years are taking a toll and he’s gradually becoming reduced to a “greatest hits” wrestler, which only works when you know the hits, and this audience didn’t.
Team The Crash won, thanks to a low blow from D’Luxe, but it doesn’t matter. None of this will ever matter again.
Mecha Wolf (w/Violent J) vs. Bestia 666 vs. Rey Horus
This match was originally announced as a one-on-one between Mecha Wolf and Bestia 666, the former tag team partners who brawled in the opening segment. With the “AAA vs. The Crash” gimmick tagged on to this show after many of the matches were announced, this was expanded to a three-way involving Rey Horus, even though the set-up at the start of this show rendered that unnecessary by establishing that Bestia 666 now considered himself a The Crash-affiliated wrestler anyway.
Rey Horus is an underrated luchadore who should, by now, have broken through to bigger things, yet persistently hasn’t for reasons I can’t quite grasp. Bestia and Mecha Wolf are a better team than they are singles wrestlers, though Bestia in particular has a lot to offer in his own right. The work hasn’t really been done to make this a blood feud, though the show’s opening angle at least tried to add some heat to the mix, and Rey Horus stepping in only diminished that - he is apparently feuding with Bestia in The Crash, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.
Despite all that, the match was good. It featured some vicious chair shots and Sabu-esque chairs recklessly thrown at wrestlers’ heads, though the way the English commentary is mixed so as to drown out the majority of the ambient noise of the show meant the impact was never felt as viscerally as it should have been. Horus was a reliable source of breathtaking spots, but was a perennial third wheel, preventing this from ever becoming the drag-out brawl between former partners than it should have become.
That the finish saw Mecha Wolf pin Rey Horus highlighted all the problems with the match - with one feud clearly highlighted over a second rivalry incorporated into this match, the finish furthered neither; it went down between the only two men in the match with no ongoing storyline whatsoever. I assume that was to keep the Mecha Wolf/Bestia 666 issue bubbling over until a future date, but I wouldn’t put money on it happening in Mexico City either - this feels like a luchadore feud destined to drag on in increasingly varied venues for years to come.
Secta Cibernetica (Cibernetico, Dark Cuervo & Dark Ozz) vs. La Secta de Mesias (El Mesias, Dark Escoria & Dark Espiritu)
That wrestlers already fully equipped with spooky goth boy gimmicks were en masse granted the sobriquet “Dark” tells you all you need to know about this match.
La Secta were perennial heel foils for much of the mid-00s in AAA under a variety of leaders, and reformed this year under their original head Cibernetico - kicked out of his existing heel stable, a long-standing rehash of late ‘90s stable Los Vipers, who would have been a better fit for the Origenes ‘90s nostalgia angle - only to splinter in two, with El Mesias (perhaps better known as TNA’s Judas Mesias, or Lucha Underground’s Mil Muertes) heading up the rival faction, each taking their share of their large adult goth children.
Cibernetico has been both beneficiary and victim of the vagaries of AAA’s booking in recent years - returning in 2021 after a six year absence, he was immediately positioned as a major threat, and took specific aim at Konnan, at the time the babyface non-wrestling figurehead of the entire show. That feud went nowhere, but transitioned Cibernetico into a Hair vs. Hair semi-main event for 2022’s Triplemania; from there, he’s been an odd man out, with the majority of the members of Los Vipers quitting the promotion ahead of a planned feud between them and Cibernetico’s new/old faction, La Secta, which more or less gets us where we are.
It’s hard to say that Cibernetico deserves more than he’s got - he’s 49 years old, and moves like he can feel every bit of it. He still has name value and looks the absolute business, but needs a lot of smoke and mirrors to make his matches work - especially when everyone else in the match is north of 45 too.
Amazingly, this match almost managed it - nobody in it is as good as they once were; Mesias’ punches lack the snap they used to, and Cuervo and Ozz aren’t the workers they once were, but everything moved with enough pace to keep things rolling, and while my main criticism would be that the match ended - Cibernetico taking a surprising clean (by the standards of AAA) pin after a spear through a table from Mesias - before things had really escalated to a level that warranted what had all the vibes of a feud ender.
Dr Wagner Jr, El Hijo del Dr Wagner Jr & Galeno del Mal vs. Psycho Clown, Negro Casas & Brazo de Oro Jr.
A family affair now, and the match that feels the most “Triplemania” of the card - the slight oddness of the Wagner family being somewhat arbitrarily deemed representatives of The Crash aside.
Negro Casas and Wagner Jr clashed in a trios match at Triplemania Monterrey with surprise partners, Wagner recruiting Tigre Blanco and Bestia 666, while Casas drafted in NGD, despite them having previously turned on him on a smaller show. To no surprise, NGD turned on Casas again at the end of a nothing match, and the challenge was set for a family vs. family trios clash in Tijuana - Wagner Jr drafting in his Large Adult Sons (while ordinarily a “Large Adult Son” would suggest a wrestler only notable for their parentage, Galeno del Mal qualifies on the grounds of sheer largeness alone), while Negro Casas brought in son-in-law Psycho Clown and his nephew, Brazo de Oro Jr.; in the interim, Psycho and Negro have won the AAA Tag Team Titles.
Something Lucha Libre does better than wrestling anywhere else in the world is family feuds - the intertwining history, legacies, the sheer number of family members makes it always an impressive affair that simply cannot be replicated. The Bloodline have nothing compared to these guys. In this match alone, Dr Wagner Jr is, you won’t be surprised to hear, the son of the legendary Dr. Wagner, and the brother of the late Silver King - this is a family legacy dating back to 1961, with El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr and Galeno del Mal (literally “The Doctor of Evil”, a nickname once used by the original Dr. Wagner) looking to continue it for many years to come. But even that fades in comparison to the team on the opposite side of the ring.
Negro Casas’ father is Pepe Casas, who first entered the ring in 1963, and may be more recognisable to many Lucha Libre fans as a long-time referee than as a wrestler. Negro Casas himself debuted in 1979, followed into the ring by his brothers Heavy Metal and Felino. Felino’s sons subsequently wrestled as Felino Jr (and a bunch of variations on the name “Tiger”) and Puma King, while their cousins took the names Canelo Casas, Danny Casas, Destroyer, and Nanyzh Rock. But we’re not done - Felino married Luchadora Princesa Blanca, and Negro Casas married Dalis La Caribena, who jumped ship from CMLL to AAA with him and became a staple part of AAA’s women’s division - that also brings Dalis’ father, Panamanian wrestler-promoter Chacho Medina, and her brother Veneno into the mix, along with his son Vudu Max.
But what of Psycho Clown? Well. He married into the sprawling Casas family, pairing up with a non-wrestling daughter of Negro Casas. But he brings considerable pedigree in his own right - his grandfather wrestled as Shadito Cruz, but it was the next generation that really matters here; El Brazo, Brazo de Oro, Brazo de Plata and Brazo de Platina wrestled in different permutations as the revolutionary trio Los Brazos, but other siblings included Brazo Cibernetico (better known to me as Robin Hood), Lady Apache, Super Brazo and La Alimana. The subsequent generation gave us El Brazo Jr., Super Brazo Jr., Robin, Maximo, Aramis, La Mascara, Brazo Cibernetico II and, of course, Psycho Clown, son of Brazo de Plata, who you may know better as Super Porky. Then there’s Psycho Clown’s sister Goya Kong, married to Carta Brava Jr., which brings the original Carta Brava into the mix, a luchadore who debuted all the way back in 1948. There’s El Hijo del Brazo de Platino, Danah, El Hijo del Brazo, El Hijo del Brazo de Plata, and Arquero. Maximo, meanwhile, is married to India Sioux, the daughter of the original India Sioux and Hombre Bala, which ties her in to the Pirata Family - Bala’s sons Hombre Bala Jr., Monsther II and Corsario, sister La Marquesa, and brothers Verdugo and Pirata Morgan. Deep breath. Pirata Morgan’s children are Perla Negra, Pirata Morgan Jr., and Hijo de Pirata Morgan, the latter of whom is married to luchadora Lolita. There is also their cousin, Rey Bucanero, the son of a non-wrestling sibling of Pirata Morgan and Hombre Bala and so on. Still with me? Good. I’m sure there are plenty I’ve missed that somebody can and will correct me on.
Psycho Clown was somewhat slumming it here, playing second fiddle in a family feud that concerns his father-in-law, but you wouldn’t know it - dressed as Wolverine and surrounded by his family, he got the biggest and most bombastic entrance of the night, as befitting still arguably AAA’s top tecnico or babyface, and most recognisable star. It’s a step above Monterrey, where he was booked as one of a mess of wrestlers in a 4-vs-4 atomico, but miles away from the previous two years where he was an integral part of two excellent reverse mask tournaments. Generally, Psycho Clown can be relied upon for big money apuestas matches on the Triplemania stage - indeed, since 2014, he has claimed his opponent’s mask or hair on five separate Triplemanias, most significantly taking the mask of Dr. Wagner Jr in a superb main event match back in 2017.
Here, the story was of the Wagners being cocky, but deservedly so - a more comfortable trios unit together, they dominated most of the match, taking particular delight in beating down the youngest member of the tecnico contingent, Psycho Clown’s nephew, Brazo de Oro Jr.
It was a match that felt at times disjointed, but mostly heated and enjoyable, let down once again by bad production and audio mixing, as it came across a match far better received in the building than what was apparent watching at home on Triller. It was the most like a traditional, Triplemania match, while maintaining the family feud that will, presumably, culminate in a Negro Casas/Dr Wagner Jr match in Mexico City - there’s been little indication that this would make for a good match, but with enough plunder, gimmickry and smoke and mirrors, I’d be happy to see it.
One of the things this run of shows has lacked is a big high stakes apuesta, something that was guaranteed by the tournaments of the previous two years - the Vampiro retirement tour lacks that hook, because he’s not putting his career on the line, we just know he’s finishing up next show. It’s a fool errand trying to make sense of AAA’s booking or make predictions as to where any of their stories might be going, but if I were to bet on it, my money would be on a Negro Casas/Dr Wagner Jr Hair vs. Hair encounter in Mexico City. And not only because Wagner Jr has grown his hair out into a deeply unflattering series one Frasier style.
Vampiro, Alberto el Patron, Murder Clown & Dave The Clown vs. Sam Adonis, QT Marshall, Satnam Singh & Parker Boudreaux (w/Jeff Jarrett)
You wait all show for a scary clown and then three come along at once. Or, at least, two come along shortly after the last one.
For those unfamiliar with Lucha Libre Clown Lore - Psycho Clown was once the leader of a stable of evil clowns named the Psycho Circus, who kicked him out and went off on their own, but who ultimately also turned babyface, so now there’s just unrelated creepy babyface clowns rocking about. Original members, aside from Psycho, were Murder Clown and Monster Clown, later joined by Panic Clown in 2022 and, prior to that, by one of the competitors in this match, my favourite named wrestler, Dave The Clown. Psycho, Monster, Murder, Panic, Dave The. Nailed it. Dave The Clown, incidentally, was recruited from a separate group of clowns from outside of AAA, The Clown Corpacion, in which he teamed with Rotten Clown and Broken Clown. He was still Dave The Clown.
This match was, of course, part of the Vampiro retirement tour, but took in multiple other factors too - Alberto el Patron lost in his efforts to win the vacant AAA Mega Championship last show, defeated by old rival Nic Nemeth, but has been granted a rematch in the future by Latin Lover, while Sam Adonis has long-standing beef with Psycho Clown, the on-again/off-again friend of the Psycho Circus, and Jeff Jarrett simply hates all things Mexican and Lucha Libre, but has a more specific beef with Vampiro over largely unspoken professional disagreements over their long careers - everything from kayfabe interactions in AAA, to Vampiro blaming Jarrett for sabotaging his career in WCW and TNA, and infamous incidents stemming from Jarrett’s alcohol issues backstage at a AAA show during Vampiro’s tenure as the creative head of the company. Several years ago, Jeff Jarrett returned to AAA briefly to set up, seemingly, a match pitting himself and Rey Escorpion against Vampiro and Latin Lover, but it never came to fruition, as Jarrett re-signed with the WWE for a very brief second stint in the office, and Latin Lover reportedly got injured either during their sole in-ring segment together, or while training for a comeback. Vampiro quit and subsequently rejoined AAA, and Escorpion all but vanished from AAA altogether as so many have in recent years.
The Jarrett contingent in this match were an unlikely highlight of Monterrey’s show - so “highlight” on that show is graded on a pretty steep curve. There, they defeated the team of Octagon Jr, Laredo Kid, Murder Clown and Psycho Clown, in a match that largely involved the smaller luchadores bouncing off the 7’4” Satnam Singh, and Jeff Jarrett at ringside being more active and taking more bumps than most of the men actually in the match. They obviously put in such a good performance as the heel act du jour that they got promoted to main event duties next time around, though against a mess of opponents who aren’t exactly inclined or able to pinball off the big men.
Monterrey’s Vampiro match was a mess. The finish is something I can barely describe - it just sort of ended, as if everyone realised they had missed the last move and just decided to call it a night. This was better, though Vampiro’s contributions were fewer - from memory, I can only recall two or three actual moves he performed, one of which was a leg drop performed very gingerly and awkwardly, followed by a lot of limping that suggests a possible hip injury; whether sustained during or before the match, I couldn’t say. For all of Vampiro’s performance issues as he nears retirement, last time around he was still able to dive and launch himself off the top rope, and that was never in the offing here. Alberto el Patron, meanwhile, was in better shape than last time around, no longer wrestling in a T-shirt, but his ringwork hasn’t improved with it, and he’s still one of the low points of any show he’s on, his prime being long gone in the rear-view mirror even before you consider the extracurricular activities that make his matches a consistently unpleasant watch. That more or less leaves the perfectly average Clowns to carry the babyface side of the match, while Adonis and Marshall do all the work for the rudo contingent, given all that Satnam Singh needs to do is stand around looking tall, and Parker Boudreaux is seemingly capable of slightly less than that.
That left a lot to Jeff Jarrett - last time around, he was bumped all over the place by babyfaces, had a drink thrown in his face by AAA figurehead Marisela Pena at ringside, and then was beaten back to the dressing room by Faby Apache. Jarrett specifically called out Faby in his earlier promo, so no surprise that we got a repeat of the same spot for the Tijuana audience, with Jarrett getting kicked and beaten up the ramp, until heel referee and long-time Faby Apache foe El Hijo de Tirantes made his presence felt and blocked the ramp, attempting to give Jarrett time to escape - no such luck, as Faby Apache proceeded to spend the next few minutes taking pints of beer from the audience and throwing them in Jarrett’s general direction.
This was a match that needed smoke and mirrors, shit thrown at the wall, and all the bells and whistles they could throw at it, so I have no objection to Tirantes getting involved here, nor to Faby Apache and Jeff Jarrett mixing it up, nor for Latin Lover being the one to make the heroic save to fight off the bad guys and even the odds, even if he had been promising that he wasn’t going to get physically involved.
The result was something of a surprise, with Vampiro taking the pin for his team; a low blow from Jeff Jarrett setting up for a Big Boot from Satnam Singh, who pinned the retiring legend with a single foot on the chest, while Latin Lover stood around ringside doing nothing to help.
Perhaps I didn’t make this show sound incredible, and that’s because it wasn’t, but after the absolute dross of Monterrey, I’m happy to declare this one a resounding success - if you have a spare three hours or so, there are certainly worse ways you could be spending it, and it does seem to point towards some interesting matches for Mexico City. Whether any of those matches actually happen is another matter.
To guess, I expect we will see either Vampiro & Latin Lover vs. Jeff Jarrett & Sam Adonis, or an expanded version of that match to also include QT Marshall, Satnam Singh, Faby Apache and maybe Psycho Clown. By rights, it should also include a mess of outside interference and abject nonsense but, ultimately, we know that Jeff Jarrett is capable of working near-miracles with barely mobile retirees, so I’m cautiously looking forward to it.
On the rest of the card, I would expect a Negro Casas/Dr Wagner Jr match, possibly with hair on the line, a continuation of Bestia 666 vs. Mechawolf, and a final big nostalgic extavaganza to wave goodbye to the Origenes concept - perhaps a Rumble-style Copa Triplemania full of familiar faces. There’s the question of TNA or AEW involvement, or even of a WWE relationship by the time the show rolls around, or a left-field gimmick like The Crash involvement here, as well as whether El Hijo del Vikingo will have been able to return to the ring by then - I suspect not, but I know that’s his aim. A straight rematch of Nic Nemeth and Alberto el Patron feels like a waste of a spot on the card, but I wonder if the Latin Lover/Konnan power struggle story will result in Konnan throwing some spanners in the works and added a stipulation or a few more wrestlers into the mix to prevent a rehash of a thoroughly underwhelming match - doing the exact same match at two Triplemanias feels like a poor move. But also, there’s that mysterious eyeball, if they ever get round to remembering to book a pay-off for that.
What these shows have missed is an agent of chaos, a luchadore like L.A. Park or Rush, who also bring an element of in-ring danger and out-of-ring politics and unpredictability - as much as Triplemania has become a meme for the downsides of its chaotic nature, the positives are that, when its good, AAA can still put on some of the genuinely most compelling matches and moments, but right now they’re lacking the wrestlers to make it happen; they don’t have the reliable highlight reel of El Hijo del Vikingo, nor the wild and bloody dad-fights that the likes of Blue Demon Jr and L.A. Park have brought to the table in recent years, and it feels like something is missing.
With Mexico City as the final show, I would expect the stakes to be higher and for a little more blood to be spilled, but they’re missing the sort of wrestlers and feuds I would expect that from - Negro Casas vs. Dr Wagner Jr seems the most likely, though whether Casas is up for the kind and blood-and-brawling brawl that I love Triplemania for has yet to be seen; his match last year with Nicho el Millionario never reached that level, though it’s hard to blame Casas for that one. The alternative is that the Vampiro retirement match gets a little more heat behind it - if Jarrett needs to bleed to get a story over he certainly will, and Vampiro has been angling on social media and on his podcast for his retirement match to be a rematch with Penta El Cero Miedo.; their deathmatch in Lucha Underground was a legendary bloodbath and a star-making performance, but that was ten years ago, and Vampiro barely had that match in him - by all accounts it was heavily edited down to the watchable match that made air - and today Vampiro would need the rub from Penta far more than the other way around. Given that Penta has made it clear that he will not be working with AAA this year or for the foreseeable future, it would take a near miracle to put this one together, and an actual miracle for it to be watchable. If it’s completely off the cards for AAA, as it seems to be, I wouldn’t put it past Vampiro angling for a spot on AEW TV, or for the match to take place on the Lucha Bros’ Republic of Lucha shows, or anywhere else that a promoter can be encouraged to put the money up for it (lend me a few thousand quid, you never know), if he thinks it’s actually a possibility.
And if he can’t make it happen, and he retires in Mexico City without having faced Penta again, then don’t worry. There’s always next year.
