Shani/Faby & 4 way cage match for TripleMania, all AAA events to stream on Twitch

coming in 2018

Today’s been a busy day with other things, so I’m just covering the AAA press conference today, and we’ll catch up on IWRG trainee shows and CMLL stuff tomorrow.

This AAA press conference was a sort of mission statement for the year. They had one of these last year which included a Psycho Clown/Dr. Wagner contract signing (and then Wagner’s flight got canceled), and to give out other information while they had the media there. This year’s version had everyone who was supposed to be there, and so can already be seen as a great year to year improvement. Some of the information had been announced or touched on during Dorian Roldan’s Zona Ruda appearance, and some was brand new.

AAA announced the first two matches for TripleMania

  • Lady Shani versus Faby Apache in a mask versus hair match.
  • Psycho Clown versus (the winner of Hijo del Fantasma & Texano Jr. at Rey de Reyes) versus a third person versus a fourth person in a Poker de Ases cage match, last one left in loses their hair or mask.

No date or city or arena was announced for TripleMania. Maybe that was the one thing that didn’t show up for this announcement – weird to be announcing match for a show that’s got no date.

Shani & Faby both talked about an apuesta match after Guerra de Titanes, though it seemed like something which might just be in the moment challenges. There’s an issue here with Faby Apache betting her hair. Back in 2009, when Guerra de Titanes was still a December show instead of a January one, Faby and Sexy Star had their own apuesta match, Faby lost, Faby allowed the barber to cut her hair down from a long haircut to a short one, then she walked to the stage to wave at the crowd and went to the back. The idea was she got the rest shaved of back there. Faby wrestled for a short time with a cap covering her theoretically bald head, only the cap fell off when she was wrestling at a big (non-TV) show Guadalajara, and everyone could see she never shaved her head and just got a stylish short hairdo instead. Faby Apache was (and is) so over as a babyface that all the AAA fans didn’t turn on her for backing out of the deal, but there was negativity then and she’s never been involved in an apuesta match since.

2009 is a long time ago, and AAA’s policy seem to be to ignore these sort of unhappy past situations. (There’s been so much turnover, most people beside Faby & the Roldans might have not been for it or forgot it happened.) I suspect it’s something that’s going to be brought up during the next few months and probably could be addressed head on, though again AAA is more likely to ignore it.

My early guess is Shani’s losing her mask. But it’s still far off.

A lucha libre cage match is only as important as the worst person who is in it. If it’s, to pick some names, Wagner and LA Park as the last two names, that’s a pretty big match. If it’s La Parka and Dave the Clown, then it’s the same problem as all the CMLL cage matches no one cares about. This one will do better because it’s TripleMania and they’re at least starting with some big names in there, it just won’t do great if it’s a method of hiding an apuesta loser no one wants to see.

The AAA press conference went over AAA’s current media picture. AAA starts this week on Space channel in Mexico and other Latin America commercials. (People watching the channel today told me they started seeing commercials for it.) They also remain on Televisa, and it appears the same episodes will air on the same weekends on both channels, just with different sets of announcers since the main announcers are at least technically Televisa employees. There’s no indication AAA is leaving Televisa in the short term. In the long term, it’s safer to have options.

(Also: having a show without Televisa involvement might make it possible for them to sell that show in the US outside of Televisa’s networks.)

AAA is also going strong into Twitch, so much so that the sort of people who read this site might really not need to pay attention to their TV situation going forward. Their current Spanish language channel will go live 24/7 starting with Friday’s taping in Toluca, and the plan is to air every taping live in the same way CMLL currently does on YouTube. (CMLL has an advantage of taping from the same locations all the time; AAA will be traveling around and I wouldn’t hold it against them if some of these didn’t turn out to be actually live due to internet issues.) AAA says they’ll be running thirty one events in total, which would be up three from the last few years.

When the Twitch channel is not streaming a live event, they’ll be streaming classic content from the AAA archives. This is going to be really exciting if AAA digs into shows from it’s first couple of dates, featuring some big names and matches which might have never been seen since they first aired. It’ll be less exciting if it’s more recent content already available on YouTube. They did go way back in the archive for TripleMania’s marathon, so this has the potential to be interesting and will at least keep the channel warm.

This year is the Gira de Conquest for AAA, and went over their plans for their world conquest:

  • February & March: Lucha Underground
  • August & September: Colombia & Panama
  • September & November: United States
  • October: Japan (probably the Lucha World Cup)
  • and there are talks about going to England, but no date has been agreed upon

Those dates should be seen as flexible; AAA also said they were going to Colombia last year and it just quietly went away. Being on Space will help them in Colombia & Panama if they do make it, and they’re also crediting the success of Lucha Underground for creating a demand for this sort of tour. United States is interesting and impossible to know how successful will be without knowing the venue they’re going and if they’ll be visible in any real way before it. As is, AAA would do fine in the size of arenas AroLucha is running in and maybe not as fine in the arenas NJPW US is trying.

(I would suggest AAA avoid 09/01 as a US date.)

Finally, AAA announced they would continue the La Llave a la Gloria competition in 2017. Last year, they had a sponsorship with a chain of gym and had people come there to tryout. They don’t seem to have that sponsorship this year, and so the idea is to do tryouts before TV tapings and live shows. They’ve already been advertising those before some shows and more details are to come later. Last year’s competition made little sense yet ended up with good people and I suspect the same this year.

That’s pretty much it for details. Dorian did put over La Mascara & Maximo as exclusive signings, and as a sign big stars wanted to work with AAA. He ended the press conference by telling people to expect the unexpected, seemingly hinting at the other two spots in that TripleMania cage match.

One thought to “Shani/Faby & 4 way cage match for TripleMania, all AAA events to stream on Twitch”

  1. AAA is the US will be an interesting thing to watch. They have been off television for a long time, but they’re still recognized in the Hispanic community as a major league brand and that means a lot.

    Hispanics as a whole are far more assimilated than they were almost 25 years ago when AAA was a major arena act. Today, the majority of Hispanics were born in this country and prefer English over Spanish. AAA would have to advertise heavily in English to attract millennial Latinos, instead of the old Spanish only advertising that worked a generation ago.

    AAA would be good for 5,000 in some cities like LA, Chicago, San Jose, Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Dallas but they’d tank out in smaller markets.

    Hopefully all of their international dates do well.

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