NJPW hosted their first PPV on American television this past January with Wrestle Kingdom 9. It was in large part a success. Mexico’s AAA promotion looked to be following that same model of success by televising their biggest PPV of the year, Triplemania, on American PPV for the first time. Unfortunately technical difficulties, questionable booking, and too many old wrestlers got in the way of what could have been a much better debut for the company to the American audience.
The show was offered by most standard PPV providers for $19.99 in SD and $29.99 in HD. The American speaking announce team would consisted of Hugo Savinovich and Matt Striker. The show opened with a very nice video package, and some announcements in the ring. There were some initial audio difficulties, which the company addressed, but they would repeat throughout the night. Through the middle portion of the card Striker and Savinovich would have major reverb issues, and could not be heard by the home audience for long stretches. This seemed to be cleaned up somewhat for the final two matches, but plagued the middle of the card.
This was very unfortunate for AAA as it made it hard for fans who were new to the product to get a feel for the background of each match. Also, it made the organization look a bit second rate. While it’s certain they did not plan for these issues, it was frustrating that they could not fix them and restore the show to a higher quality after discovering them. AAA did release an apology to all fans later that night.
Drago, Goya Kong, Dinastia & Pimpinela Escarlata vs. Daga, Sexy Star, Mini Psycho Clown, and Mamba in a mixed tag match.
This traditional match to start the show was an Atomico match featuring an assortment of Extico’s, female, male, and midget wrestlers. The match was a forgettable disaster. Goya Kong, who is on the larger side, spent far too much time in the ring. She sold extremely poorly and executed moves in a very poor fashion. Her low work rate slowed the match down far too much and didn’t mesh well with the rest of the group.
When a talent works the way Goya did it hurts anyone in the ring with her and makes the match feel and look…FAKE! While this is a traditional match for AAA, it did nothing to set a solid tone for the show that it would be desperately lacking until the final two matches. Pimpy got Sexy Star to tap out to get his team the win in what was thankfully a short affair, but a waste of Sexy Star, Drago, and Pimpy’s abilities.
Villanos III, IV and V vs. Los Psycho Circus in a trios match
This would be the final match for Villano III as he is retiring. Before the match he announced that he and Villano V, who had previously lost their masks, would remove them after the match as is traditional once you have lost your mask in AAA. This was an utter mess of a match from the start. The Villano’s all probably should consider retirement as they are slow and their move execution was clunky. This was once again giving off that FAKE feel.
The teams traded the advantage, but by far the worst part of the match occurred when the Villanos had one of the Clowns in the ring by himself, but the camera showed the other two Clowns just standing on the outside making no effort to get back in the ring. If the first match had slow poorly sold moves, this match topped it.
For the finish one of the Villanos hit a clown with a low blow and got the pin. The other two Villanos were not happy about this, but the Villano that did it didn’t care and left before the closing match festivities honoring Villano III. Thankfully the match was over after 10 minutes as it was an utter train wreck. The Clowns and the Villano’s seemed to get along post match, which again seemed strange given the feud between the two families the announce team hyped up.
TRIO’s Title Match (c) Los Hell Bros. (Averno, Chessman, & Cibernetico) vs. Jack Evans, Angelico, and Fenix vs. El Hijo Del Fantasma, Pentagon Jr., and Texano Jr. in a steel cage match.
For this match the belts were hung above the ring across a steel beam. If anyone released any of the belts there team would win. Why all three belts were hung given that stipulation was confusing. The audio problems peaked during this match, which was unfortunate because this felt like the first real match of the night. There were some good dives and well executed moves, but the cage forced everyone to be in the ring at the same time, so the behavior of everyone rarely made any sense. The two heel teams spent most of the match ganging up on the face team of Angelico, Evans, and Fenix.
The match was sluggish and it just felt like the cage was restricting this from being anything special. It also didn’t help that the team of Pentagon, Texano, and Fantasma felt thrown together. The announce team did not suggest that these guys often team together and later in the show Averno and Pentagon would appear to be on the same page in a different match.
The end was especially brutal. Angelico got very close to the belts at the top of the cage with Fantasma and Averno coming at him from both ends. Fantasma knocked Angelico to the ring and waited for Averno to come close. They seemed to have formed an alliance, but Averno kicked Fantasma between the legs and tossed him to the ring. He grabbed a belt and ended the match. Averno was struggling so bad to get across the top of the cage that it was ridiculous to see him outmaneuver to guys that were way more athletic and fearless that high up in the air.
The first three matches suffered from terrible in ring booking, and overbooking in general, but it was hard to get invested in anyone because there seemed to be no real story behind the build up to the matches other than they were booked to happen. There was so much talent wasted between those matches.
Blue Demon Jr. & La Parka vs. Electro Shock & El Mesias
This match was being held to commemorate 30 years of wrestling by Blue Demon Jr. in his career. That had to leave everyone wondering who was going to win, right? El Mesias to those who don’t know is Mil Muertes in Lucha Underground. The way he was portrayed here was completely different and although he has been the Champion of AAA many times in here he was basically made to look like a guy past his prime. Nowhere near the dominant force he was portrayed as in LU.
Electro Shock’s ring attire was awful, like Giant Gonzales awful. He wore a red body suit and a Hannibal Lector mask the entire match and basically looked like he was being punished by the designers. The match never really got out of the starting blocks.
La Parka worked the first few minutes on top and then sold for the heels for a short while. Then he gave Blue Demon the hot tag and he proceeded to pretty much take over the match. Eventually he caused Electro Shock to tap to a version of the Sharp Shooter. The match was actually less than nine minutes long. At this point 90 minutes had gone by in the PPV and only four matches had occurred. Only one of those matches had gone over 10 minutes. AAA seemed to have no issue wasting large amounts of time rather than having more matches featuring more talent.
This was yet another bland affair with a very predictable ending, making it hard to be excited for. It was also older wrestlers going at half speed with no story really advancing out of it that anyone at home should care about. Electro Shock did try to spoil the after party for Blue Demon by attacking him, but what fan really wants to see that match after Blue Demon had just made short work of him.
Brian Cage vs. Alberto El Patron in a non-title Hair vs. Hair match
This finally felt like the first match of the night that had some teeth. We had two wrestlers who had established a feud, and had a passionate reason to fight with a fun stipulation. Cage had been very insulting to the Mexican fans, which got him some serious heel heat, and really helped Alberto shine as a face. The match was non-title, but the hair stipulation is considered to be a bigger deal.
Cage was seconded by Fantasma and came to the ring wearing a Trump for President Shirt, which was a great way to score some cheap heat. It was baffling that Fantasma would second him considering he is Mexican as well. Alberto was seconded by Fenix. Alberto came out to the biggest pop of the night so far.
They had a good match with some well executed spots and it felt like we were finally being treated to some good wrestling, but again this match suffered from another obvious ending. Was Villano III losing his last match? Was Blue Demon going to lose his 30th anniversary match? Was Alberto really going to lose a match with the pride of Mexico on the line in Mexico City? Those questions all had easy answers and they hurt the card. When a booker can’t create doubt in the minds of the fans then it feels as if the show is just going through the motions and in a lot of ways that’s what this felt like in the end.
Alberto got the predictable win and Cage got his head shaved post match. After this occurred he tried to attack Alberto, but Alberto got the better of him. Fantasma stood in the ring and did nothing as this happened to help Cage, yet he physically involved himself during thematch countless times. This was again more unexplainable behavior, but it would be the finish of the show that would suffer from that the worst.
Rey Mysterio vs. Myzteziz in a dream match 15 years in the making
Myzteziz is known to most American fans as the first Sin Cara. He was previously known as Mystico in AAA before leaving for the WWE. For his entrance he was lowered from the ceiling by a harness. He was lowered so slowly that it looked awful and perhaps it showed that he was scared as he wildly swung his legs.. Mysterio came out with wings that he could control to extend out and stretch. The announcers noted that Mysterio was receiving most of the love from the fans and it appeared to be bothering Myzteziz.
The match was nothing special, but had a few good spots. Myzteziz seemed to be working heel and that caused Mysterio to take a few liberties as well. Myzteziz suffered a bad cut over his eye and was bleeding through his mask. The best spot of the match came when Myzteziz suplexed Mysterio over the top rope and threw a table on the outside. The spot looked rough on both competitors.
Mysterio survived a Frog Splash and landed his 619 nine into a Kamura lock that Myzteziz survived, but Rey quickly locked it in again moments later and Myteziz was forced to tap. Mysterio was victorious. Then the confusion started. Rather than just have a show of respect between the two talents or just have Mysterio celebrate winning a Dream Match, AAA decided to advance an angle.
Joe Lider, Averno, and Pentagon Jr. (remember Pentagon and Averno were against each other earlier and Averno screwed Pentagon’s team out of winning the Trio’s titles) hit the ring and began beating down Myteziz while Mysterio was celebrating on the outside with the fans. When Rey saw what was going on he hit the ring, but was also taken out by the group. Lider had a staple gun and was stapling Mysterio. AAA then cut to replays of the match as it seemed the beating was over, but as they were finishing the package Myteziz and Mysterio gained the upper hand.
They did some combos and sent the heels to the outside. Myzteziz even stapled Joe Lider a few times for good measure. The heels remained on the outside and Myzteziz went for a dive on Averno and fell about three feet short (classic Sin Cara botch). Mysterio did a flying head scissors on Averno sending him to the ground and helped Myzteziz back to the ring.
Mysterio then grabbed and mic and began praising Myzteziz who suddenly sprained Mysterio in the face with a mist of some kind. He grabbed the mic and completed his heel turn by running down the fans and Mysterio. He challenged Rey to a mask vs. mask match and then proceeded to attack him. They cut away for closing montage and then came back to Konnan in the ring apparently trying to convince Myzteziz to join the heels that were just beating him up, but the show ended before any of that could be explained.
This was a massive mess at the back end of the show. The main event was good, but not near great. The post match antics had so many logic flaws it was hard to keep track of. Sadly a Myzteziz heel turn was probably a pretty shocking thing, but it was done so poorly that it made no sense and left many scratching their heads.
Why not just have Rey get attacked post match by the heels, but when Myzteziz comes to make the save he actually joins in on the beating and then flips 100% and challenges Rey to the Hair vs. Hair match. That would have been an impactful ending that might have caused some to want to see the rematch.
Triplemania was in the end was a disaster. It was bad enough there was poor sound quality, but the booking was criminal. They probably could have had the first 4 matches in under an hour if they ran the show with a sense of urgency, or if they wanted to keep to the time schedule just made the matches longer and avoided all the dead time.
It may have just been the audio, but the crowd felt absolutely dead for almost about everything that happened. This might have been just the traditional way Mexican fans watch their shows, but it might have also been because the show was so slow paced and the action extremely predictable.
In the end it didn’t feel like a good solid PPV, but a bad episode of Monday Nitro where none of the angles and results were really well thought out. Perhaps AAA can do better in the future, but it’s almost certain that they have chased away many potential fans and with the success of Lucha Underground that is a real shame.