1997 AAA

 

We start off 1997 AAA TV with a good one! In Arena Neza, just like a year earlier. Only much different circumstances this time. Antonio Pena is wanting to start fresh. We have a new trio, a new quartet, new gimmicks (that's why Espectrito lost that quick feud & got "shaved bald") & the debut of his top new act La Maquina Del Amor featuring his best new acquisition Hector Garza. Exciting times to be an AAA fan! Although if you were following from afar it was all doom & gloom with Konnan having the express line to the Torch & Observer, all you heard was talk of AAA's demise & how he took everyone who had any talent. What you didn't hear was how Promo Azteca was already floundering big time & those who didn't have WCW deals were already thinking about or actually trying to jump back to AAA or get work at Arena Mexico. But I can get into that some other times. Let's focus on AAA's primary goals - the new image & ............ tying everything to their new WWF partnership. This may sound familiar to you CMLL fans reading this in 2026. Pena is focusing on pushing acts that will be heading to WWF or already have. The WWF deal gets mentioned every 3 seconds on commentary. Including at one point a mention of people coming in including Razor Ramon (the fake out) & Mankind (did not end up coming). It got me thinking how back in 1997 none of these guys drew & the WWF deal meant absolutely jackshit in Mexico because WWF wasn't sending any real names. It was just their leftover copycat gimmicks & a beyond washed up Jake Roberts. The fans saw right through this & did not give a shit about these nobodies. Whereas these days you could send the most bottom of the barrel WWE wrestler to work a show in Mexico & those people will treat that person like the next coming of Jesus. Christ, not Castillo. Funny how things have changed. Anyways, the TV opener is a minis tag with our new WWF inspired characters. It's openly acknowledged both on commentary & in the introductions that these are the former Espectritos. Arturo Rivera adds an anecdote about their recent trip to Albany, New York where the gimmicks were presented to Vince who loved it. The wrestlers themselves didn't know what to make of it but after they had their match & came to the back he claims they got an ovation from all the boys including Bret Hart personally coming up to them & telling them they did a great job. STOP MAKING ME LIKE BRET!!! IT WON'T HAPPEN!!! I tried to think back & remember what my reaction was to see these WWF minis. I'm almost positive by this point I was totally addicted to the internet & had read this was happening on some new site. I also am pretty sure I saw them on WWF TV somewhere first before they even popped up in Mexico. If this had been a few months earlier, I'm sure I would have been blown away & confused as fuck. This taping is one week before the Rumble so everyone is clearly amped & trying out things they will eventually bring to the WWF. Mascarita does some amazing things as you'd expect. The WWF characters don't do anything resembling their counterparts but look the part perfectly. I love how Pena was always able to do that. Like even when Mini Goldust shows up he looks exactly like Goldust, not just a Mexican in a Goldust outfit. Credit Pistachon I guess! The rudos end up winning when Mini Paul Bearer aka MEXICAN PAUL interferes hitting Parkita with the urn. I should also note we had Tirantito back refereeing this match. Hadn't seen him in quite a while. I assume he's a local so just got used here & wasn't gonna be brought along on the road when AAA was taping all over in November/December. So he may stick around for a bit. Next up is Venum & our first look at the Chivas Rayadas as they take on a new trio - Los Duendes! We have these charachters as being played by the original Duende who had been around for a while on TV + ex-UWA guys Azabache & Sismo aka the ones who played Maremoto & Terremoto in that Natural Disasters trio with Hecatombe. We know it's not the Diabolicos - they are Los Hampones at the moment. I always suspected it may have been the Cirio Brothers (Tony/Luis/Manny) but have no proof of that. So let's go with LuchaWiki. Whoever were under the masks were definitely veterans & good vets because this match ROCKS! So much so that I remember making a music video of it back in the day set to Green Day. The guys under those Duendes masks totally committed to the bit of being jesters by rolling around the ring at all times. Taking bumps, between moves, just chilling waiting for a tecnico to enter... that's committment to the bit I can respect! It also made them feel so different & exciting. The work here was fantastic... so many great little bits as the action just kept flowing & increasing in speed. I think the only thing I didn't like was the lame DQ finish for excessive violence. Otherwise you've got a ****-****1/4 match here depending on how high you want to go. It breaks my heart we only see the Duendes once more as Pena seemed more attached to the Hampones & even brings back Los Destructores for a short while. Bummer. A hidden gem match right here. Noti AAA is up next which talks about the minis recently doing WWF, followed by a pretty awful promo from La Maquina Del Amor about going to the Royal Rumble & it's capped off with an all time great segment - introducing Los Rudas De La Galaxia! ABISMO NEGRO! EL MOSCO! MANIACO! HISTERIA! For simplicity sake - the group we always refer to as Los Vipers which they'd eventually become founding members of. What makes this segment extra great is it was a one take GTFO recording. You can hear the producer as we cut to these guys, it's not edited out. Then the ultimate goof - they forgot the order of names being announced so Histeria turns around when they say "Maniaco". You can see Maniaco 1/4 turn before realizing shit he already turned what should I do... so he just waits for them to say Histeria & then turns himself. Mosco notices & seems to be looking at the camera like "should we re-do this?" No, Mosco. This is AAA. Of course not! So this is how it aired & will be in my mind forever. Along with the 6 music videos I made for the Space Cadets/Vipers. We then get a rundown of many 1997 TV tapings in the Mexico City area, some of which either don't happen or I will end up finding out they did when I finish going through all my new SuperLuchas magazines. Now it's main event time which again I remind you is happening a week before the Royal Rumble so we're all in good spirits! Which means we're all working hard! This is about as workrate heavy as you'll get out of any AAA match in 1997. Garza fits in seamlessly here working with three solid rudos. Heavy Metal is looking like it's 1993 all over again. Even Fuerza Guerrera is busting out an apron dive! The second fall finishing sequence was great. Pierroth fakes a low blow to win that one but Garza gets him back in the third fall by faking his own which the crowd loved. I would have preferred a different finish but whatever... it's nice to see the rudos get what's coming to them. That is the essence of lucha libre when you do it right. So we're 1 for 1 to start 1997! A very easy & fun show to watch.

We have a poster for this show so some things immediately stick out as weird. First off, how dated some of the promo photos are. But two inclusions of wrestlers who don't participate on this show - Mil Mascaras & Karis La Momia. The La Parka photo is of the original Parka as well. I would assume this show was sold before many gimmick changes & the wrestlers pictured were part of what was promised but these are turbulent AAA times as I've said before. The list of matches are indeed the matches we get minus Calaca who is replaced by Fuerza Guerrera since it's a revancha from last week's TV. The semi-main does not make TV, second week in a row the new rudo group gets cut. This could be just a US thing or it could be a legal thing as lots of behind the scenes battles are going on about the names (Sagrada/Parka). We start off with the minis again thankfully. The usual excellent match with this crew. Mascarita Jr just out of this world working with Mini Vader. Since Mini Killer is around here we also have Mini Miss Janeth so it's 5 on 3 with Mexican Paul out there as well. This week's cheating finish is Paul spraying some substance into La Parkita's eyes (but he's masked?). They almost fucked it up, Paul had to stop fleeing the ring to spray again b/c Parkita didn't notice him spraying the first time so he wasn't selling it. One notable thing in this match is Mini Vader starting to incorporate some of Vader's regular moves like the backwards splash & chest attacks. No, Mini Mankind was not sticking his fingers down people's throats yet. Next up is once again the Venum & Chivas trio taking on the new look Destructores. This trio left AAA in late 1995. They pop up on a week or two worth of CMLL shows so it's always been historically said they jumped to CMLL which isn't true. They left for the PROMELL organization which was supposed to be an independent group for all luchadors in Mexico who want to work with all companies (including AAA/CMLL). The idea was founded by Fuerza Guerrera/Blue Panther with the basis stop letting these two major companies control when and where you work, it's bring back the days of the true independents. So when the Destructores make their Arena Mexico appearence, it's as PROMELL guys which includes them lining up behind Fuerza/Panther during their speech pre-show explaining why they are here but not part of CMLL. How did this PROMELL concept go? Destructores are back in AAA by February 1996. They stick around a few months, they are out the door by the fall. Now they're back in early 1997 as Pena is still looking for bodies to fill spots. He freshened up their look as their masks look different. They still have the "NO VIOLENCE" deal on their outfits which I never understood as a kid & still don't quite get. I assume it's rudos being rudos saying they are anti-violence but then using it to beat up the tecnicos. The announcers explanation is they are against violence outside of a lucha libre setting. Alrighty. Pretty good match. Venum looking specatcular but also taking his usual crazy bumps at insignificant moments in the match that would end up shortening his career. Like at one point he just has to take a bump to the floor (as in like through the ropes, very simple ring exit) but chooses to go backwards over the top & kinda miscalculates his trajectory so he lands badly with his shoulder right on the edge of the apron. You can see him in obvious pain. This is days before the Royal Rumble. Why, dude? Why? First fall finish was excellent. Third fall not so much. We get an excessive violence DQ on the rudos which is the second week in a row Venum/Chivas have won this way. Either put them over or don't. Or maybe the idea here was to be setting up Hampones vs Destructores (which never happens)? It's a waste of time to read too much into AAA matches finishes under Antonio Pena's booking but as I noted he's focusing on anyone WWF affiliated at the time which Venum was so these kind of finishes are puzzling. Next up is Noti AAA where we get introduced to some of the new faces of AAA including La Calaca - the inverse La Parka. Speaking of Parka (Jr) we get a promo with the new Junior Atomicos. I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be referencing the match from this show that didn't air or the previous week's match but we come to find out Parka Jr/Sagrada Jr are having issues after some friendly fire. Parka Jr is being very rudo by pointing out Sagrada Jr had the same problems with Halcon Dorado Jr last year so he has a history of being a bad teammate. This is Pena continuing his idea to have a rudo La Parka on the roster so not the last we'll be seeing of this forgotten AAA angle/time period. Main event time. Days before the Rumble. Let's just say the effort level was not what it was on the last TV show! The only real highlight is a Hector Garza corkscrew plancha - not it's AAA debut since Mascarita Sagrada Jr had been doing it regularly. He seemed to hurt his ankle on the landing & is selling it for the rest of the match + post-match. That's not good. We get some mask ripping between Metal/Fuerza. Tecnicos win in straight falls. If you ever watch this don't skip the intros. We get some wonderful very of it's time theme music including Latin Lover w/ "Scatman" & Hector Garza with "Coco Jumbo"! They even had it blasting through the post-match replays.

Now we begin to get into some confusing TV as the shows start to be combined. I am still to this day unclear what the Mexico situation was. As in whether AAA had two days of TV or just the one. Whatever footage made it to the US could have just been combining both shows since the US airings were just one day of the week for an hour half. But I know for a fact more stuff was airing in Mexico & Europe. I'll prove the Mexico deal on the next taping below. The Europe thing I know for sure because I made an internet friend by this time named Edwin. He was a guy in Germany (I think...) who ran his own lucha libre website. He would post TV recaps. The exact type of site I'd spend hours & hours online looking to come across back when you had to put the legwork in - and I still had the free text only internet so I was getting kicked off every hour. Naturally I wrote to him & we started to communicate back & forth. What I started to notice was his TV recaps always included a match or two that was not airing on the US version that would pop up on everyone's tape listings. I don't know when this started or when it ended. Edwin's recaps end in mid-1997. So at least through 1997 there may be some AAA footage out there somewhere that never made the rounds to US/Canada tape traders. Fun fact: About a year and a half later Edwin takes a trip to Mexico City & ends up being the fan of the week on CMLL TV where he is given a gift & gets to briefly speak with Dr. Alfonso Morales. It sounds too unbelievable to be true but back in 1998 a foreigner from Germany ending up at an Arena Coliseo show sitting front row wasn't as common as today where you have to work hard just to find the Mexican born people in the first few rows of CMLL shows. So the first half of this week's TV is from Actopan & the second half is from Neza. We have our Venum/Chivas vs Hampones rematch which is just as good as their first match. Real solid action. Lots of ramming spots by the Chivas being incorporated now, probably at Pena's request, which means they use their "horns" to drive into the butts of the rudos. Always gets a pop. This is a reason people would use to shit all over AAA around this time but what's the harm in that? They are soccer goats! THEY DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER! The highlight of the match for me is near the finish where Venum busts out a prototype Code Red! Years before everyone credited Red with inventing it. It should have been the Code Venum! Or Code Green! Even though he's in purple for this match which became his new color scheme. The only thing missing was the snap Red used to get but that is more on the opponent than the guy doing the spot. Tecnicos win. Next up we get our first ever look on TV at Abismo Negro! Historic! He's teaming with his future Vipers friends & current Rudos De La Galaxia members. Their offense really isn't super spectacular in this outside of a Histeria springboard moonsault but their selling & bumping for the tecnicos is just fantastic in the second & third fall. We get a big dive sequence with bodies almost flying into the crowd because of the limited ringside space. The finish is the classic lucha spot where we have a triple submission by the rudos but the leftover tecnico crawls between their arms to cover them all for the pinfall. Post-match we get La Parka Jr & La Calaca running it to attack & unmask the tecnicos except it backfires & they get unmasked! We see replays & then cut backstage to interviews conducted right as the wrestlers get through the curtain. This was a new Pena concept. Not sure where he got the idea, I don't remember this being a WWF thing at the time. The interviews would be in front of screens so they could watch the replay as they cut their promos. Maybe it was supposed to be like the backstage interviews on RAW but AAA didn't have the ability (or care in the world) to pre-tape stuff? This also happened after the opening match here but those guys had nothing to talk about. Here we find out Parka Jr/Calaca have friends who are apparently coming. This is weird on TV that we are following because their matches didn't air the previous weeks but as I noted above - off camera Pena was turning Parka Jr rudo to allign with Calaca. Switching over to Neza we have our Maniaco debut & another Maquina Del Amor appearence. Garza is already suffering from Ultimo Dragon syndrome where he's having trouble adjusting to the AAA match style. You can see this is already in danger of not working & his face isn't hiding his worry. But he's not here to be an AAA wrestler... he jumped to be a WWF guy. So just gotta power through. They split the first two falls. Maniaco takes some wonderfully wild bumps for Latin Lover. Finish has La Parka Jr back again (different show!) to pull Maniaco out of the way of a Heavy Metal moonsault leading to the tecnicos loss. Garza chases Parka Jr into the crowd. Next up is Noti AAA which is a short one but also had A+ rare footage! I believe it was taken from Televisa or whoever went with AAA to cover the Royal Rumble. Includes clips of a couple of the pre-show dark matches. Pre-pre-show as I mean matches taped before the pre-show which had the minis tag. This was always on my list of matches I'd love to see WWE pull from the vault one day but I was specifically told by those who would know the matches do not exist on video. Their internal recording has the hard cam turned on just before the pre-show goes live. So these Rumble matches do not exist outside of these few second clips. I'm not even sure if Tinieblas sticks around here much longer so this is all very weird. We get a rundown of the big Mexico City show coming up on 1/31 which is billed as AAA vs WWF with Diesel II/Razor II/Jake Roberts set to debut. The card listed on TV does not allign with what ends up presented which is on brand for AAA. We also find out Rey De Reyes is coming to Madero soon & Bret The Hitman Hart is coming to Mexico! He does not. For reasons I'll explain later, none of the WWF guys end up on that show. This AAA/WWF deal continues to roll on smoothly! Main event time. A barnburner! If you enjoyed that Royal Rumble trios match, you'd love this match with Perro/Canek/Octagon teaming once again! Too bad the deal wasn't completed a year earlier or they could have been around for the tail end of the WWF New Generation era! This match is really just a vehicle to start problems between Pierroth Jr & Cibernetico. Fuerza is trying to play peacemaker but it's a no-go. They fall apart, rudos lose, they brawl afterwards. Then we get the backstage interview gimmick where they yell at each other & we are reminded these two have to get along since they are scheduled to team with Perro Aguayo to defend AAA's honor against the WWF next week. A can they get along story! Don't say Pena wasn't paying attention when he went to visit those WWF shows recently! That's it for this week's TV. This is my jam. Couple of decent matches, couple of matches full of AAA wackiness. That's what I was raised on!

The big AAA vs WWF show is upon us! This is definitely the new era AAA & official start to 1997 because we have new graphics, new entrance set, an opening that features the edecanes dressed as cheerleaders doing the Macarena in the ring & Pepsi banners everywhere in sight. That's right, the "dying AAA" as per the newsletters being fed information by Konnan, just signed a sponsorship deal with Pepsi in Mexico. Meanwhile Konnan's Promo Azteca was airing as an informercial @ 1am on TV Azteca & had phone sex ads between matches but was the top wrestling promotion in Mexico if you got your news through the Observer. Funny how that goes. We start with the minis who are now using the WWF entrance music. All the edecanes for this show have special outfits designed to match who they are walking out to the ring accompanying. Throwback to the early AAA days. Very professional looking show, a far cry from what CMLL was presenting on TV at this time. The new entrance set is a sliding door & has the WWF logo. I assume they got the specs from WWF & just built their own version. Match seems to be JIP as does other matches on the show. I also believe the matches are being edited to hide certain things which is a new concept around this time, also probably patterened after WWF. I wish someone other than Torerito had been a part of this match. He's just no good. But the other three are great & work super hard to match this a blast. Amazing tornilo dive by Mascarita. Mini Vader is destroying both tecnicos with his kicks. Mascarita Jr does an awesome monkey flip setup into a spinning headscissors. The finish is again Mexican Paul interfereing to hit Mascarita Jr with something (he had an object hidden in his hand but they never got a good camera shot). The mini rudos continue their win streak. The Naucalpan/Neza matches were better but this had more heat than those. Next up should have been the semi-main but Roy Lucier said NOT SO FAST. He found a TV version of this show that included the segunda which had never been seen before. So we get full entrances which is great to hear the themes. This is Super Nova's AAA debut. He was Orito in CMLL & jumped with Felinito a week or so before this show. They had been feuding & were heading to a mask match. So it's hard to know if this was scouting talent (both were very good) or if it was just a way to fuck with CMLL. At one point the minis opener had a mini sorpresa listed which could have been Felinito before maybe Pena decided to re-gimmick him as a normal sized guy. Not sure. I lean more towards it was Mini Goldust but the guy doing that gimmick (Mini Karis La Momia) was still injured at this time I think. There's a Mini Goldust listed on a previous Naucalpan taping but that match never aired so I wonder if Pena tried someone else out under the gimmick, realized it didn't work & scrapped plans to debut it on TV until Mini Karis was ready to go. Again this match seems JIP. No worries, we still get plenty of action because this one is GREAT! This is absolutely a match that would have been in my all-time memory bank had I seen it back when it aired or on a video tape when I began collecting. It has everything I want out of my lucha libre. Great flying, rudos bumping all over, comedy, dive train, creativity... you name it. The only guy who stuck out in a bad way was Picudo who didn't even wear his futuristic outfit he debuted back in late 1996 & messed up his dive badly. He was not a fit with this crew although he stays with them & his performance improves later on. If you don't know - he's related to Antonio Pena so he always had a spot here when he wanted it. Tecnicos win by DQ due to a foul. Crowd loved this. I loved it. In terms of footage Roy has discovered himself - this is right up at the top for me. Either #1 or #2 behind the long lost Rey Jr 1995 AAA TV matches. Falls right into the wheelhouse of me falling in love with lucha libre & the characters that have stuck with me forever. ****. Now back to the version I got on TLN here in Canada - we have the debut of the new Pentagon being played by the ex-Joe Mercado/Metalico. He's in this match since originally Octagon was in this match but for some reason isn't here. We have the Maquina Del Amor as opponents. It's a match designed for them to shine of course. So Pentagon does his job perfectly bumping all over the place with Jerry Estrada. Jerry is notceably slowing down at this point in time. 1997 was definitely the year where we saw the Jerry we all knew & loved started to fade away. Working the way he did all those years & the lifestyle he lived was always going to lead us to this point, it was just a matter of when. He disappears after his late 97 run in Promo Azteca & by the time we see him again a couple years later in AAA he's a total shell of what he once was. The other thing happening in this match is the teases that Miss Janeth is falling for Latin Lover which makes Killer very unhappy. It seems like they had spots planned where she would accidentally/not accidentally end up in Latin's arms but they only pulled off 50% of those correctly. Tecnicos get the win. I liked the finish where even though Pentagon/Killer both got pinned, Garza still found time to send Jerry to the floor & hit his gorgeous corkscrew plancha as the icing on the cake. The "IT MAKES NO SENSE!!!" people would be infuriated but this is exactly what lucha libre as meant to be. A show. Next up is Noti AAA where we just get a mass info dump. We get the dates of the next WWF shows where AAA talent will be appearing. 2/16, 2/17 & 2/18. A quick check of History of WWF reveals no AAA wrestlers ended up on any of these shows. The talent exchange is already off to a wonderful start! It's then revealed Pentagon II (yes, acknowledged as not the original) has debuted & he was handpicked by the original to put an end to Octagon. We also find out Parka Jr & Calaca's new friends are Hijo Del Espectro & Vudu (who ends up being called Zombie as well). They are the Atomicos Del Terror, naturally to feud with the new Junior Atomicos (Demon/Sagrada/Tinieblas/?). It's noted Tinieblas Jr made such a big impression at the Royal Rumble, he ended up attacked backstage by WWF wrestlers and will be out a while. Tinieblas worked a dark match at the Rumble. I'm certain he was not attacked backstage nor did he make any sort of impression. I do remember this bit makes it into the magazines. Xochitl Hamada is coming to AAA! That's nice, Pentagon will be happy. Main event time and oh boy... is it ever a main event. Let's split it into three parts - first off the entrances. Chicano Power who has wrestled on AAA in quite a while is the manager for the WWF folks who come out seperately to their WWF music. Perro gets a huge reaction. Ciber's edecanes are men. The weirdos who show up occasionally on twitter to shame lucha promotion for having edecanes always seem to forget that male edecanes were a thing. Funny how that goes. Always beware the male fans on twitter who are a little too loud about making sure to tell you how other men don't respect women, only they do. Shoutout to Steven Graham! Second - the match itself is horrific. I don't know what the WWF guys were expecting from their AAA opponents but I'm sure it wasn't ancient Perro Aguayo who could barely move + very young Cibernetico who hated bumping & hadn't figure out how pro wrestling works yet. When Pierroth Jr is the one who has to carry things, you know you're in trouble. Even moreso when he & Razor were on different pages the entire match leading to some of the most hilarious fuck-ups you've ever seen inside a pro wrestling along with the scariest of scary moments when Razor goes for the Razor's Edge but of course Pierroth has never seen this move nor practiced it so he dead-weights Razor which only causes him to be dropped right on his head at a disgusting angle. Razor seemed very concerned but Pierroth shook it off & continued the match. He kinda had no choice but to get up unless he was paralyzed, he was key to all this. After the foreigners win a long first fall, Cibernetico & Pierroth begin to have problems so Ciber walks off leaving them down 3-on-2. Poor Perro having to get thrown around by these sloppy big dudes. Finally Ciber comes back & the crowd urges him to go help! So he runs to the ring but doesn't help... he attacks Pierroth. The foreigners pick up the scraps & win in straight falls. Third - the post-match is just all chaos with Pierroth now joining the foreign side to beat up on both Perro & Ciber. This brings out Latin Lover, Garza, Metal who defend Perro but are not defending Ciber. Their shots are also being no-sold by the foreigners who probably were not clued in at all as to how this entire deal was supposed to go down. Jerry Estrada & friends then come out to attack the pretty boys with Miss Janeth trying to play peacemaker to continue her angle with Latin Lover. The foreigners eventually get escorted away. We get a dramatic fade out & a graphic popping up that says "Story to be continued...". A fascinating show for so many reasons. Vital to telling AAA's history. One thing that was clear is even with it being advertised as AAA vs WWF, they did not sell out the Gimnasio Juan De La Barera. Camera shots clearly show the empty seats. It wasn't a bomb but that isn't a huge building to fill. They only needed like 5000. WWF wasn't a big thing in Mexico at this time & of course the names being sent were not exactly draws at all. I find it funny comparing it to these days where WWE's AAA is doing monster business just because it's WWE. It doesn't matter at all who they send. The lowest of the low will get giant pops & be treated as stars as long as people remembered them from appearing on RAW/Smackdown at some point. Antonio Pena would have killed for that in 1997. Instead he's got WWF sending over their rejects who he can't even claim are WWF wrestlers any longer in due time + they stop booking AAA talent on their own shows. That Royal Rumble trios match really soured Vince on this agreement & you can't not put the blame on Pena who probably could have changed things & put the Cadets/Rudos De La Galaxia on as the PPV match but decided Canek/Perro/Fuerza/Estrada would work better. That one decision changed the entire course of how this working relationship played out.

This is where things get a little messy. I can't guarantee I'm gonna be 100% trying to straighten it up but I'll do my best. As I noted - either AAA is combining TV tapings into single episodes or it's just airing that way in the US & there's no quality control. In between these tapings is a 2/7 Arena Neza taping that I am skipping over for now because I believe it aired as a standalone show w/ it's own Noti AAA. I think these episodes got bunched together & have their own Noti AAA covering the events. We'll start with 2/9 for the sake of simplicity & also the lone match from it aired first. That would be Venum/Super Muneco/Blue Demon Jr vs Los Duendes. The Muneco graphic is still him with his frowning mask funny enough. What hits you immediately here is the venue. This is an outdoor venue never or rarely seen before. You can see houses outside the venue. What you can't see is people. An outdoor venue in February... not a great idea. The few people you see amongst the empty seats are bundled up & the storm clouds are rolling in. The announcers even mention it. The guys out there go on with this match as usual & the first fall is great. The Duendes impress once again basing for Venum & clowning around for the more limited tecnicos. Venum hits a picture perfect in-ring tornillo splash that you gotta see to believe. Then we go to commercial... and we don't come back. What I think happened here is the skies opened up & the rest of the show was not broadcast quality. It's still light outside at the end of this first fall. We get clips from the main event of this show during Noti AAA where it's now pitch black. I have to assume they waited out the rain, then sent out the main event just to have it happen. The mat looks completely soaked. Pierroth Jr, who wasn't booked, shows up with Chicano Power to attack Cibernetico. This is where we rewind to the 2/5 Arena Naucalpan taping. This one is a total mess in the DB although that'll get fixed (hopefully) by the time you all read this. It combines results with a March taping in Neza. The only thing that airs for us from this show is the main event with Perro Aguayo & friends. According to my records the Mascarita Jr/Mini Vader & not listed in the results above Latin Lover/Blue Demon Jr/Pantera vs Abismo Negro/Killer/Pentagon match aired in Europe. Sad for us. Very very sad. A Mascarita/Mini Vader match probably kicked all sorts of ass & even had the ultra rare DOUBLE COUNTOUT in the first fall meaning it was a two fall match as the second was the decider. The match we see is basically all storyline. Ciber/Pierroth are in split masks which look cool but are a waste since they are in the process of breaking up. Octagon/Fuerza are doing their own thing which involves Fuerza's mask so ripped up that you can basically see his face. Not a pretty man. This definitely felt like a match where they weren't given clear instructions on what to focus on except for the finish so they are all just doing their own thing. Sagrada beats Ciber with a huracanrana to end the first fall. Ciber won't stand in the corner with his partners after that & it leads to him & Pierroth brawling to the back leaving Fuerza alone. They make their way back out a few minutes later & Ciber is tearing at Pierroth's mask. The new Pentagon then runs out to low blow all the tecnicos except Octagon avoids it only to then get one from Fuerza. Tecnicos win in straight falls. We get some post-match brawling with the various feuding people. Also of note is this match is the first appearence of the "Hombre De Negro". A mysterious figure dressed in black watching the show from the crowd. They actually have one nice camera shot where we are watching via the hard cam, then it kinda slowly zooms in towards this masked individual watching on. At this time you weren't getting production like that on any lucha TV show. Probably totally accidental haha. This man will show up again although without spoiling myself looking forward, I'm forgetting where it leads, if anywhere. Now we move to Pachuca on 2/11. The main event airs here with Pentagon in for Parka Jr. The semi-main airs as well with Parka Jr taking Calaca's place. So yes... the first ever incarnation of the Space Cadets vs Rudos De La Galaxia does NOT AIR! Seemingly anywhere. I don't have it in my European listings. We see some clips on Noti AAA which include a couple dives & Venum doing an awesome top-rope headscissors on Histeria. Unbelievable this got scrapped for a Payasos match. Noti AAA also runs down the upcoming Rey De Reyes card which ends up changing but not due to disorganization as much as travel problems. The disorganization part is originally Rey De Reyes was announced as a Champion of Champions concept. Arturo Rivera said 16 men would be entered, only champions. Makes sense between all their singles, tag, trios & atomicos champions. But the math didn't math or Pena changed his mind so we have a bunch of randoms like May Flowers & Maniaco listed as participating. Hector Garza plays a big role in the tournament & with him having just jumped here there was no way to get a title on him so quickly so maybe that played a part too. So we go to the semi-main which is La Parka Jr on the rudo side, funny enough with Hijo Del Espectro (future Silver Cat). Funny because Espectro would be Parka's first big AAA feud. It was scheduled to end up a mask match but a couple days before the show word spreads Espectro won't be there. AAA even addresses it in their magazine at the time noting a surprise luchador would step in. It's called a huge fraude as they delivered Gigante Drako, a total unknown, to lose his mask to Parka. The story AAA gave was Espectro got hurt. It's not likely the real story since Espectro disappears & next time we see him on TV is as Silver Cat (unmasked). He loses his mask as Hijo Del Espectro the following year on a non-TV show in Tijuana I believe. So why would he end up back in AAA after fucking Pena over so badly? Well, he's family. You know how that goes. He had a job from Day #1 of AAA so I'm sure he apologized for whatever the reason was he mised the match & Pena forgave him but wasn't gonna get him a big show payday again. The guy listed as Vudu in this match is the same dude who worked as Zombie. He seemed to go back & forth between the names or we lost something in translation at some point. It's not Electro Shock, he comes later. This is a smallish skinny dude. These guys were just announced as the Atomicos Del Terror to feud with the Junior Atomicos but it seems like Pena has had a change of mind because this match ends with Parka's partners turning on him & leaving him half unmasked & beaten to a pulp. The Payasos tease coming back to save him but end up just beating him up as well. So this kinda leaves Parka in limbo. Neither the rudos nor tecnicos want him. Poor guy. I wonder why Pena changed his mind so quickly on him being a rudo? As for the match, it wasn't much. I liked the second fall finish where the rudos ran into each other on the outside leaving Parka alone to be triple pinned. Last match from this (presumed) TV episode is the main event from Pachuca. I remember this aired on a combined CMLL/AAA episode on TeleLatino here in Canada & I was so depressed this was the one AAA match that made the cut. Watching it back all these years later my takeaway is Pentagon was fucking awesome. Joe Mercado/Metalico was always a superb worker in CMLL. The problem for him was there was no more Antonio Pena around. Pena would absolutely have grabbed him - a total bland looking dude with negative charisma - and figured out a gimmick that hides his face & brings out what little energy he has. Instead CMLL just let him rot as an undercard for years. He comes here to AAA, gets a shiny new gimmick & he's a world beater. The way he moves around the ring is fantastic + original, he bumps like a madman & his selling is tremendous. He got so good he ended up working in Japan more than Mexico eventually. Jerry Estrada was definitely not in his right mind in this match & was doing lots of weird things like removing the top of the ringpost (which apparently isn't attached...) & grabbing a photo a fan was holding, then trying to show it to the camera man. He also takes a few bumps that look like someone who is not sober. God bless Jerry! Live by the sword, die by the sword! The finish of the match is Jerry getting beat so bad by Perro he flees to the backstage area. When he returns he's not alone - he has Abismo Negro who attacks the tecnicos for the DQ. Poor 14 year old Rob seeing how cool Abismo Negro looks but not getting to see him wrestle (I would on Monday Night RAW & Shotgun Saturday Night in a few weeks!). We get some post-match brawling to finish things off here. Perro actually gets some shots in on Abismo. On a final note I should mention in the Noti AAA clips we saw Histeria was decked out in an amazing half Histeria/Abismo mask that I have never seen since. Maybe the ultimate gold level discovery would be that match showing up one day although nothing from this time frame ever popped up when AAA was putting retro stuff on their Twitch or YouTube. Sad.

Well, as the kids would say, I worked myself into a shoot seperating this taping. It was not a stand alone episode. It appears to have aired with the missing Naucalpan matches as a joint TV episode. So maybe the Pachuca show above aired on it's own somewhere. We get two matches from this taping - the first being the Space Cadets against Picudo & Los Hampones. Rudos immediately attack so we get the differently strucutred match where the rudos dominate, tecnicos fight back to win the first fall, then they shine, then rudos cut-off to take second fall. I like this kind of variety to keep things fresh. 2/3 falls is only dull if you make it dull by following the same patterns. Venum & Nova looked spectacular here on the tecnico side. Full of energy coming off their WWF appearences. Picudo was doing a good job basing for Nova. Commentators make note of a spectacular dive Venum did on the Pachuca show (so it aired before this) in the match we never got to see. THANKS! LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT AWESOME THINGS I'LL NEVER SEE! Discovery has a bad slip on his part of the first fall finish. Venum gets thrown to the floor & doesn't even bump, just lands on his feet from a great distance. Not good! Third fall has another tecnico comeback. Ludxor does his trademark Ludxor Dive as we dubbed it originally. Venum & Nova don't give a flying fuck that there is no room between the crowd & ring - they're busting out dual springboard moonsaults! Both land hard on top of the guardrail. Discovery hits his plancha after running up the ropes. Takes too long for everyone to recover just to lead to a finish where referee El Chocolate - because he's dark skinned, get it? - steps in front of Super Nova & trips him. Picudo then beats him but Pepe Casas is having none of this & awards the match to the tecnicos by DQ. Very enjoyable stuff! Cadets already a highlight of 1997 TV. Next up we get a pre-match interview with Pierroth Jr wearing a WWF RAW t-shirt! Someone got some swag at his last taping! He hypes up the main event on this show, another match we'll never see. We get the semi-main which is an all-angle match. See we are told Blue Demon Jr has been having issues with the other Juniors. We haven't seen that in the US episodes. So immediately he's having discussions with Sagrada in their corner. He purposely costs his team the first fall by tripping Sagrada leading Pantera to chase Demon backstage. And guess what? We have a camera waiting backstage! As soon as they get through the curtain they start brawling. I feel like Pena absolutely took this from watching WWF. Tirantes comes back to seperate them & they return to the ring. Rudos win in straight falls as the tecnicos are too busy fighting amongst themselves to try and mount any sort of comeback. Demon has his mask ripped up but storms away. We get a backstage promo from him saying he's not a rudo, he's just sick of the Junior Atomicos & most tecnicos. Erm...... doesn't that make you a rudo by default? He tells Antonio Pena (while looking off camera to signify Pena is right there) stop booking me with these fools. Then he storms off.

Ugh What an ugly scan. That one is on me, I should re-do it at some point. Our pre-Rey De Reyes TV taping is in Cuernavaca - a place I can't recall AAA visiting for TV in 1996. LuchaDB has the top two airing but something about that mini's match set something off in my brain. I knew I had seen that combination & in this same ring. So I dug around & sure enough it aired here on TLN in Canada. Not in February, not in March, not in April... it was tacked on to a random episode near the end of May. I have to assume this was a TLN thing & not AAA airing a match 3 months old by that point. So this match is Mini Goldust's official TV debut. It's incredible how much he looked like the full size Goldust. Pena really had a nack for picking the perfect people for these mini roles. This is the ex-Mini Karis La Momia returning from injury. He would go on to become Mini Abismo Negro by year end. Over on the tecnico side we have Mini Super Nova or Mini Nova if you will. I went with Mini Super Nova in my listings because coming soon WWF will re-gimmick some of the minis including creating a Mini Nova (original Mascarita Sagrada). It's funny how there's a Mini Super Nova because the actual Super Nova is Mike Segura who was playing Orito in the CMLL mini's division before he jumped here. This is a pretty quick two falls match where the rudos go over when Mexican Paul interferes. Same finish we've seen every time so far, the team remains undefeated. It was fine but nothing you need go out of your way to see. Or maybe you do. It took me forever to get this off the disc which DVD Shrink was refusing to recognize. Now you owe me & have to watch! Semi-main is another one of those angle matches. Cibernetico is refusing to help his partners due to his issues with Pierroth. Killer & Miss Janeth are also having issues due to the Latin Lover deal. Pentagon is playing chickenshit rudo perfectly by running from Octagon every single time which gets great heat. Seriously, Mercado was so good at this gimmick instantly. You have to wonder if Octagon reccommended him for the role as they would have known each other from back in the CMLL days. Everything Pentagon did here made Octagon look like a million bucks so it stands to reason Octagon was looking for someone like that. Finish of the match has Killer accidentally kick Janeth which knocks her flat on the floor. Ciber then lays down for the tecnicos. Two straight. Latin Lover then goes to ringside to check on Janeth but it's Garza who ends up carrying her in his arms to the back for medical attention. Off we go to Noti AAA where we first recap Parka Jr getting laid out by both tecnicos & rudos. We see highlight of Mach 1's debut where he gives Super Nova a scary high backdrop. We also get a rundown of the upcoming 2/28 Gimnasio Juan De La Barera show which has Frisbee listed where El Mexicano would wind up, teaming with the Chivas Rayadas. Not sure if that gives away who was playing Frisbee at this time or just a switch that was made for whatever reason. Main event is the title match with some weird audio issues. Couldn't tell if it was on purpose or not. We can hear Tirantes the entire match. Anything he says comes through loud & clear. I wonder if it was some audio issue tied into the angle they were doing here? It's a very slow match as all Pierroth singles matches are. Janeth is at ringside supporting Latin but they make her leave at one point. She finds her way back. Latin takes the first fall. Second fall is a bunch of nothing. Pierroth just holding Latin down in some sort of chinlock. Fuerza tries to interfere but Octagon is out there to hit him with a tope suicida. Behind the ref's back Pierroth fouls Latin to even things up. He had actually also low blowed him about two minutes earlier but then didn't try to cover him. Very strange fall finish. Third fall is even slower somehow with Pierroth this time just kinda laying on Latin on the mat. Killer is out to warn Janeth about supporting Latin. Chicano Power accidentally hits Killer with the flag. Out of nowhere we hear a voice taunting Pierroth over the house mic. At first I couldn't understand if they were playing audio from a promo over the match or what. The crowd is confused too but eventually realize someone is talking so now nobody is paying attention to the match, they're searching the crowd for who is talking. I thought maybe it was the Hombre De Negro? The cameraman seems to be having problems getting a shot of whoever it is but finally after about 90 seconds this person starts walking to the ring while still taunting Pierroth. It's Cibernetico. In the confusion Latin returns the favor to Pierroth with a foul & then gets the three count from Tirantes. Definitely seems like an idea Pena took from WWF. In the back we get a quick interview with Latin who has Cibernetico by his side. We get a graphic for Rey De Reyes coming up & we're out.

It is Rey De Reyes time! The first one ever! Somehow we don't have any poster or lineup sheet so the LuchaDB results spoil my story time. This is the first big event of 1997, originally advertised as a tournament with all the champions, then as a big WWF vs AAA event. Lots of names were promised including Bret Hart, Goldust, Vader (the big one), Mankind (the big one) & even future AAA booker/writer according to Facebook - The Undertaker! None of them made it. It's a good thing too because someone may have reported back to Vince that AAA's set designed never got a copy of the WWF logo so they put some makeshift logo together that looks just awful. The relationship continues to go smoothly! You know what didn't go smoothly? The flight in for the foreigners. No idea where Jake came from but Diesel/Razor were coming from the WWF house show in Tennesee the night before. If I remember the SuperLuchas coverage of this, the claim was they got delayed en route & by the time they cleared immigration in Mexico City there was no way to get to them to Madero in time. A humorous line said Marisela Pena tried to get them a private plane. No offense to anyone who may end up reading this & be super offended - AAA 1997 was in no position to be affording a rental of a private plane & zero chance Marisela owned her own. At this time the AAA crew would have been getting bussed to Madero (~6 hours from Mexico City). So if these guys were gonna be on that bus, they'd have to have arrived by early AM which is impossible from where they were coming from. My guess is they had a connecting flight in Mexico City but Tampico (where you land to get to Madero) is now a huge airport so there are likely only 2 flights per day, if that. If they got in late they probably missed that flight & there was zero chance they were gonna be able to make it. I even wonder if communication was so awful between the two sides that they had no idea Diesel/Razor were working the night before because if anyone realized they were & *where* they were, I'm sure they would have been re-routed. Another example of this great working relationship! So AAA has to announce to the live crowd the promised WWF wrestlers would not make it & a few guys end up doing double duty. Not one of their finer moments & there is no coming back from this one. The crew keep showing up but this AAA vs WWF deal is dead in the water as everyone & their mom expected. In terms of production besides the fancy stage we have fireworks which were not common + something else Pena clearly swiped from his WWF viewing. There is a full time camera man on the apron. They clearly didn't alert the wrestlers because a few times during the show you see them annoyed or signalling for him to get the fuck out of the way. I thought it looked good but when you have something like that the wrestlers need to be prepped & learn to work around it. Only match from this show that doesn't air in some form is the planned AAA vs WWF match. I think it went on as the semi-main but I can't be sure. The crowd doesn't seem to be filing out after the Rey De Reyes final but many kids appear to be sleeping so I wonder if this show just kept getting delayed to see if there was any way to get the WWF guys to the building. I'm sure it was a stressful day. The minis opener originally only aired in clips on the Year in Review show. But thanks to Roy Lucier we finally got a full copy from the original TV airing about two years ago on YouTube. It's your standard good minis match with Super Munequito in particularly shining thanks to this stacked rudo side. I have no clue where Mascarita Sagrada Jr was considering this is a major show. He wasn't over working WWF & is listed for a show the following days in Guanajuato so who knows. Good thing we have a deep tecnico crew here. The idea of course is that these mini WWF guys have not been beaten yet. Commentary hammers that home to the point you think they are going to finally lose here. No such luck. Creative finish where La Parkita gets handcuffed at ringside. Big dive by Munequito, big moonsault plancha by Mini Nova, then Mini Mankind just rolls Parkita into the ring & pins him as the little guy just can't get a shoulder up with his hands cuffed. Next up is the big one......... SPACE CADETS VS RUDOS DE LA GALAXIA! Minus one. No Maniaco. No matter. This is still an all-time RobViper match which of course comes with RobViper Lore: I was communicating at the time with Steven Jensen - internet guy I made friends with who sent me AAA/CMLL TV around this time. He would e-mail me about what aired & we were in love with this crew of guys at this point. Oh, I guess I should mention - this did not air originally - it's another match that shows up on the Year in Review show. So when it aired, he put his new technology to use which was a program that captures stills from video. He sent me photos of this match to get me hyped! Yes, I was still using free internet so it took time to download. He ended up making a collage of all the big dives which was my desktop wallpaper for the longest time. I still have the image somewhere, always makes me smile. Unfortunately no luck on Roy's part for this one - his copy didn't even have this match. So the clipped up version from the Year in Review is all we'll ever see of this madness. I won't take you through it, you should have watched this already. It's mandatory viewing to even be interacting with me. For it's time everything they did was beyond nutty. Heck, by 2026 standards it's nutty. The sequence with Mosco asai moonsaulting to nowhere, then getting hit with the flip senton plancha is never going to be re-created. Core wrestling memory for me. And that was proceeded by Histeria being BACKDROPPED OVER THE RINGPOST TO THE FLOOR! FUCK!!! Tecnicos take the match with an SSP by Venum onto Mosco. A billion stars. A billion & one stars just incase Meltzer has really lost it by this point & given some Ospreay match a billion. This is the kind of match that makes people lucha libre fans. I still have it in my head almost move-for-move. Yes, I'm proud of that. Now we roll into the Rey De Reyes tournament. Four way matches under elimination rules with each winner advancing to the final. I know this. It was announced this way. I just wonder if anyone told Tirantes ahead of time. He seems to only be call the final submissions so throughout these matches you have guys calling their own eliminations. Our first four way is Mascara Sagrada Jr/Latin Lover/Killer/Jerry Estrada. It's all two tecnicos & two rudos. This one gets the most time out of the first round matches, possibly undeserved. It's fine but probably the second weakest match of the tournament. Sagrada gets the shine eliminating both Killer & then Jerry leaving it tecnico vs tecnico where of course Latin Lover comes out on top. BTW Latin was far & away the most over guy on this show. Next up is Heavy Metal/Blue Demon Jr/Maniaco/May Flowers. In theory two tecnicos & two rudos like I said but Demon is in the process of a turn so the match is full of him trying to screw over Heavy Metal by breaking up his pinfalls & trying to get him to jump onto the rudos but being very obvious he's gonna pull them away at the last second. Heavy Metal is too smart for this & just starts working by himself. Both rudos get eliminated, then Metal starts ripping at Demon's mask. Demon responded by low blowing Metal for the DQ & beats him down post-match. Announcers try to explain Demon couldn't see what he was doing due to his mask being ripped apart. Next is the best of the first round matches. Hector Garza/Perro Aguayo Jr/La Parka Jr/Abismo Negro. Garza hadn't fully adapted to the AAA style yet, he still thought he had to work hard like in Arena Mexico so he's doing everything here. Although he runs into some problems with Parka Jr. The two are on completely different pages multiple times. Abismo's job is to shine up Perrito before eliminating him with a cool submission. Abismo goes next via Garza. There's a wild superplex to the floor spot before Abismo goes which sets up Garza's corkscrew plancha. Finish is very scary as Garza does a second rope version of the Guerrero Especial but he doesn't get Parka all the way over so he ends up dropping him onto his head. OUCH! Parka seemed pretty shaken up by it. Garza advances giving us all three members of La Maquina Del Amor in the final. Next up is Octagon/Pantera/Pentagon/Fuerza Guerrera. Joined as Octagon has been attacked on the outside. Pantera gets to work with old rivals Pentagon (Joe Mercado) & Fuerza Guerrera. Pantera's big breakout match was actually vs Fuerza at Arena Coliseo in 1990 when he challenged for the National Welterweight Title. He also shocks the world beating Fuerza for the CMLL Welterweight Title in 1992 but as America. No such luck here as he's the first one eliminated leaving Octagon in a handicap match. Pentagon is great here with everything he does. I'm realizing quickly how much we slept on him. Like I think we knew he was good, maybe too good for AAA at the time, but he was probably better than a lot of the CMLL guys at this same time, he just had nobody to work with in the main event scene here. He ends up making Octagon look like a million bucks before getting submitted. Fuerza low blows Octagon which Tirantes misses. He tries it a second time but this time Tirantes catches him & awards the win to Octagon. We have an all tecnico final! Creative booking but also we have now reached the portion of the evening that just doesn't work in an AAA setting. AAA crowds - especially out in the towns like Madero - are just very much comprised of families who just come to the lucha shows to scream at the rudos & cheer the tecnicos. The serious wrestling stuff is for Mexico City - the "conocedores". Out here they like the brawling, the drama, the conflict. They are now seeing a four way match with all tecnicos so there's no conflict... and it's all people they've already seen wrestle. So the match gets off to a very cold start when ideally you'd want them super hyped for this big tournament final. In this sense it's very much a WWF type crowd as those also notoriously tired of seeing the same people when a tournament was run (see: Wrestlemania 4). Another new production element can be found in this main event as Tirantes is mic'ed up. We can hear everything he is saying. Not only that - so can the crowd. This puts all the heat on Tirantes as he can be heard making cracks at all the tecnicos which is the only thing getting much of a reaction. Heavy Metal is eliminated first & rather quickly. Blink & you missed it. Octagon does a tope onto Latin Lover which causes his shoe to fall off. He sells a foot injury for a bit before putting the shoe back on & re-entering to get himself eliminated rather quickly as well. This means we're down to Latin Lover & Hector Garza. Friends. Such friends that neither guy wants to hurt the other. They offer to lay down for each other. Tirantes isn't having any of it. Heavy Metal jumps back into the ring & explains to them just fight... let the best man win... so they shake hands & it's on! The action isn't bad but it's clearly Garza trying to have an epic Arena Mexico match in front of a crowd that has not been trained to accept something like that so it feels like it's missing something. Plus Tirantes keeps making everyone laugh with his comments to Octagon at ringside like "don't talk back to the best referee is all of Mexico!" The finish is rather weak with Garza missed his tornillo splash off the top & Latin just draping his arm over him for the win. Crowd pops because as I said Latin is the most over guy here but it just didn't feel like a memorable finish at all. We do get the fireworks, a trophy & a little celebration from all the tecnicos. I remember watching this on TLN & liking it because it was the first seemingly full AAA major show I got to see in real time. I understood pretty much everything going on by using my eyes so I was starting to feel more comfortable watching the product even though I still didn't know any Spanish. To me this was the far superior promotion to CMLL who just did random matches, many times with much older wrestlers. This promotion had young colorful exciting guys who would sometimes pop up on my WWF show as well. Watching it back now I don't have the same feelings of course but this hit all the nostalgia feels I was looking for.

This turns out to be the big WWF vs AAA show after the Rey De Reyes mishap. Strangely we only see 3 matches from this show & one isn't the main event. Again you can't be sure what aired in Mexico & what didn't. From my records the three matches from this show that are easily available through the tape trading scene are the Chivas match, the Cadets match (thank the lord) & a Blue Demon Jr tag match which isn't on the poster for some reason. According to my records the minis match aired in Europe. In the LuchaDB Cubs has a link to the main event on the now deleted Gambe Lucha channel so I can't be sure whether he actually had it from Mexico or whether it was a link to a different match. Since I can only recap what I have seen with my own eyes we start with the Chivas match which originally had Frisbee but it winds up being El Mexicano. Something I'm sure he regrets. The most notable thing in this match is Goyo's performance. I want to accuse him of being drunk. That would be unfair. He could have just been coked up. I can't say for sure. Either way he's clearly not in his right mind even just during his entrance, then during the match he completely shiffts on catching a Mexicano tope suicida in the first fall & then has his back turned in the third fall when one of the Chivas is mid-dive which caused him to crash & burn. We never saw that Chiva again. We may not have seen this Goyo again either. I remember an Arte De Gotch interview with Angel Mortal where he discusses they had to replace Goyo at one point. It's hard to remember the specifics. I really should have been writing all that stuff down somewhere other than random tweets. These guys ended up having about as good of a match as possible with one non-functioning human being. I am concurrently watching 1993 CMLL so it was funny to see Apache doing his slap to the head bit on one show, then seeing it replaced here with the horns to the butt deal. Smart worker! Next up is the Space Cadets vs Rudos De La Galaxia (minus Maniaco, plus Picudo). Can you imagine if this ended up being one of the unaired matches? Changes the course of my history perhaps. This was the big one, the must-get match for anyone getting into lucha at the time. I won't do PBP of course. I know the match off the top of my head, I've seen it that many times. Just pure insanity start-to-finish. One of the first matches I clipped up for my alternate IG channel of matches that shaped me as a wresting fan. It's noted on commentary that all these guys are going to Wrestlemania this year. The AAA announcers tend to say the dumbest shit at times but I don't think they were saying this out of pocket. I am almost sure at one point WWF planned to have an AAA presence at Mania & these were the guys that would have been at the top of the list to avoid another Royal Rumble type disaster. Of course it doesn't end up happening as this relationship is pretty much dead after this show. An easy ***** match in terms of accomplishing what they set out to do. Crowd loved it. Lots of current day wrestlers watched this or clips of this & were influenced by it all. No Noti AAA leads me to believe this is definitely a partial show that was recorded. So we close out with the unlisted on the poster tag match between Mascara Sagrada Jr. & Pantera vs Blue Demon Jr & La Parka Jr. This is billed as tecnicos vs tecnicos even though Demon has been going rudo recently & Parka Jr literally has been wrestling on the rudo side. It starts out as a clean match to establish tecnicos vs tecnicos. The announcers even note "these guys are following the code of honor". Little known fact: AAA was the originator of this concept. Gabe, long time lucha fan, saw this match, heard the term & brought it to ROH many years later. It's why he ended up booking Blue Demon Jr that one time for an ROH show. True story. Make sure if you ever see Gabe to ask him about his love of lucha libre, I know he'll appreciate it. So after the technical start we get to the point where Demon Jr starts acting like a dick by avoiding working with his partner & runing from his opponents. It's clear what's coming. It breaks down into a brawl in the second fall with Demon/Pantera which features mask ripping & eventually Demon just yanks his mask off. Heavy Metal runs out to attack Demon. At some point here in the background you can see Parka Jr take his own mask off & give it to Pantera so he can get up & join the big brawl. This is all very weird because I know where it goes (nowhere!). At this point Parka Jr's role in AAA is totally unclear as in 3 months he went from tecnico to rudo to now somewhere in the middle. You can tell Pena didn't know what he wanted to do with his new Parka yet but he figures it out soon enough! Also of note from what we saw of this show - the man in black watching from the crowd is back. Remember him from the Arena Naucalpan taping? They cut to him multiple times during the various matches. So he's still a thing. Wish we could have seen more of this show!

From this taping we actually get 3 & a 1/2 matches! The only one that doesn't see the light of day or at least our video tapes is the Chivas match which I'm fine missing. We start off with the women. Yes, THE WOMEN! WHY ARE WE BEING PUNISHED?????????? Based on my memory & cheating using Cubs' often inaccurate older TV listings - this is the first women's match to make an AAA TV episode since Migala & Janeth's awesome hair match in September 1996. And before that you gotta go all the way back to a tag match in January 1996. No, this is not why AAA was my favorite promotion... but it certainly helps! Yes, Rob hates women's wrestling. An easy go-to when you can't defend the indifensible. Watch this match & tell me you want to see more women's wrestling on AAA TV. This match was atrocious. Martha Villalobos is the key person that makes these matches unwatchable. She single-handidly... well Lola Gonzalez helped... killed women's wrestling in Mexico for all the early 90's. Love in this match is a very young & green Mari Apache under a mask. She stunk. She would have to end up going to Japan to learn how to wrestle. Sahori was also young & green but she didn't go to Japan so she never learned how to wrestle. She did have some babies for Octagon though. Do not look up those ages, I'm warning you now. Xochitl Hamada & Karla Villalobos (Karla Ivonne) are terribly out of shape & slow. At one point Xochitl tries a dive & just comes crashing down on her ass. It looked so fuckin painful. Yeah, this stunk. The only person who would defend any of this are the weirdos you should actually fear - not the creepers who just watch women's wrestling to jerk off, at least you know what they are all about - the ones who would defend this are the way too overprotective of female wrestlers they don't know types. The ones who won't accept any criticism of women's wrestling matches & turn every argument into "you hate women". The ones who will sit you down & explain to you in detail why they respect women more than everyone else. Surely there's no otherside to these kind of people. Shoutout to Steven Graham who is out there somewhere very ANGRY about something or other. Next up we get only the third fall of the Payasos trios match. Blue Demon Jr is out, Super Muneco is in. Sucks for Muneco because he gets bloodied & beaten before being submitted to a triple team submission. This re-starts the Super Muneco vs Payasos rivalry. Are we heading to another Triplemania showdown??? Semi-main is the only good match on this show. Crazy 33 comes all the way from Juarez & is dressed exactly like Jerry Estrada. Arturo Rivera, an idiot, explains he is the brother of Crazy 34. No, it's Crazy 32. He gives a bunch of other incorrect information as well. This is why I laugh at people who say they could have gotten into lucha libre if there were just English subtitles. No. You would be more confused than ever. Garza is great in this match. All the tecnicos are. This is just a perfect tecnico vs rudo mix & exactly the kind of match the AAA audience pays to see. In the third fall we get three spots in a row where each tecnico & rudo tumble to the floor together - I liked Garza/Estrada doing a variation of Scott Lost's Suicide-Plex. They end up back in the ring & Garza gets Estrada to submit clean to a weird upside down submission I've never seen before. Very cool! I put it on my IG asking someone for the name but no luck. I'm going ***1/2 on this one! A very gentleman's effort & more! Noti AAA is up next where we get footage of Diesel/Razor's entrance from the Mexico City show. They are wearing "mWo" shirts - Mexican World Order. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever but I assure you Vince had no idea this was going on. This would have been way too risky to have approved after just winning the lawsuit over WCW for the Madusa thing. I can also assure you WCW wasn't aware of this because this would have been the most slam dunk legal threat ever. In fact, I'm stunned Konnan didn't somehow alert them to this copyright infringment. In addition there is a random white dude walking to the ring in an mWo shirt & I have no idea who the hell it was. I would say it was Jake Roberts' young boy but Jake wasn't booked on that show. There's a clip of Razor giving Canek a piledriver to lay him out on the 3/9 Juarez taping we have no video from. The lighting for this show looked atrocious. We also get an announcement that plans are in the works for the biggest Triplemania ever & it would feature guest stars from the WWF! Diesel, Razor, the big versions of Vader + Makind & ... wait for it... wait for it... yes... The Undertaker! The man who currently books AAA, or so Facebook tells me. The man who always respected AAA & grew up watching it, a combo of Facebook & Mark himself tell me. Well, this was his chance to come work Trplemania & he passed. In fact, they all passed. No WWF wrestlers end up on the show unless you count Jake Roberts but he was fired by then. He may have been fired by this taping actually, I forget the actual timeline. Main event is actually a tag match inside a cage & Perro Aguayo is stupid enough to enter first. This allows the rudos to lock him in & then beat the shit out of Perro Jr on the outside. Perro eventually has to climb the cage to help his son but it's too late & Perrito is taken away for medical attention. Rudos beat down Perro 2-on-1 for a while until you guessed it... the music hits & Perrito is storming back to the ring to save his dad! This is getting huge heat. Perro (Sr) was so fuckin over anywhere he went. True legend. They beat up the rudos including ripping up Pierroth's mask to the point you can see most of his face. Many double stomps. Mosco is no help to his partner. Perro's are just dominant together & escape at the same time to win the match & send the crowd home very happy. No complaints about this one. Exactly what it should have been & they didn't stretch it out or over-book it. We get some brawling on the outside afterwards but the rudos end up leaving. We go backstage where Arturo Rivera is with a very angry Pierroth. The idea is he's gonna cut a promo staring at the TV screen with his back to the camera since he has no mask on any longer. Except it seems nobody told the cameraman about this because he keeps trying to get a side angle shot which exposes Pierroth's face. Arturo Rivera seems very nervous about this & keeps glancing over looking worried. Mosco catches on & kinda uses his body to block the cameraman out so finally the cameraman has to move the other way & film from directly behind which is what the intention was all along. Very strange. Good promo. You can watch the top two & enjoy this show or watch the full show & enjoy it a little less.

March 1997 is full of TV tapings. AAA had not yet adapted to a world where they now only had one show a week, sometimes two hours, sometimes 90 minutes. So we have a weekend loop in Northern Mexico, followed by two mid-week tapings closer to Mexico City. That's like 10+ hours of TV if everything was filmed. The lineups are largely the same so my thinking is the idea was to take bits & pieces from each & present it on TV as look AAA is travelling all over the country. Obviously they make more money selling TV to these local promoters than just a regular spot show because you can bring all the fancy lights & TV equipment. This show never aired on TLN so I had to buy the video from Jeff Lynch. So I was very let down when the match listing showed matches 3 & 4 aired but it turns out the Cadets match is just the third fall joined in progress. I WAS ROBBED! My listings tell me the version that aired in Europe had the first two matches. So I have no idea how this stuff we being sent out. That first match has zero reason to ever see the light of day. I assume whoever recorded this show for Jeff was just late to hit the red button otherwise we'd have seen the first four matches in total. Oh well. So we pick up with the rudos beating up the tecnicos. Al Capone does a Macho Man style flying axhandle to the floor & the announcers correctly point out that probably hurt his knees more than his axhandle did Venum. Tecnicos make the comeback which leads us into dive-city! So at least in this one fall we got plenty of action. Al Capone does his somersault dive where he basically hits his knee on the top rope before flipping which is a trademark Marabunta spot. Something Rob discovered while figuring out gimmicks using video as a teenager. It used to be a skill! You had to pay attention! Venum caps things off with his famous springboard tornillo plancha although they film it very poorly. The twists end up off-screen. Why am I not going crazy? Well, I saw the rematch from this on TLN originally & *that* was where I saw him bust out the springboard tornillo so my emotional attachment to this one is far less. Still an all-timer dive though! Finish is a double low blow where Nova quickly covers Maniaco, then after Pepe Casas counts to three, Frank Nitti puts Maniaco on top of Super Nova so Tirantes can count the three as well. A disputed finish to setup that aformentioned rematch. Fun! Noti AAA has clips spoiling the main event we're about to see. We get the announcement Latin Lover as the Rey De Reyes winner has earned the right to face Pierroth Jr who holds the Campeon de Campeones Title at Triplemania. So they had a Triplemania match booked 4 months out! That's wildly impressive! Maybe only topped by the fact this match DOES actually occur! Can you believe it??? I feel like this is something we should have celebrated so much more knowing AAA's future track record with things like this. But we are brought back to earth with two announcements of things that do not happen. Los Cadetes are going to be on WWF Wrestlemania. I wish. Also, Triplemania will be on 6/15/97 in Mexico City (not said where) & the event will feature AAA wrestlers vs representatives from America & Japan. Kinda pitched by Arturo Rivera as a World Cup thing. That does not happen either. No Japanese wrestlers are on the show & the couple of Americans who are just ended up there by accident. TV main event time is another Maquina Del Amore vs Crazy 33 & friends match. The finish having been spoiled on Noti AAA. Pretty good match! Helped by a super heated crowd. These Northern Mexico crowds were not to be fucked with. They're basically standing the entire time & throwing garbage at the rudos. Crazy 33 is a very brave man as he jumps into the crowd at one point which could have ended badly for him. I thought he worked well here. Jerry Estrada was the rudo star of course. Him bailing to avoid being hit by Garza to end the first fall was fuckin hilarious. In the third fall he keeps hitting all three tecnicos & then ends up realizing he's trapped with them all in the ring so he gets a beatdown the crowd goes crazy for. Picudo is shown watching the match from the aisle & is identifeid as a member of the "Mexican World Order". What in the fuck? Was there an angle shot that never aired? He ends up running to the ring with a chair to hit Heavy Metal as he attempts a tope suicida. Not a swinging chairshot, Metal just jumped into the chair. Very safe. There's some weird editing going on here so not sure what went wrong but we cut back to Picudo running back out again with a weapon to hit Heavy Metal with. Broomstick? Pole? I dunno. Meanwhile inside the ring the remaining tecnicos hit huracanranas but Crazy 33 reverses each one so his guys are on top & Tirantes counts the three. Los rudos, los rudos, los rudos! Good stuff. Again setting up another rematch in the next cities. No main event airing from this taping so that's the show!

Already covered the Zacatecas show but lumping all these together just to show how similar these mass tapings were. We end up getting the minis from Zacatecas & the top three matches from Durango. Again, I think they wanted each city to have one match on TV to justify the added price tag of bringing an AAA TV to town but I think it aired this way because the minis probably didn't work in Durango or they had some kind of change as Mini Mankind should have been off to make his WWF booking in New York the next day by that point. The actual minis match we see is La Parkita & Mini Cibernetico vs Mini Goldust & Mini Mankind. This Mini Cibernetico is a new character, presumably introduced since Cibernetico is now a sorta tecnico as he fights the evil WWF guys. I can't be certain this is Torerito but he certainly moved a lot like him & was similarly sized. He was also just as terrible as Torerito. Truly just god awful. In the third fall he clips the ropes trying a tope and Mini Goldust has to save his life. The other mini tencico is also a debut as this is the first time we see the new La Parkita who would stick around for many years... umtil at least 2009. The old one was is the guy who took over the gimmick in November 1996 when they switched Parkita over to being a tecnico. He most recently worked Rey De Reyes. At some point between then & now Pena decides to switch him to playing Octagoncito (a gimmick that hasn't existed in AAA since the original left the company in late 1995). But he keeps the Parkita gimmick by giving it to this new person who is much less athletic but has the comedy down perfect. My feeling is the minis were the only wrestlers Vince/WWF were showing interest in & Pena didn't want a La Parkita running around as everyone associated that gimmick with the guy working in WCW. So he pulls off the switch but unfortunately for this new Octagoncito he never makes it to WWF under that name (or any name). We only see the first & third falls of this match. Mini rudos go over after Mexican Paul interferes so that win streak continues unless I lost track of something at some point. We move to Durango for the Space Cadets vs Maniaco & Hampones match which is a rematch of a rematch. Already saw what happened in Zacatecas, the announcers explain in Torreon they went to another disputed finish which should like a double pin draw. So this is the one to settle it all. I remember watching this on TLN & honestly this may have been the first time I saw this match in over 20 years watching it back here. It was one of my go-to matches to watch on VHS back in the day as Space Cadets matches were few & far between. It was a great weekend when AAA popped up here instead of CMLL & double so when the Cadets got a match. Unfortunately memories tend to be played in your head using rose-colored glasses. This match was not very good haha. But the big moments are certainly big! For teams that were doing their third match in three days against each other, there's a lot of miscommunication. At one point Venum is quite frustrated at his exchange with Al Capone going off the rails so he motions for him to get back in the ring but the rudo bails. Poor Venum coming off the high of being on WWF TV probably had tons of motivation around this time. You can see his intensity has been upped. It's amazing what the chance to make US dollars does to someone's motivation (1997). It's also amazing what signing a contract to earn US dollars does to someoen's motivation to keep wrestling in Mexico (2026). As I said - the big moments were certainly big! Ludxor does the great Rey Jr invented corner somersault dive in the second fall. The third fall has the old Power Raiders multi-man spot ending in a mid-ring pose which gets a nice pop. We go to the big dives which include the Ludxor dive, a weak Discovery somersault plancha, Super Nova doing an insane flip dive with so much speed where he goes feet first into the crowd... he had to have hurt someone... way too much force for someone to have avoided getting kicked, finally Venum caps it off with his springboard tornillo which I chose as the 1997 DOTY. Ludxor then submits Maniaco. A great match to provide clips for future music videos! I would know! No Noti AAA this week strangely so we move to the semi-main with La Maquina Del Amor taking on the people they are currently feuding with. I felt bad watching this team because you have all three guys working hard as they have WWF on the brain. Even Latin Lover had just worked Monday Night RAW recently. It's true, look it up! So they want to stay in top form & put in a good perofrmance but these rudos just can't keep up or seem disinterested in trying their ideas. Garza especially since he is pretty much still just adapting from his CMLL time & probably very frustrated at the rudos he is being fed. We don't see it because of a poor camera shot but Jerry Estrada whiffs on a dive catch to end the first fall which leads to Garza being shaken up. Crowd seems hot for the match but the announcers may not have gone on the road since the audio sounds like they are trapped in a Televisa studio bubble. Finish is Heavy Metal sliding outside to confront Crazy 33 only for Picudo to sneak up from behind & smash a beer bottle over his head. A fan actually tried to grab Picudo before he could do it. Then in the post-match brawl Garza/Picudo fall into the crowd & there's a bit of a melee with some fans as security runs over. Those Northern Mexico crowds! I find it so fascinating Pena has positioned Latin Lover as his 1A in this group, Metal as his 1B & Garza is just like the third guy hanging around with the two number ones. Spoiler: Garza is not long for this world of AAA so maybe Pena had a feeling or flat out was told Garza was already not happy here & he didn't wanna waste his time investing in him. Main event is the WWF guys & Pentagon vs Team AAA comprised of Octagon, Canek & Cibernetico. One fall match! Pena ahead of the curve as usual. Fans are rowdy & throwing stuff into the ring immediately. Must be that American flag. We get another mWo (Mexican World Order) reference so it's definitely a real thing. Just jaw droppping to see Cibernetico trying to figure out how to work with both Diesel & Razor... and vice versa. I have no idea who was the one helping them put these matches together because I can't imagine these guys being able to explain things to each other. Canek was feeling pretty spry tonight, did a couple things I wasn't expecting that involved him leaving his feet! Including a knuckle-lock deal with Diesel where he got flipped over to land on his feet & hit a small package. WTF??? The finish is kinda funny as Razor picks up Cibernetico for a piledriver & the kinda just stands there... and stands there... and stumbles back a bit... then seems to be looking around for someone... and finally Mini Cibernetico hits the ring, low blows Razor to a big pop which saves his big version & allows the tecnicos to win the match. A total spectacle of a watch just to see these guys all working together & it not being horrendous (the horrendous matches are still to come). Show finishes with Octagon/Pentagon cutting promos on each other side-by-side in front of the building in either Durango or Torreon. This appears to have been a pre-tape which makes it especially odd by normal standards to stick at the end of an episode, but not especially odd by lucha TV standards.

Our final taping of the year brings us back to Arena Neza but a PACKED Arena Neza. They definitely oversold this show because fans are everywhere & on top of each other. The aisle leading to the ring is a mess with people standing on top of each other. Security is having a heck of a time all show long with this out of control crowd. The announcers reference an all-time attendance record multiple times on commentary. We start with the minis but joined in progress in the second fall. This is where I regret not saving my original recordings because I swear this match aired here on TLN in full. No Mini Mankind, we have Mini Goludst. No Mini Cibernetico, we have Super Munequito. Two upgrades! This is also the debut of Pentagoncito which was neccessary for what happens later on. No idea who is playing the gimmick but he's very good. Killer exchange with him & Octagoncito. Awesome second fall finish with big dives & a Munequito huracanrana on Mini Goldust. Rudos take control in third fall until the tecnico comeback. Tope suicida by Munequito. Amazing world class double springboard tornillo by the future Tzuki. Mexican Paul breaks up an Octagoncito pin in full view of the refs, then gets chased outside by the tecnicos. I think the idea is he was supposed to run up the aisle but there was no space to move so he just begs off as he's surrounded. Through the mass of people the Payasos fight their way to ringside to attack the mini tecnicos who get awarded the win by DQ. This brings out Super Muneco & Mascara Sagrada Jr for the save. Just two? Yep. A big brawl on the outside ends up having a fan get involved until security drags him away from the mess. It's legit chaos. Payasos stay in control until Leon Negro finally appears to even things up. Octagon even comes out to carry Mascarita Jr to the back. Announcers give Leon Negro the big introduction & say Antonio Pena personally scouted him (uhoh). Even compare him to Rey Misterio Jr in the sense both came from TJ to join AAA. This match is obviously all built around the idea of getting Leon over. Muneco decides he needs to shine too so he does what he does best & cuts himself very deep so blood is splattered everywhere. Rudos are in control until they get thrown into each other & immediately pinned to end the first fall. They just stay in control throughout the second fall as well. They keep beating a bloody Muneco down in the corner. It's like a pile of rabid dogs. Out of nowhere Leon Negro climbs up top & hits a flying dropkick to pin one of the clowns. He then catches another with a huracanrana out of nowhere so the tecnicos win in straight falls! He gets a low blow immediately for his trouble. More beatdown post-match. This isn't hitting like last year's Payasos feud yet but this is clearly a Triplemania direction. One of the Triplemanias this year just happens to be in Tijuana. Hmmmmmm. Next up is the title match with Octagoncito & Pentagoncito as our seconds. I remember loving this when I originally watched - that is the mini version of the big versions all on screen together. We get tons of stalling to start as Octagon doesn't want Tirantes as the referee. I also figure by this point in the show everyone realized this was an out of control hot crowd & you could do anything to get major heat so there was no need to work a traditional title match. Octagon took the first fall via submission. In the second fall we get a lot of chasing around ringside & the seconds getting involved a bit. Octagon is in control but when he goes for a kick Pentagon side-steps & Tirantes gets hit leading to the DQ. Octagon was pissed & the announcers tried to claim it was an accident but dude you kicked the ref in the face! We all saw it! On commentary they keep mentioning Pentagon is doing this match even though his young son died earlier that week. Very strange thing to mention for the rudo who is doing rudo things on the screen. No idea if it was true or them just BSing like lucha announcers tend to do. Pentagoncito jumps Octagoncito & ends up taking his mask off. So not only is Octagoncito down & out but Pentagoncito puts on Octagoncito's mask. You can see what's coming if you've ever watched pro wrestling in your life. Octagon puts his submission on Pentagon & suddenly a towel flies into the ring. Tirantes is confused at first - then sees Octagoncito signalling it's over so he breaks up the submission & raises Pentagon's hand. New Mexican National Middleweight Champion! Take that commission! Crowd is furious. I was worried Tirantes wouldn't get out alive. Funny thing is post-match Pentagoncito ducks out to switch masks with Octagoncito again........ except he can't find his own mask. It went missing at some point during the switch. But he has to give Octagoncito his mask back so you see him frantically searching all over under the ring & guardrail for his own mask to no avail. I'm sure some fan grabbed it. He ends up just using the towel to cover his face. Everyone manages to make it through the people to the back in one piece. We get a post-match interview with Octagon who vows revenge & completely dismisses Pentagon beating him. Not a very inspired promo. I will say this - whoever this Pentagoncito was had to be a veteran Pena trusted. No way he would have done this angle with some random kid just on TV for the first time doing the Pentagoncito gimmick. I'll have to do some research to see who was around at this time & would have fit size wise. Main event is a cage rematch between the Aguayos vs Pierroth/Mosco. This time Perro is smart & won't let his son enter the cage alone at first. They enter together & the match is on. Usual cage match stuff, nothing really to describe outside of the crazy hot crowd. The Aguayos try to escape together but only Perrito makes it. We get a cut away as Perro has his tights pulled down. Perrito tries to climb back in but Fuerza Guerrera comes out to beat him up. Pierroth ends up escaping & grabs a weapon (a 2x4?) to beat Perrito down. He re-enters the cage to beat up Perro with Mosco. Both rudos escape which was inevitable. I'm not sure Perro would have made it over the top of that shaky cage. There are some wrestlers who get scared off by these type of crowds & ones who embrace them fully. Pierroth definitely was the latter. Mosco took off but Pierroth sticks around to continue to brawl. Cibernetico comes out to make the save & chase Pierroth away but Pierroth sticks around in the aisle as security is trying to keep fans away from him. Perrito runs over to start brawling with Pierroth amongst the fans, Pierroth has another chance to leave here but doesn't. He's looking for trouble. None comes though. We just get more pushing & shoving, replays, then we're out. A memorable show in terms of the crowd. Yes, wrestling used to have people who showed up to get invested in the action instead of their own chanting & singing. My recollection of this event originally was still wishing more AAA was here on TLN than CMLL. It just seemed way more fun. I should also note I forgot to mention there was a Noti AAA segment before the main event. Blue Demon Jr teases a new look is coming & seems to indicate he's 100% a tecnico so the rudo deal has just been dropped out of nowhere. Diesel/Razor are coming back soon but with Jake Roberts again this time. We are introduced to a new character named Esquizofrenia who would only use that name for a couple weeks I think & then keeps the same look but gets a new name most of you would recognize more - Electro Shock.

Look at this - an AAA show where all the adverised matches actually happen! No changes at all! Opener doesn't air but we end up having the rest. We get intros for the minis & Cadets match which shows us the new AAA entrance & that someone splurged for pyro on this show. As another production note we also have new bumpers which feature shots of women on the Acapulco beach in bikins. I can only imagine the AAA production member who insisted no we must get these shots for TV! I'm sure he took all day filming to get the exact right shots too! Lucky SOB. We are immediately notified this rudo team of WWF minis are on a 76 match winning streak. I will not be spending time counting matches in the LuchaDB to figure out if that's accurate or not. Usual rock solid AAA minis match, can never go wrong with these. Mascarita Jr was absolutely incredible! Totally standing out of the pack, not a surprise WWF wanted to keep him around. Incredible corkscrew plancha in the third fall. La Parkita making his second appearence is doing the gimmick well although he shows he's not as athletic as the previous version (who he's teaming with here) as he slips off the top rope trying a plancha but covers with a tope suicida immediately. The win streak continues as Mini Mankind fakes a foul which Tirantes immediately calls even though he saw the entire thing. He also fast counted the tecnicos in the first fall. Next up is another Space Cadets vs Rudos De La Galaxia match. This is the full teams, only time that happened in Mexico! Picudo is in the previous one, Abismo is in the upcoming one. But when these teams were presented in SuperLuchas under these names - photos from this match were used. I won't give the PBP as usual even though I have this entire match memorized of course. To set the scene... this is almost a week after this crew worked a live RAW & the tapings the next night. We got a trios on the live RAW, atomicos matches on Shotgun, Super Nova vs Mosco taped for RAW the following week & Venum vs Histeria on Shotgun. So they all thought they were gonna be back imminently since they killed it every time out. This equals very motivated wrestlers who want to go all out which is exactly what this match is. If you enjoyed that crazy Shotgun match - this is that match only much longer & in a 3 fall structure. Everyone gets their chance to shine & show of their biggest spots. Venum brains himself like only Venum can do but they wake him up & he continues the match as normal. Nova torches his shoulders on a dive late in the match but gets right up to catch a dive later. Before the third fall begins we hear a commotion & see Heavy Metal/Picudo brawling in the aisle which is a rare time we got crossover like this in AAA where one storyline carried into a different match going on. I suspect this was taken from Pena's WWF viewing. Anyways, a classic match for you people who like all-time highlight reels. Easy *****. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Their crowning achievement match, one that holds up watching in 2026. Next up originally we'd be skipping to the main event. But thanks to *ME* - yes, *ME* - scrolling YouTube randomly one day, I found a channel that wasn't even a lucha libre channel... just someone's private channel where they were posting old VHS tapes they had. This is where you find the true gold. So by a pure stroke of luck this person had a recording of this AAA TV episode as aired in Mexico which included the 4 way tag semi-main event. The video & audio are very iffy so you are better off watching muted but the mere fact it exists is really awesome. We haven't seen these Relevos Tijuanenses match in a while but they haven't changed. Everyone for themselves even though we start with assigned teams. Picudo is out pretty quickly & Heavy Metal keeps beating him up outside with a chair. Some eliminations are hard to see with the video issues but the action is moving quite well. Everyone still has that WWF buzz going. Yes, I'm going to keep saying that because it is a really big deal at this time for the AAA talent. Hector Garza isn't hanging around here for his health. Cibernetico is distracted by someone we can't see off camera so he gets rolled up & eliminated. The camera is late to cut to Pierroth Jr walking away from the ring. The match comes down to Hector Garza vs Abismo Negro so you get a decent little last couple minutes, ending with Garza going over to a nice pop. A gentleman's ***1/2. Noti AAA follows up on Blue Demon Jr's promise of a new look last week to introduce us to Space Cadet Blue Demon! Yes, the controversial futuristic look that to this day people get mad about. Who do they get mad at? Pena! The usual. Shitting on tradition for his clown show. Of course the truth is by all accounts this was a Demon idea. *He* wanted to freshen up the gimmick & pitched a change to Pena who wasn't about to say no. As we have come to find out Demon created gimmicks in his spare time (even sold a couple to CMLL) so it stands to reason he played a part in this design. Years later after falling out with AAA he did the usual spin blaming it on Pena forcing him to change his look. The fools & anti-AAA people ate it up as expected. We are also introduced (once again) to Esquizofrenia with the same video in front of a blue screen as last week. The final introduction is to the forgotten original version of Los Vatos Locos. They were not called that but if you see this clip it's obvious what is going on. It's an updated version of Los Rockeros as we have Picudo, Jerry Estrada, Crazy 33 & May Flowers. All decked out in facepaint & Vatos Locos style black outfits. Pena clearly loved this idea & kept it in his back pocket for 1998 when he had Picudo/May Flowers bring it back with Charly Manson/Nygma. Main event time features the debut of Scarecrow! Or Scare Crow depending how you want to spell it. I'm blanking on who this was... I wanna say the ex-Masakre? LuchaWiki has it as possibly the ex-Kahoz. I guess that could work too. It's another gimmick Pena clearly loved because after this short run he brings it back years later in a trio version! I was a big fan of that. Pentagon continues to shine here as he runs away from Octagon & then sells like a motherfucker when caught. Octagon had the easiest job in wrestling at this time, Pentagon was his human test dummy. You could do whatever you wanted to him & he made it look amazing. Maybe a little too amazing as near the finish he takes a sallida de bandera so high up that he comes down terribly on his knee & seems to injure himself. Let's hope it's not serious because this match would have been horrific without him. Tecnicos win the match in straight falls when Jake Roberts & the same unidentified white guy who was in the mWo clips run out to attack the tecnicos. Cibernetico follows to attack Pierroth & unmask him. In typical AAA fashion it's a very disorganized run-in where nobody appears to know what they are supposed to be doing. It's also possible Jake Roberts is out of his mind on drugs because he seems to be attacking the random white guy a couple times. I have to assume that was Jake's handler. So nothing is really accomplished here with the run-in & I question why Jake was brought in just to do a run-in. There's probably a story here but the people who would know are dead except for Jake who probably can't even recall what he did yesterday, let alone 30 years ago in Acapulco. Overall a pretty exciting episode capped off with the legendary Space Cadets/Rudos De La Galaxia match. I hate to say it but this is kind of a turning point show because we are about to get into an era where the WWF deal falls apart officially (unofficially it ended at the Rumble as soon as it had begun...). This leads to talent leaving, re-shaping the main event scene & effort going down from certain people. Yes, another time I can drop my "winds of change" comments re: AAA...

I think this taping aired in combination with the next one from Arena Aficion in Pachuca but I'm keeping them seperate for no reason other than I have this fresh in mind & haven't watched Pachuca yet. A frustrating quick show because only the first fall of the tercera airs but even more we get to see the show opening promos with Venum & Crazy 33 meaning that semi-main aired somewhere but either never escaped Mexico or whoever was recording in the US didn't include it (or maybe had some technical issue hence why the tercera gets cut off). Shame, I would have liked to have seen the match. Tercera is a bunch of nothing as the Payasos just dominate to win the first fall & that's all we see. Noti AAA airs between these matches. Not much here. We see Canek getting an award, a fiery ringside promo from Super Muneco challenging the Payasos to a mask match & the announcement that AAA/WING after formed a partnership so wrestlers will be going to Japan. I could tell this story but it would take too long & nobody would care. I'll just end up dying one day & the story will go with me! Main event is very bad. I get that he's considered an icon, mainly because Andre allowed him to do the bodyslam spot + the way the magazines covered his career, but you will never be able to convince me Canek was any good. Holy shitballs. His performance here was so bad. Falling down multiple times. I won't even accuse him of being drunk, I think he just stunk & couldn't hide it at this point. Maybe Pentagon did get hurt on the last taping because he's nowhere to be found here so Octagon turns into his usual useless fuck mode with nobody to bounce around for him. Esquizofrenia is debuting. Not much else to say. It's a skinny Electro Shock who gets really upset when people are chanting things at him - hence the gimmick. First fall is a DQ when Fuerza kicks Canek in the nuts as he's doing the press slam. Second fall tecnicos win clean, Cibernetico over Pierroth. You can safely skip all of this.

The second half of the TV show brings us to Pachuca where we have the minis starting us off. I am amused at the lineup having him listed as La Parkita Jr which is not at all how it was ever presented on TV unlike with the big version who was definitely Jr for the longest time. Match starts with a rudo beatdown but a quick tecnico comeback & as Octagoncito holds Vader/Killer at bay in the aisle, Mini Goldust is quickly pinned. We get some great stuff from the mini tecnicos before the rudos even things up as Mini Vader submits Octagoncito to a Boston Crab. In the third fall La Parkita hilariously does a plancha into the guardrail completely missing Mini Goldust. I have no idea how this happened. Even Mini Goldust was shaking his head. Mascarita Jr dives onto Mini Miss Janeth which the cameras refuse to show. Not sure if it's a man on woman violence thing or something got screwed up. Parkita is fine, gets up to hit another, then Mascarita Jr hits a crazy fast flip plancha on Vader. Mexican Paul runs in to steal another win but uh-oh... this time he hits Mini Goldust by accident! Octagoncito quickly scores the pin & I guess this ends the WWF minis win streak??? There's no Mini Mankind so not sure if this is official or not, announcers did not acknowledge it. Speaking of not sure whether something is official - the rudos all turn on Mini Goldust & start beating him down for the loss. Even Mini Mankind runs out to join in. I guess he was hurt? The mini tecnicos make the save & it appears Mini Goldust is now a tecnico! No idea what's going on here. It never gets followed up on from what I recall. Did Goldust turn babyface in WWF around this time? Maybe he did, Pena saw it, then decided he needed to keep things the same in AAA so he shot this angle? Just me speculating. Only other match from this taping to air is the main event. I guess by AAA standards at this time it was a totally fine gentleman's **1/2 match. There's only so high you can get on the stars scale with Octagon & Cibernetico on one side together. The real highlight of the match is Pierroth Jr's feud with this little girl in the crowd. They go at it throughout including a long third fall exchange where he steals a kiss, then she smacks him, then she steals a kiss from Octagon. LOL The amount of Twitter discourse this would lead to if any of this happened on an American wrestling show is funny to think about. This crowd was eating it all up. The big moment comes at the finish where all three rudos combine to give Demon a spike tombstone piledriver laying him out. He does the stretcher deal & everything. Not sure why this was done, he's back wrestling the next month. His selling was real good here. It also allowed me to ponder if my head the reasoning for his new futuristic look. We've already established it was his head, not Pena's. I wonder if he saw WWF bringing in the Space Cadets/Rudos De La Galaxia looking guys instead of him & thought if I look like them maybe I'll be chosen next? It's as good of a theory as any.

A very frustrating show for young RobViper! 1997 TLN Lucha TV was mostly CMLL up until this point. The late night Monday or Tuesday airing of wrestling had stopped so all you had was the Saturday show if soccer didn't pre-empt it. Getting to see AAA was becoming more rare. So on this random Saturday in May (I presume based on the delay) I was happy to see the AAA announcers pop up on my screen. We finally got an AAA show! My excitement only grew when the first match popped up. All guys I had never seen before. What were they gonna do? Is anyone here like Rey Misterio Jr? Look at the cool colored outfits! All these thoughts ran through my mind. Then I watched the match. BRUTAL. These were the definition of local workers not ready for prime time. So many messed up spots. Nobody was even worthy of saying the name Rey Misterio Jr, let alone being compared to the guy. They gave these guys nearly 20 minutes! It was so bad. Tecnicos won by countout after some weak dives. And that opener pretty much summed up the show. We don't get to see the minis for whatever reason so we go to the semi-main where was the best match of the show but still not the guys I was tuning into AAA to see. Leon Negro getting the rub here being put in Heavy Metal's spot in the Maquina Del Amor trio. The rudos did great work here so I have no complaints about the match itself. I just couldn't get over the sour taste in my mouth of this being the AAA show I was receiving. Negro goes over of course for the big hometown pop. Announcers made a mention when the rudos won the second fall that it was the first fall Esquizofrenia had won as all his previous match had been straight fall losses. Noti AAA has Super Muneco/Payasos signing a contract in Antonio Pena's office to put their masks on the line at Triplemania this year. We get a graphic with a bunch of cities & question marks teasing where Triplemania could be happening. We also get a rundown of all the WWF guys who would be coming. Same list as before except minus Undertaker but plus......... SABU???????? Yes. Sabu! I remember SuperLuchas even writing about this being a fact. Of course he doesn't end up coming. He wouldn't appear in AAA until 2007. Main event is a dumpster fire of a match. Jake Roberts appears to be drugged/boozed out of his mind & somehow is still one of the better workers in the match. He got to work with each tecnico at various points & I assure it was a sight to behold. Pierroth leaves the match at one point to get a baseball bat. Or maybe he was trying to figure out a way to escape but Pena forced him to return to the match. He ends up DQ'ed in the first fall for beating Perro up with the bat. Garza/Lover come out to help an injured Perro to the back. In the second fall all of a sudden Perro's music hits but no Perro. Meanwhile Jake just yanks Canek's mask out of nowhere for the straight falls DQ tecnico win. Perro then comes back to the ring & starts beating up the tecnicos. I think this is where the DQ was supposed to happen but Jake jumped the gun. It doesn't matter. Whatever ended this earlier was for the best. A total disaster. Easy negative star match.

Special Wednesday Kids Day TV taping! We start the show with Arturo Rivera surrounded by kids inside the ring. Hold your jokes. That means you know this show will have a hot crowd & it could get out of control. We start with the minis & it's cleared up immediately the WWF minis trios is still undefeated so whatever happened in Pachuca didn't count since it wasn't the full team. Also, it just flat out never happened because Mini Goldust is here as a rudo showing no problems with his teammates who beat the stuffing out of him last time we saw. This is actually a pretty sloppy match by these guys standards. Not sure what the deal was. Munequito/Mini Goldust are so off at one point you can see Goldust visibly angry. Mascarita Jr/MinI Vader even had issues which is not normal for them. The second fall is so weird because the rudos basically win in under 30 seconds on a fast count from THE RUDO REF (more later). It's ignored & the fall continues like normal until the rudos win again a couple minutes later. More weirdness in the third fall as Munequito pins Mini Vader, then Mini Goldust pins Octagoncito. Except both those guys end up re-entering the match for unexplained reasons? The finish has Mexican Paul about to interfere but this time Mascarita Jr is smart to the game & dropkicks him outside. Camera doesn't catch it but we are told (& crowds reacts to) Mini Mankind fouled Mascarita & pins him. Team WWF is said to have reached 99 straight wins with this victory which *I think* means they eclipsed the Payasos 1993 run of 98 consecutive wins. I'll have to fact check that but *I think* that's why that number was so important here. Next we have another Space Cadets vs Rudas De La Galaxia (referrred to as Las Galaxias here) match. This time with Abismo Negro in Mach 1's spot. So it's a Shotgun Saturday Night rematch! We start fast with a quadruple tope suicida from the Cadets! Get some nice exchanges aferwards. Venum/Histeria have a rare fuck-up on a Dragon Rana but cover immediately into a sick satellite headscissors. Big dives from Discovery & Ludxor. Super Nova hits this crazy cool rope bounce huracanrana on Abismo as Venum gets Histeria with one as well for the first fall. Nice Discovery/Maniaco exchange in the second fall. Especially loved the lariat to the back of the head sell by Discovery right into position for a springboard armdrag. Rudos take control. They hit a PICTURE PERFECT double backdrop on Super Nova. Definitely gonna have to clip that. Maybe the most perfect backdrop bump ever. We get Histeria/Mosco doing the combo backflip/legdrop for one pinfall while Maniaco & Abismo struggle to do a convoluted double submission out of La Valaguez on Nova. If they could have held the post it would have looked amazing. Third fall things got sloppy for a bit. Especially setting up the double dive where the rudos toss Venum into the air & for some reason he dropkicks his own partner Discovery? And Discovery no-sells it??? Not sure what happened there. Histeria/Mosco hit dual slingshot somersault planchas. Maniaco goes to dive onto the pile from the apron but everyone moves so he crashes which gets the kids to laugh. All the rudos gang up on Nova & pose while submitting him for the clean win. Not gonna outrank any of the other Cadets/Galaxias matches but a perfectly fine effort here. ***3/4. Sidenote: It was only during this match that I noticed the RUDO REF was a very skinny maybe 13-14 year old Tirantes Jr! Working with his dad no less. This had to be his TV debut. Next up we have an Octagon/Pentagon title match that gets delayed for about 5 minutes as Octagon protests Tirantes as referee. Quick start with a tope suicida by Octagon just like the previous match. He takes fall one easily. Pentagon manages to even things up obviously by having Tirantes on his side. Octagon seems like a mess in the third fall. He must have been drunk or whatever but he's just kinda stumbling around like a bum. Some guy jumps on the apron to hit Octagon & we find out it's Sangre Chicana making his AAA debut! He had stuck with CMLL during the split & just kinda worked indies up until this point. Chicana helps Pentagon win & retain his title. It should be noted for the sake of people making gifsin the future there was one hilarious moment during the third fall where a kid at ringside punches Abismo Negro as Octagon/Pentagon are brawling & he gets immediate karma as someone behind him throws some object at Abismo but hits this same kid right in the head. LOL Glorious! Noti AAA shows us clips of Sangre Chicana from the next taping in Neza so maybe I'm watching these out of order. We get a Hector Garza tornillo from that same show as it's announced AAA is doing a young stars tag team tournament soon which is their version of the Gran Alternativa. Some names are listed as participating but very fast & I didn't take notes. Venum & Super Nova for sure. It's mentioned Perro Aguayo Jr & Tinieblas Jr have been cleared to return from injuries. Also, Humberto Garza will be honored at the upcoming TV Taping in Monterrey. Main event time. Another wretched match involving the WWF guys. No Jake here so Fuerza subs on that side, something he'd come to regret. It's weird how Diesel seemed to actually be trying here... he's attempting to work with Cibernetico & Latin Lover at various points but they just offer nothing in return. It'd be one thing if Diesel just didn't want to work with them but if the guy shows up & wants to make this work but you provide him opponents who can't/won't go... what's even the point of all this? If you ever wanted to see Cibernetico hit a plancha this is the match for you though! Canek is ten steps too slow on everything he does. Crowd is hot anyways so that's one good thing I guess. Rudos win by DQ on a hilarious deal where Canek presses Fuerza high into the air... he walks towards the ropes & is clearly waiting for Diesel to stand up so he can throw Fuerza onto him. I don't know if this was planned & they just fucked it up or improvised & Fuerza got terrified Diesel wouldn't catch him but Fuerza basically grabs the rope coming down which ends up working out poorly for him because he crashes onto the apron, then the floor very painfully. Diesel goes down taking a kick to the head & Canek just stares at them in confusion. Morons. They abruptly cut out straight after the finish. A roller coaster ride of a TV show!

So this is a bit confusing... according to Roy Lucier's upload of this complete TV show we get the tercera & main from here on the same show as a Monterrey taping on 5/18. But according to the lineups/results we have - there are other tapings spliced in between these two tapings that aired together. So I'm just gonna treat them as seperate. We also originally only had the main event from this show (what a joy...). Roy's upload unearthed this tercera which is Los Rockers (Vatos Locos before they were Vatos Locos) TV debut. But before getting into that I should note that weird looking semi-main we never see. Vegas is a new name here... kinda. It existed in 1993 as El Magnate (Ted Dibiase ripoff gimmick), then in 1995 (Black Warrior), then in 1996 (Black Power) & it exists later in 1997 as a brand new high flying tecnico (ex-Coloso, future Mr. Mexico). I can only *assume* this was him here making his debut but the gimmick goes dormant until late July. This could have been a random one-off person or it could not have happened because we don't know what happened in that semi-main. It changes for sure because Jake Roberts does not work this show. So back to the tercera... an excellent Roy find! New 1997 Space Cadets is always a welcome find! This was a really good match as these rudos perfectly compliment what the Cadets are best at. You just gotta base for them & cover their sloppiness. In the first fall Venum does a FLYING DROPKICK TO THE FLOOR!!! THE FUCK. I love the guy but Venum totally was a guy who had ideas & didn't realize certain ideas are probably best saved for certain events. Not sure a flying dropkick to the floor is appropriate for a random Arena Neza taping in a tercera. Discovery had a great exchange in the second fall. Venum/Crazy 33 also did a nice exchange together. In the third fall we get a Ludxor plancha to the floor & Venum wild moonsault plancha! They filmed it so well with the guy standing on the apron. It looks like the rudos are about to win with one of those momentum change finishes but it's only one elimination. This sets up the actual finish where May Flowers sneaks in to low blow Ludxor allowing the rudos to get the win. Fun stuff! ***3/4-ish. Main event is the second last appearence of Diesel/Razor. They're presence is just used to push the next big feud Pena wants to do - Canek vs Cibernetico. Canek gets busted open under his mask & beat up. So does Cibernetico. But late in the match when Ciber wants to enter the ring, Canek pulls him back & decides this is his battle to win. This angers Cibernetico (rightfully so, very Hulk Hogan-ish) who walks off & spends the next couple minutes watching from the crowd while grabbing a drink. Canek is overcoming the 2-on-1- odds (duh) but then Cibernetico runs back to the ring & throws his drink in Canek's face. Diesel hits an ugly clothesline & pins Canek to win as we literally fade out to commercial as the pinfall is being counted. So much for letting a big angle sink in!

This is in the LuchaDB as an April taping but is clearly incorrect so I waited to put it here where it belongs. It's also a show that doesn't have a Noti AAA, nor is it a particularly long show making me think it aired combined with a different taping (Toluca?). As I said, 1997 AAA TV can be difficult to piece together but I'm trying my best! We get the top three from this show but all are short matches. The lumberjack match is pretty fun! I've said before these kind of matches amuse me & would probably be over huge if done right in front of US audiences. Case in point here with the crowd hotter for this than anything else on the show. Esquizofrenia took full advantage of this spot & played his gimmick perfectly as the crazy dude who kept slipping or falling off the apron leading to him getting strapped over & over. Tirantes gets knocked outside & takes a beating for a good 30 seconds when nobody will let him re-enter the ring. Tecnicos take the fall cleanly. These matches are usually just one fall but the announcers were clear this was just the first fall & nobody was ready to leave the ring after the finish but we cut away to commercial & never return to the match so I'm sure it was cut out or maybe it aired in full internationally only. Semi-main is one of those deal where by certain matches not airing everywhere we are joining a storyline we have not seen playing out yet so it hits you as coming out of nowhere. I guess in all those unaired Venum/Maquina Del Amor matches last month they may have been doing teases of Venum acting reckless or losing matches on his own. So we have a pre-match discussion where he insists he's the captain much to Metal & Garza's displeasure. Pentagon was great as usual in this one bouncing all over for the tecnicos. Fuerza beats Venum to win the first fall before his partners can make the save so we already have some unhappiness amongst teammates. Pentagon takes this INSANE sallida de bandera in the second fall where he's literally hanging in the air for a few seconds before dropping down. Very Rey Escorpion-ish. Venum is left with Fuerza again & slams him down. He ignores the crowd screaming no & his partners waving their arms in order to attempt a tornillo which misses. Fuerza submits him with a camel clutch for the straight fall win. Garza/Metal angrily confront Venum post-match but they don't come to blows before we fade out. I'm not really sure what Pena had in mind with all this. Maquina Del Amor was a big tecnico act for him. Venum wouldn't have worked as a rudo. I don't think Pena was planning to turn anyone here, I think this was gonna be a tecnicos vs tecnicos feud maybe to get some good matches out there with the Maquina Del Amor & Space Cadets? Just a wild hunch. Can't say for certain since we already rapidly approaching Garza's exit from the company which changes things + the WWF deal officially falling apart which leads to Pena having to re-focus what he's doing with certain people who were only around for the WWF connection. Main event is more of the Canek/Cibernetico split as they can't get along at all. More notable to the people who will maybe eventually read this & use my words to track down video they can make then go viral is once again Jake is in no condition to perform. So much so that they don't even let him in the match until the finish. It's just a rotation of Diesel/Razor until then. At least they got them to earn their money in what turns out to be their final AAA appearence. Ciber holds the ropes open causing Canek to tumble through outside. Latin Lover tries to place peacemaker but Ciber trips Canek coming off the ropes soon after. He then jumps into the ring to low blow Canek. Pepe Casas tries to stop Tirantes from counting but Tirantes pushes him away & makes the count anyways so Jake goes over. Post-match a fan picks up a chair & is ready to throw it at Jake before security intervenes. The AAA/WWF relationship goes out with a whimper. I can't remember if Jake was already fired or not. This show aired here on TLN & I remember being very happy to see AAA so I enjoyed it even though nothing here really stands out now. I was just happy to break up the CMLL run & see the colorful AAA guys. In fact, now that I think about it this definitely aired with the Toluca taping because those matches aired here as well. I remember not being home for this show but being at my friend David's house. I flipped the TV over to see what was airing on TLN which I was recording back home & he got so mad at me watching stupid Mexican wrestling instead of going outside to play with him. All these years later I can finally relate. You were right, David. If I could do it over again, I'd spend much more time playing outside than watching pro wrestling.

Welcome to the AAA version of the Gran Alternativa! Future Stars tag team tournament where a veteran teams with a youngster in the hopes of elevating them to main event status. This was the second one of it's kind - they had one on 8/21/96 won by Konnan/Mascara Sagrada Jr. The tournament kinda sucked except for one match. Most one night lucha tournaments tend to suck. This was no exception. But I'm just basing it off 3 matches as we don't see any of the first round. So I can't tell you who Fuego Sagrado was or how Abismo Negro managed to get eliminated in the opening round (maybe he just wasn't even there). We join in the semi-finals & get a promo from Loco Valentino to start off where he explains he's not really a rookie which is true... he was working Pavillon Azteca main events in like 85/86. He's teaming wtih Picudo & they have made the semi-finals against Heavy Metal & Venum which screams angle based on the previous TV (or earlier in this same episode). But the tecnicos keep it together for this one! Venum hits a wild SFTD & Metal submits Loco with this really cool submission. They move on to face our next winners. We get a promo from Mosco De La Merced wearing his Royal Rumble 1997 t-shirt & then Super Nova who has negative charisma. Another short match with the turning point being Nova taking Garza out with a dropkick by accident. Garza gets submitted. But he doesn't leave the ring. He gets up & stops the rudos from attacking Super Nova so he can attack him himself! This brings out Venum (literally within a split second as if he was already at ringside) who attacks Garza. This brings out Heavy Metal who tries to broker peace. Garza opts to leave. With that we go straight to the tournament final. To show you how important this tournament is Arturo Rivera announces "the winners will be the champions of Toluca!" Have another drink, Arturo. There's a spot in this match where Venum does a tope suicida into the guardrail (which was very close to the ring so it wasn't THAT crazy). I don't mean someone moved. I don't mean he was a little off on his arm trying to hit one of the rudos. He is just running the ropes towards Mosco, swerves to avoid Mosco, then dives onto the guardrail. Everyone seemed confused. Mosco leaves the ring to pick him up, throws him back into the ring & the match continues as normal. I don't know if Venum thought Mosco was going to kick him so he could take the bump like a tope or if he was just on some really awesome drugs. Probably the former since he's lucid for the post-match stuff. Tirantes is refusing to count pinfalls for the tecnicos & even ignores Fuerza clearly submitting. So the rudos win the match easily as you can imagine. Mosco De La Merced is now a main eventer, or so they say. We shall see. But the real story develops after as Hector Garza comes out to attack Venum. Heavy Metal gets involved but is more forceful this time keeping Garza away. So it appears Garza is the only one going rudo here. Garza bails as Heavy Metal checks on Venum. Before we get to the main event I realize I've forgotten a piece of information from a previous show but not sure which one so I'll just put it here. During a Noti AAA segment it's revealed a new luchador has joined AAA. Inquisidor! I immediately recognize this mask & look. It's the one someone named Quinto Elemento (future Chessman) would go on to use later in 1997. No Inquisidor ever makes it onto AAA TV. Or so I remember. Now watching this show it clicked in my head. This main event is Canek & Cibernetico vs Pierroth Jr. & no Sangre Chicana... so in his place we have this mysterious rudo from that Noti AAA segment except instead of being called Inquisidor he's referred to in the intros as El Vikingo. Later the announcers correct it to Destructor Vikingo. In tape lists I've seen him listed as both "Destructor" & "Vikingo" so everyone gets a point. I don't know who played the role here but it definitely was not Chessman. It appears based on movements & style to be an older luchador... maybe Masakre? MS-1? Definitely on the taller & lanky side. He was pretty inoffensive in this largely offensive match. Canek & Cibernetico are not getting along as you would expect. Cibernetico doesn't want to help Canek at all at first, they lose the first fall by DQ, they get it together to win the second & then they fall apart again the in the third. This is where the fireworks begin. Heavy Metal gets involved for some reason which brings out Hector Garza once again. Except instead of attacking the rudos - he goes for Heavy Metal! Tears off his t-shirt & beats the shit out of him. Meanwhile Cibernetico is fighting with his arch rival Pierroth but also taking shots at Canek. Canek fights him off & then stares down Garza who wants none of him until his back is turned. Finally Canek goes after Garza which gets a pop. Heavy Metal is now up fighting as well. It ends with a four way stand-off between Canek, Garza, Metal & Ciber. A plastic bin gets involved as Pierroth throws it in from the outside as he takes off. Ciber misfires & hits Garza so now they are mad at each other. Show ends with nothing really settled & lots of confusion. If they were trying to establish who hates who here, they failed. In typical AAA fashion under Antonio Pena, this just felt like an aimless brawl where nobody was given any direction at all. It left me with more questions than answered. Is Garza a rudo? Is Heavy Metal now feuding with Pierroth? If Ciber is turning on Canek to go rudo, why was he still attacking fellow rudo Pierroth? The good news is I can answer ONE of those questions now! Garza is not a rudo. He's also not a tecnico. He's nothing here. He shows up at a WCW show on 5/20 & is on TV on 5/26 for the memorable Memorial Day Nitro trios opener where they brag about him being the newest Mexican star in WCW. This is a live by the sword, die by the sword moment. Garza left CMLL back in December with almost no notice at all based on Antonio Pena promising him a spot in WWF. Without that promise, Garza doesn't leave CMLL. Fast forward months later with Garza getting a couple WWF appearences but nothing solid, he now leaves AAA with zero notice based on Konnan promising a WCW gig which he actually followed through on (he was making the same promises to many guys who never actually got gigs but were used as a way to fuck with Pena). Pena could have just been a man & accepted this kind of thing works both way but he ends up suing Garza for breach of contract which actually goes to court later in the year. It was a pretty big deal in the magazines where Garza accused AAA/Pena of trying to ruin his career. All this should show you how important WWF/WCW were in the Mexican wars. Without their sudden interest in lucha libre, Garza is probably a CMLL lifer until a time to be determined much later in his career. In many ways it mirrors lucha libre these days where luchadors have only 3 goals in terms of "making it" - none of which revolve around headlining shows in Mexico.

1: Join AAA, get a WWE Mexico contract or in a dream scenario a WWE contract
2: Get in with CMLL, impress Tony Khan enough to earn an opportunity & get yourself an AEW contract (erm, dual contract, whatever that means to the Fightful's of this world)
3: Make it to GCW & start earning those (50? 100?) US dollars but hopefully get noticed enough to have WWE or AEW know your name like the Mexicans who have made it did with their PWG gigs

These are the matches that aired on the same TV episode that had the 5/1 Arena Neza matches. This TV show did not exist previously.......... sorta. I got a tape from someone... can't remember who or what show it was but it had a 1997 AAA TV episode on it. After the episode ends, it cuts to this building & the minis tag opener. Only about 2 or 3 minutes are seen because the tape ran out. It was always a mystery to me as at the time I didn't even know what show it was from. So fast foward many years later & Roy Lucier uploads this entire TV show which puts the pieces together. This may go down as the last undiscovered AAA TV Taping unless some miracle occurs because I think we've dug as deep as we can when it comes to who has hidden away lucha TV! The minis tag opener is fucking awesome. FUCKING AWESOME I SAY! Mascarita Jr in peak fucking form hitting everything on two amazing rudo bases. I must know who this Pentagoncito was because he was just tremendous here bumping all over for the little guy. Mexican Paul is there to help the rudos which spoils the finish. Munequito was also good here but got totally overshadowed by Mascarita Jr looking like the best mini... no... wrestler in the world. At one point Mini Vader is beating Mascarita Jr up right in front of a group of fans/kids who have balloons & are trying to throw them at him to get him to stop. Great shit. The finish is Mexican Paul taking a Pentagoncito mask out of his urn & throwing it to Super Munequito at the same time as Pentagoncito unmasks himself so when the refs turn around they disqualify the tecnicos & the WWF mini rudos stay undefeated even though the WWF deal is officially dead. Next we have the Payasos trios match which starts off with Arturo Rivera explaining Stuka is on the tecnico team. He goes in-depth explaining how well Monterrey used to draw, the famous matches including Stuka/Perro/Santo where Stuka lost his mask & talks about promoter Carlos Elizondo. A few minutes into the match he asks for forgiveness noting Stuka actually isn't in the match & he was just thrown by Principe Franky's similar hair & the fact they are in Monterrey. He seemed legit embarassed about this because he keeps apologizing over & over for the rest of the match. Mistakes happen. I'd be more pissed at my fellow commentators who at any point could have stopped him but I bet they also had no idea which shows the prep work they did for these shows. It's explained Coco Rojo was sick so he couldn't make the show & the Payasos recruited a top local wrestler to step in - Sepultura. I am by no means a 1997 Monterrey expert but I've searched high & low... that name does not appear to exist in any results. I have no idea who it is or where the gimmick came from. My guess is someone just made that name up & if we had more footage of 1997 Monterrey lucha it'd be easier to figure out which local this was. Bu we don't so I cannot this question for you. He's very much a local luchador, a step slower on everything during this very okay match. It only goes two falls with Franky getting the big moment winning the second fall out of nowhere. In the meantime the remaining two Payasos are beating the shit out of Super Muneco who appears to be trying to hit a gusher by blading again but nothing happens. Must be that terrible Monterrey humidity! Next up is Noti AAA & this is where that Inquisidor debut segment takes place. The future Quinto Dan! In that same segment we are also introduced to new tecnico Kraneo! Yes, this is Alebrije/current Kraneo. He is noted as debuting soon (Triplemania). It's also mentioned Jake Roberts is coming back to AAA but he's not coming alone! Which top WWF wrestler is he coming with??? Well... none. The deal is dead. He's coming with Gorgeous George (III). Oh Antonio Pena, why must you have been this way??? This is the equivalent to CMLL announcing a major international superstar is coming to the Anniversary Show this year & then announced fuckin Donovan Dijak or some shit. Oh wait. Nvm. Anyways, it's bad. Also making an appearence somewhere in here is Kick Boxer who is noted as "rising from the ashes". This would be his 3rd or 4th re-start in AAA. Main event is a pretty heated match as it's Latin Lover in Monterrey & Pierroth takes full advantage dragging him all over the building & dumping him into the laps of every female fan they pass by. Not only is the match heated, it's also very hot on this day as we see Latin Lover just soaked in sweat by the third fall. So soaked that he actually has a very embarassing slip when going for a superkick but thankfully the way he slipped meant his arm extended & legit hit Pierroth in the face so it doesn't look like a totally botched spot. I actually didn't even recognize Jerry Estrada until halfway through the match. He is in his Rockers outfit so he looks like a slightly bigger version of Picudo. The tecnicos end up taking the match to please the crowd & this sets up Latin Lover/Pierroth for the Campeon de Campeones Title at Triplemanoa on 6/15 @ El Toreo. Very thankful Roy got his hands on this show as the AAA completionist I am.

Another combo show where we start with Nuevo Laredo & finish in Tlalnepantla. I presume more matches aired in Mexico but this US version has the Payasos + title match from NL & only the Abismo/Histeria/Maniaco match from Arena Lopez Mateos. They note Coco Rojo's absence once again, this time saying he fractured his ankle which seems like a long term injury so that's odd. Unlike in Monterrey they don't need a local to sub as they have Mosco De La Merced around (does that mean he filled in for someone in MTY?). The MTY sub is noted as Magico so I guess that explains the Sepultura deal, they just didn't want Magico (a tecnico) working under his regular name for whatever reason. This is another match designed to get Principe Franky over as he appears to be on his way to winning the match on his own except this time Tirantes unfairly DQ's him. Oh, I just noticed Stuka is in the match listing. How funny considered the MTY commentary on the previous show haha. Maybe that's where Rivera's confusion came from? He was looking ahead to the next day's show. Next up is a Latin Lover/Pierroth title match. The big moment here comes when Pierroth accidentally clotheslines Pepe Casas out of the ring & in taking the bump he injures himself. After a few minute delay this brings out Tirantes to take over & he promptly fast counts Latin so Pierroth can tie the falls up 1-1. If you ever wanted to see booking fingerprints, this is Pierroth's. 100%. In the third fall we get another unfair DQ as Pierroth hits Tirantes from behind with a board, then fakes a low blow. Tirantes turns around & think Latin hit him so he gives the win & title to Pierroth. I'm not sure why Pierroth had to fake a low blow in this plan? Octagon gets involved afterwards & crowd is infuriated. Mission accomplished. If memory serves me right this is done so Latin Lover can get his win back at Triplemania next month. Next up is Noti AAA where we get an incredible Pierroth promo as he interrupts Cibernetico challening him to a title match. That Pierroth laugh should be in the HOF. Ciber was so outmatched here it was kinda funny since he'd end up growing into one of the best talkers in lucha libre. I'm sure he learned a lot from Pierroth. We get a rundown of upcoming events including some TV taping dates that don't allign with what we have in the LuchaDB. I should make a note here but I'm too lazy. Maybe Cubs will read this one day & do the legwork. Moving onto Arena Lopez Mateos for what appears to be a run of the mill trios match that looks good on paper. It starts off good. El Mexicano working spots with the bumbling rudos. Blue Demon Jr. & Maniaco combine to hilariously mess up the first fall finish which throws everyone off. More bumbling rudos in the second fall. They regroup to take it with a Histeria cool cancun tornado on Sagrada. Rudos stay in control during the third fall until Abismo grabs a chair but ends up hitting Maniaco! Histeria shoves Abismo down but then the tecnicos immediately pounce to take him out & win the match! Those bumbling rudo bits actually meant something this time around because out of nowhere Histeria & Maniaco start attacking Abismo & ripping his mask up! Abismo makes his own comeback & even manages to tear up Histeria's mask but the numbers are too much for him. The tecnicos have to run back out to save him from more damage. Just like that... Abismo Negro is a tecnico! That's right! A very forgotten angle & short tecnico run through Triplemania. I'm not sure what inspired this other than perhaps Pena couldn't seperate the guy under the mask (Winners) from the strong rudo he was turning into. Remember initially he had Abismo Negro pegged as a tecnico based off the Judge Dredd movie. Post-match we get backstage comments from both Maniaco & Histeria as they re-watch what happened on the screen. Neither are very good promos so this wasn't especially effective in any way. A notable episode if only for that out of nowhere turn. I remember they replayed this match a few months later which is when I first saw it & the timeline made zero sense to me until I eventually discovered it was a repeat + the original taping date.

This show looks absolutely wretched on paper... and it was. Don't get me wrong. It was god awful. But this is also the "go home" show in US terms for both days of Triplemania. There were more storylines on this show than current day CMLL does in a year. We start right away with Arturo Rivera interviewing Jake Roberts/Gorgeous George/Mexican Paul where Rivera does most of the talking & clearly does not understand a single word Jake says in English. This all looks so very low rent, clearly shot in front of a green screen. We move onto the tecnicos (Parka/Sagrada/Muneco) running out to save Abismo Negro/Chivas/Kick Boxer from what appears to be a post-match (that we didn't see) beatdown from Los Payasos. Abismo has had his mask torn to shreds. It should be noted *we* haven't seen La Parka Jr on TV since the Payasos beat him down in Neza back in April. It's possible his matches aired in Mexico but he has been absent & he's part of the upcoming Triplemania main event for some reason which is the Payasos vs Super Muneco & friends (Parka Jr/Sagrada Jr) in a cage. Sagrada Jr does a wild running somersault plancha onto one of the clowns. Most of the match otherwise is a beatdown of the tecnicos including Sagrada Jr getting busted open badly & pouring blood to the floor as he is hanging over the apron. At some point Parka Jr finds a weapon (board) but Tirantes stops him from using it. Tirantes then hands the weapon to Coco Azul to use & Parka gets beaten down with the rudos targeting his leg. This brings out Pierroth Jr/Sangre Chicana & the debuting El Cobarde! Pena really just rounding up every washed up wrestler he can find! They beat down Parka badly. He ends up needing to be carried away in a stretcher & the camera follows him being taken out to the ambulance so you know an angle is coming. As soon as he gets put in the ambulance Cobarde is there to jump in & keep attacking him. I'm sure this is a direct ripoff of a WWF RAW bit around this time. The medics are real medics who have been clued in this is part of the show so they can't help but laugh at all this which kinda ruins the entire thing even though Cobarde is doing his best to play it off seriously. Some officials run over to pull him off & you play a game of how many Mexicans can you fit in the back of an ambulance. Looks like 7. This is the big Triplemania switch-a-roo! You see, as Parka Jr was being led away we see La Calaca intercept & show compassion for his arch enemy (they are the interverted colors). This will lead to the last minute switch where La Calaca ends up taking Parka Jr's spot in the cage match with no prior notice which is a huge fraude but Pena was long past the point of caring what the commission or fans thought. I don't know the reason for this switch - it's possible Pena was gonna unmask one of the clowns (as a follow-up to last year's match) but had second thoughts or someone else was going to lose & backed out. Either way La Calaca is just inserted here to be the loser. Nobody remembers this angle at all, I'm 100% positive, so consider this a blog exclusive! Next up is a trios JIP as I think it bled over from the previous match. Blue Demon Jr & Scarecrow hilariously blow a top rope frankensteiner spot & Demon then hilariusly falls off the ropes trying........... something. It's a clip that will be loved when I post it on IG & inevitably someone steals it for FB. Metal is already busted up as we join the match & it only gets worse as he brawls with Chicana which is setting up their Triplemania match. Marisela Pena is shown on camera sitting in the crowd looking 50 years older than she does now in 2026. The rudos when Heavy Metal crotches himself in the corner & then Chicana low blows him for good measure. Cobarde gets involved here as well, Pena really pushing his new arrival. Noti AAA follows where Pierroth Jr introduces his new group officially - himself, Chicana & Cobarde. EVERYWHERE I LOOK IT'S EL COBARDE!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! We get a mention about AAA's new initiative running shows at a night club in Mexico City. I can't recall how long these lasted but I don't think it took off at all. It's basically the first time Pena tries something like this. It returns a couple years later & then most notably in 2005 with his "for women only" shows which were basically like lucha shows that doubled as stags. One actually aired on TV! Well, the clean parts. We also get both Triplemania lineups revealed. Parka Jr at this point is still listed in the cage main event for El Toreo. We get interviews with all the participants in our cage match main event. Pierroth ducks into the crowd during his entrance so he can sneak attack Canek on his way to the ring. It's a 3 way cage match with these guys... do you really need a blow-by-blow description? Ciber brings a garbage can lid into the ring for spots. He escapes first after having his mask ripped up a bit. Canek then yanks off Pierroth's mask so Pierroth has to stay down covering his face allowing Canek to easily escape leaving Pierroth as the ultimate loser. Canek/Ciber then brawl on the outside. We go to break & when we have returned we see Canek & Pierroth brawling backstage with faces blurred out. Yes, Pena filmed stuff with both these guys unmasked but was decent enough to blur the faces. You can tell nobody got a head's up about any of this b/c there are people backstage - including presumably unmasked wrestlers - peaking in to see who's fighting & realizing cameras are filming. One even tries to break it up before being pulled away. Typical AAA disorganization where Pena had an idea but didn't clue anyone in or think how are we going to shoot this because the lighting is terrible & the space is too small for a real brawl to be happening. Either way this takes us into Triplemania where Pierroth is not wrestling Canek & Ciber is even teaming with him! Wait what. Yes. *smacks head into wall* Listen, Pena was trying his best to keep things together to start the year but the WWF deal falling apart just completely turned AAA into a shitshow because Pena had nothing on the books for the rest of the year. We are heading to a very low point starting with this show (or the last couple honestly...) & if you thought blurring the faces of Pierroth/Canek was disrespectful towards lucha libre... STAY TUNED! A legendary lucha libre TV moment few remember is about to take place.

On the previous Noti AAA this was advertised as 6/5 but here it's listed as 6/11 & I'm noted as one of the sources so this is like disagreeing with myself. I think I just took the date from Jeff Lynch's listings which were very iffy at times. Only reason this matters is because I can't figure out where this fits in the TV schedule. It may have aired the weekend of Triplemania if AAA realized they hadn't taped enough TV. Or it could have been the week before & with all the angles shot in Neza, they just decided to air the undercard stuff here since nothing in the main event fit into the storylines now. I don't know. But that's what we get here - a totally inconsquential to anything show. The most noteworthy thing may have been Noti AAA where we get Triplemania promos from Chiva/Blue Demon Jr./Tinieblas Jr./Heavy Metal. But it does allow me to give some RobViper lore. The opening match here is all locals from the Guerrero state area. As I mentioned back in the April Tijuana recap - I would always get excited seeing a locals match because you're getting to see wrestlers you've never heard of before, sometimes in really cool outfits. It may be difficult to understand now because you see a clip of someone & can then search out every match of theirs on YouTube immediately. Seeing new names & faces back in 1997 was like opening a whole new world. Where did they come from? What can they do? Unfortunately much like the Tijuana match, this was a bunch of nothing. These guys couldn't do much of anything. Lots of sloppiness & guys who were clearly not TV ready. Maybe the one standout was Diablo Rojo but even he was green as grass. Which brings me to the LORE! When we (myself & O'Connor) went to intern/train at Highspots, we met this guy named Clemente. He would come in every so often to teach "lucha libre classes" at the back of Highspots. Obviously my favorite training session of the week. In talking to him he mentioned wrestling in Acapulco a few years prior until he moved to the US to start a new life. He told us a bunch of stories about who he worked with & noted he did AAA a couple times including being picked for a tryout to play the new Venum when the original left in late 1997. It all sounded good but wrestlers tend to lie about things so you can't accept this stuff blindly. He told me he had a video tape of his matches from Acapulco he would show me some time. Wouldn't you know it? He delivered! There he was wrestling as Diablo Rojo - in the same outfit as the Diablo Rojo in this local trios match. I couldn't believe it. To me this was the greatest discovery, an authentic AAA TV luchador! One day he just stopped showing up & we never heard from him again. But I always thought this was a cool little story I could tell that most wouldn't believe. I still have the copy of that tape somewhere. Local rudos end up winning by DQ when one of them faked that Diablo Rojo low blowed him. Next up is a minis trios. The usual decent stuff outside of when Mini Ciber (Torerito for sure!) was involved. For a really small tecnico he sure had no charisma. Don't worry, his time is about to expire with the new arrival at Triplemania! Octagoncito looked fantastic here except for one ugly springboard legdrop attempt. He was springboarding all over the place. Mini tecnicos win clean which sorta surprised me because (at least on TV) we never did see how that WWF minis win streak played out. I assume they lost it at some point before this match because the announcers don't make any sort of big deal about the loss. It's just hard to pinpoint when that loss could have come since they win in Monterrey 5/18 & if this is 6/5 that doesn't leave any real opportunity in between to have ended it. Oh well. It was a nice idea in theory, very Antonio Pena-ish. Main event is just a random assortment of oh these guys are still around? Kick Boxer pops up out of nowhere & is the focus of the match so we're in for another attempt to push him as something special. Kraken is apparently still a thing although who knows who is under the mask at this point. There's nothing wrong with the match, it's as average you'd expect. I liked some of the stuff Kick Boxer busted out. Ludxor looked sharp in the limited stuff he did. The finish is very strange as Kick Boxer/Loco Valentino suddenly break into this MMA style fight where they mount each other & start throwing punches/stiff forearms. Only to both then get up & have Loco foul Kick Boxer for the DQ. Not sure what the purposes of that was. There's a jump cut right after the replays to the announcers signing off so maybe another match or two aired in Mexico but didn't find it's way to US Galavision. It's too bad they decided to fill a week with this stuff instead of going back & airing some of the cool earlier 1997 stuff that went unaired.

I am not recapping this show even though I have the video. It's a handheld shot by Ron Rivera. None of this ended up on TV so technically it's not "canon". I do think it's worth noting just to keep track of the timeline of events. On this show May Flowers ends up losing his hair to local hero Leon Negro. The lineup has Crazy 33, the results have Halcon Dorado Jr.... I may have to go check the tape to see which one it was but Crazy 33 seems more likely & Ron just couldn't identify him. Local Principe Arandu ends up subbing for the injured La Parka Jr. The big no-shows are Mascarita Sagrada Jr. & Mini Vader who decided to bail on this show & show up as surprises over on the Promo Azteca show in Cuautitlan as Mini Rey Misterio Jr. & Espectrito. BOOM! The politics are interested because by this point both of them have WWF contracts (Max Mini/El Torito) but they jumped to the promotion that has the WCW wrestlers & connections. This was Konnan recruiting them to take a shot at Pena as that war is still going on. I'm surprised Espectrito left his brothers (Mini Killer/Mankind) behind. The subs end up being Pentagoncito for Vader & some local who to this day has never been identified for Mascarita. Imagine that - someone UNIDENTIFIED once worked a Triplemania! I remember watching the video many times & couldn't identify which small TJ opening match wrestler it was. Next up is the big one - Triplemania V from El Toreo in Naucalpan! A show so big it got it's own graphic & a special TV airing so every match ends up on video in some form!

TRIPLEMANIA V IS UPON US! It's a big one. I can't remember if it gets treated as such in the Observer since Konnan had Dave's ear at this point but this was held in El Toreo & the place was fucking jam packed. Easy near or more than 20,000. I don't see a note on LuchaDB so I assume the WON never gave a number out. But I know at the time the Observer narrative was AAA was on a death march b/c how could it ever survive without Konnan & yet even with this VERY middling lineup they fucking packed this building that hadn't been packed since the UWA glory days still existed. Props to Antonio Pena! In fact, this went so well that the failed Top Win group runs here 2 weeks later & 2 weeks after that & 2 week after that & NOT 2 weeks after that because that's it. 3 shows & kaput. No more money. I'm not entirely sure how this event aired. One of the first lucha VHS events I got was this show but it was only a couple of matches. Many years later thanks to YouTube I found a version that had the other matches except for Latin Lover/Pierroth Jr which turned up on a Year In Review show in edited form. My educated guess is this did have a special airing of some kind more than just the usual weekend TV. So we start off with the minis but have some changes. With his jump Mini Vader is OUT & Pentagoncito is IN. With his jump Mascarita Sagrada Jr is OUT & Chivita Rayada is in! Yes! A LITTLE SOCCER GOAT!!! This is the ex-Arturito/Micro Konnan making his AAA return in his 5th or 6th gimmick. The perks of the gimmick are Arturo Rivera making goat noises every time he does a move. You know me with my little wrestlers... I love 'em! So this was a big hit with me. A fantastic way to kick things off with the rudos bumping all over the place for the smaller tecnicos. Oh shit I just realized Octagoncito was here instead of Super Munequito too. Mexican Paul is here with the his WWF minis & to encite the crowd at various points. Mini Goldust looked like a fucking star. The tecnicos go over so maybe the WWF minis are now on a losing streak? Excatly what an opening match should be. ***3/4! Next is one of those matches you have fond memories of & romanticize. I remember this being one of my early looks into the Rudos De La Galaxia team - even before I saw the full Cadets/Galaxia matches I've already raved about. So this match holds a special place in my memory. But upon re-watch... oof. There are A LOT of messed up spots in this match. Venum did not have a good night at all. Almost immediately when a backflip off Histeria's shoulders goes wrong. They clumsily get to their planned dive spot which is a Venum moonsault over the ringpost & for some reason we have a replay cued up of him doing that same dive from Rey De Reyes? OK. Tons of highspots in this match - they were certainly going for it with multiple dive trains. Histeria's SFTD was picture perfect. Venum does a tope suicida to nowhere & then gets flattened with a slingshot somersault senton plancha by Mosco. Chivas do their dual tope/plancha deal. Finish is Histera fouling Venum which only one of the Chivas saw so he enters the ring to get revenge but the refs catch him fouling Histeria so the rudos win by DQ. Match definitely had it's highlights which is probably why I remember it so fondly - I turned those highlights into many music videos! But it did not hold up to the test of time. Next is a weird one! Jerry Estrada has also decided to leave for Promo Azteca. Or he got wasted at Triplemania in Tijuana on Friday & never made it back here for the Sunday show. Either way he doesn't work for AAA again until years later. This leaves a hole in the new Vatos Locos themed group. So who gets to fill it? Well - that would be Leon Negro! The same Leon Negro who took May Flowers hair two nights earlier! Oops! The announcers conveniently leave that part out of the introductions but they do have time to note Rey Misterio Jr. & Psicosis swung by Triplemania Tijuana to say hi to some former friends. How sweet. This is Kraneo's AAA TV debut so he gets a nice little intro & by the way the announcers were talking + them working out tag team moves together it seemed like he & Abismo Negro were being poistioned as a top tecnico duo. The new faces of AAA! Oh, and Perro Aguayo Jr is just slumming it here too. Don't worry about him. LOL Very fun match with the tecnicos getting plenty of opportunity to shine. There is a big dive train capped off with a Kraneo attempted running corkscrew bodyblock onto everyone. He used to be very thin & athletic! Tiffany must have fattened him up. Abismo gets the win for his team to a big pop. I don't hate it. I could go for an Abismo & Kraneo top tecnico duo! But let's wait for it to play out. Up next is our get everyone on the show six man tag featuring Tinieblas Jr's return to action after an injury. A lot of Alushe spots as you'd expect. Crowd loved it. Demon Jr looked good working with Pentagon - who doesn't look good working with Pentagon? The tope to his back looked tremendous. I'm not sure what happened but they went to this extreme long shot during the finish for an extended period so I don't know how but the tecnicos won. My guess is Alushe was doing something with Miss Janeth they didn't want to show? It happens a couple times on this airing. Reminded me of when WCW would pull the camera back when someone was bleeding but you could still kind of make out the action. Here the camera was in the far upper level of El Toreo so the ring looked like a little dot. I'll get to the street fight in a moment. Let's just take care of the clipped Latin Lover/Pierroth Jr match. This is another one where the camera kept cutting to that long shot. Tirantes is the star here as he played a big part in Pierroth winning the title so they were teasing he was gonna screw Latin here again so Pierroth could retain it. Pierroth keeps getting agitated that Tirantes isn't fast counting Latin & berating him. Naturally this leads to Tirantes fast counting Pierroth down so Latin Lover wins his title back AND becomes the AAA Campeon De Camepones! Crowd loved that. Perfect kind of match you'd want on a major show. Now the street fight. This was *EPIC*! It was a total Toreo throwback match........ kinda. They both bled buckets. That's about it. I think the myth of what El Toreo was inspired what they did here but the reality was very different. This entire match is mainly these guys fighting through the crowd. It's funny because they start off brawling to the back & you can hear the crowd whistling in unhappiness because they can't see shit - there are no screens. So they immediately brawl back out through the curtain & begin their trip all the way around El Toreo. Metal is the first to start bleeding. The thing about this is you would never see this in the actual UWA days. Fighting in the crowd was prohibited. It happened. But it was immediately a DQ. It was an easy way to get out of doing a finish. Countless times the DQ would be called because "things got out of hand" aka nobody wanted to lose. There are so many common misconceptions when it comes to the what "estillo UWA" stands for. It doesn't mean brawling all over. It doesn't mean technical wrestling. What it really means... and here's a blog exclusive because nobody would dare talk about this publically... it means drunk guys are in the ring bleeding buckets. You see the locker rooms in El Toreo were underground. That's where the matadores would change & prepare to fight the bulls. You know what else was down there? A very large wine cellar. So the wrestlers would help themselves to drinks before their matches. They'd usually be so wasted while out there that you couldn't do real matches half the time so it would just turn into bloodbaths. Drunk guys bleeding while brawling all over ringside. That's estillo UWA in a nutshell. Metal/Chicana definitely have the bleeding & brawling down here. At various times each guy ends up almost falling over the rail in the upper level. It's a pretty choatic scene with the fans running AWAY from them since both are covered in blood. At various points you get more whistling because the lighting isn't so hot so half the building can't see what is going on. They work their way back to ringside where Tirantes starts to get involved by tripping Heavy Metal. This sends Perro Aguayo Jr running to the back where he soon returns with a guitar to even the score! The guitar a noteable lucha libre throwback weapon. Crowd is super hot as Metal threatens to hammer Chicana. Chicana bails to the floor but Metal follows. He runs around the post to hit Chicana who moves but it doesn't matter because Metal just smashes it over Tirantes head instead! Crowd goes INSANE! Metal throws Chicana back inside & continues to beat on him. Out from the back runs Pepe Casas, he slides into the ring, throws his own son off Chicana & disqualifies him! Rules are rules! Crowd is actually in stunned silence before whistling at Tropicasas for a poor error in judgement. Great stuff all around here. ****. The perfect kind of major show match, one you'll never forget if you bought a ticket & these two bloody men brawled right past where you were seated/standing. This takes us to the top two but the cage actually comes first! I'm not sure why. It could be Pena wanted to end on a happy note or Canek refused to not main event El Toreo. Our modern day invention on this show is the cage was already set up & just needed to be lowered. AAA is advancing! I know a lot of people dislike lucha cage matches but I certainly don't & this match proves me right! Great storytelling & super heat for the escapes. Everyone bleeds almost instant as you'd expect. The first out is La Calaca. Remember, he's only in this match because La Parka Jr got "injured" in Neza. He was the last minute sub so him escaping first assures you there won't be a fraude with the loser here. Smart! Soon after we get Mascara Sagrada Jr pulling himself over the top & falling to the floor a bloody mess. That leaves Super Muneco all alone with the Payasos! OH NO! What did the tecnicos expect when they escaped though? LOL La Calaca is ready to be done for the night - he's outta here. Sagrada Jr is torn. He sees Muneco taking a beating. He goes to the back to bring La Calaca back to ringside & urges him to get back in the cage so they can both save Muneco! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! THAT'S ALWAYS DOOM!!! But Calaca relents & they both get back in to help their buddy putting us back at square one. One of the clowns escapes followed by Muneco & Coco Rojo both climbing at the same time & exchanging HARD slaps at the top of the cage before climbing down together. Soon after Sagrada Jr escapes himself so it's down to La Calaca - who had the match won & masked saved earlier - against Coco Azul. The others are brawling outside the cage when suddenly La Parka Jr comes down the aisle with a drink in his hand! Both Calaca & Azul are climbing the cage. Parka gets up there too & throws the drink but Azul ducks & Calaca gets hit! He falls into the cage! Azul climbs up & over! LOS RUDOS LOS RUDOS LOS RUDOS!!!!!!!! Awesome finish as the crowd goes nuts. Poor La Calaca. Shouldn't have even been in this match, escaped first to save his mask, showed what a loyal guy he was climbing back inside to help once again & what does he have to show for it? A drink in the face & forced to unmask! La Calaca rips his mask off & we see it's the ex-El Sanguinario. He promptly attacks the tecnicos & honestly can you blame him? To me he's the only real babyface hero here! Classic Triplemania booking by Antonio Pena here. A tip of the hat, fine sir! Last up - and you can tell it's last because the crowd looks ready to go & it's pitch black dark - is our Mexico vs foreigners match. Originally planned to be AAA vs WWF no doubt. Instead we have a fired Jake Roberts & the future WCW Maestro playing Gorgeous George with Mexican Paul as his second in a wear genie type outfit. I don't get it. Match is joined in progress thankfully so we don't have to endure the entire disaster. The idea is Cibernetico doesn't want to team with Canek or help Mexico so he's just standing far away in the aisle watching. Unfortunate placement for him because this allows everyone to pelt him with trash for minutes on end. Finally he decides to help & leads the big tecnico comeback. He even does a tope suicida on George! A CIBERNETICO TOPE SUICIDA! YES! IT REALLY HAPPENED! Pena sends the fans home happy as Octagon pins Fuerza & then Canek press slams Cobarde for the final pinfall. Post-match Cibernetico wants to make up with Canek & even bows down to him. It's all a trap though - he fouls him! Then he puts the boots to him as Cobarde attacks Perro & Fuerza attacks Octagon. Triplemania ends with a giant clusterfuck as god (Pena) always intended! This entire show was as Triplemania as Triplemania gets! If I made a list of all-time Triplemanias it's hard to imagine this one not cracking the top 10. The Heavy Metal/Chicana & cage match are must-see matches. I'd go as far as to say Metal/Chicana is one of the all-time great Triplemania matches. You get all the stars, all the hot undercard action & major storyline developments across the board. Some stories end, some begin. Well, in theory. But you get my point. A very enjoyable re-watch experience!

Combining these post-Triplemania shows because they aired together. Not sure what the TV situation was but we'll see a few of these going forward, not to mention the immediate post-Triplemania taping in San Luis Potosi didn't see the light of day. Not sure if this was an everywhere thing or just on US Galavision thing. It certainly makes AAA harder to follow at this point & also very hard to watch because the matches being chosen to air are usually not the best options if you want to see good wrestling. So our first show is from Queretaro. I have to immediately point out - what a total piece of shit crowd. In both matches we saw there was garbage being thrown at the ring with no care in the world as to the problems it caused (wrestlers slipping/getting distracted). Security seemed non-existent & you could see many of the wrestlers openly agitated. During the dive sequence in the first match Maniaco actually starts having popcorn put in his hair so he turns around & spits in the face of a young female fan. Good! Leon Negro is back here but in describing his AAA run the announcers conveniently skip over his Triplemania appearence as a part of the Vatos Locos inspired rudo team. Understandable. If you were following the AAA TV weekly you were probably very confused what is going on with this guy but I don't think many were paying that close attention unlike this nerd 30 years later. Also in this match is the big Triplemania loser La Calaca! He still has the same bodysuit but is going with the painted face look. It's weird placement for him but with no clowns or Parka Jr around, I guess this is just where he fit. A lot of cool stuff by the Cadets in this match including a fuckin amazing never replicated exchange between Nova/Crazy in the first fall. Rudos take over in the second fall & bust Leon Negro openly badly. He bleeds so much & the arena staff doesn't clean the ring apparently because the blood on the mat is still visible come the main event. We get a wild dive sequence in the third fall capped off by Super Nova attempting a 450 plancha but he only makes it to 360 which means both his feet get driven into Ludxor's head. On first look it appears to KO him but he's up fine post-match. Calaca fakes a foul from Leon to win the match illegally for the rudos. This was a fun match 30 years ago & remains a fun match today! A prototype of a match AAA could give you that CMLL could not at this time. Colorful wrestlers, tons of action & a hot crowd. Main event is more of a storyline than any kind of match. Cibernetico once again not willing to help his partners. There's an extended camera shot at one point when I think Cobarde slipped badly on a drink thrown into the ring. Rudos win in two falls. It looked like Tinieblas & Canek were about to tie things up but Ciber came back to the ring & laid down for Chicana. Post-match Ciber gets chased away to the back as fans throw more shit. Waste of time airing this, nothing got advanced. Noti AAA shows us a quick clip from the unaired San Luis Potosi show where Ciber once again turned on his teammates. We are also introduced to Dos Caras who is officially with AAA now (not really) & has brought some friends - El Cuervo & El Renegado. This was part of the Top Win stuff going on at the time. Neither of these guys gets a TV match for many months. In fact, Renegado never does. Cuervo shows up again in December. We switch to Tala, Jalisco for the main event - the CUM PERRO AGUAYO! No, I'll never stop laughing at that. Airing a Perro Aguayo singles match in 1997 is certainly a choice... airing one against El Cobarde who is equally shot is even more of a choice. The good thing for them is Perro Aguayo was so fuckin over that this is a very hot crowd - except for when Cobarde won the first fall. They did not like that. In the third fall Cobarde goes for a tope suicida (why???????) & just crashes so hard I was legit frightened he wouldn't get up. He also landed on Perro's knee & I was worried he wouldn't get up either. Instead it's Pepe Casas who goes down almost immediately afterwards leading to Tirantes taking over. Perro Aguayo Jr does not like this & bolts out from the back to attack Cobarde. This gets Chicana, Fuerza & Octagon involved. Somewhere in this mess Tirantes awards the match & UWA Junior Heavyweight Title to Cobarde by DQ. Another match that didn't serve much purpose being shown on TV.

Another 2 for 1 where 10 taped matches get sandwiched into 3 for the weekend. I take issue with the matches chosen. LOL I mean it's not like it looks like there are some great matches sitting unseen forever but that Neza tercera & the Metal/Chicana rematch would have been fun to see. Especially if it features Blue Panther's actual return here instead of the "debut" we got shown. Spliced in between all these matches are quick video clips of everyone participating in the Torneo Metropolitano which is a newcomers tournament but strangely it says "Queretaro" in the graphic but the tournament appears to take place in Pachuca according to the DB. Maybe it's our mistake. Could be an unaired/unrecorded taping too. Some notables are "Heat Guzman" who is actually Kid Guzman with a spelling error. Sometimes he went by "Hit Guzman" so that could be it. Hong Kong Lee with a look I've never seen before & doesn't make it to TV at any point. Capitan Acero is definitely an ex-UWA guy. R-15 & Guerrero 2000 show up for the first time, they'd be relevant AAA guys by year end. Our opener is the minis from Zacatecas in one of my favorite obscure trivia questions! This is Mini Abismo Negro's debut. But look who's on the other side - it's Mini Goldust! The guy who notably played Mini Abismo Negro! It seems like Antonio Pena was experimenting & did not like how this Mini Abismo looked. I can't say I blame him. It seems like a young kid based on the way he moved & nerves. Maybe a local? Maybe someone who came with Mini Siniestro? This is his only shot as Pena has Mini Goldust working as Mini Abismo by the end of the year unless I'm forgetting some random upcoming match. Also new here is the aformentioned Mini Siniestro who is the future Jose Ramona under the hood. He immediately starts feuding with Octagoncito here so no point hiding that he's losing his mask in the coming weeks. Usual good showing by the minis. Octagoncito tried a couple new things including a wild corkscrew senton splash off the top rope. I'd go 6/10. Needs work. Siniestro looked great basing for Munequito & beating up Octagoncito. Mexican Paul got involved but accidentally hit Mini Goldust with a chair. I think this may have been the end of the line for our friend Paul. Mini tecnicos won by DQ. Next is Muneco & Chivas vs Payasos. First two falls are pretty fucking awful. They horribly fuck up the finish of the second fall where Globito (the second of the Payasos) trips Muneco running off the ropes which seems not the intended spot because they ignore it & do a sloppy roll-up to even things up. Third fall thankfully picks up a bit with the Chivas looking good. Convoluted finish where Globito gets involved & costs the tecnicos the match. Post-match the Payasos surround Globito who ducks down so you can't see him... then emerges with a clown mask & white hair... IT'S COCO NEGRO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who? I don't know. We've never heard that name or seen this person before. But the announcers seem to think this random fourth Payaso is a big deal because they are screaming his name from the rooftops. The real Globito then comes to the ring to celebrate as well. Why did they need a fake Globito in all this is my question? Classic Pena booking. The most notable thing from this show happens next. At one point considered "lost media" for some reason on Mexican facebook/forums. Not sure how something that aired on TV & was regularly available in collections is lost media but I digress. We see La Parka Jr/Mascara Sagrada Jr/Heavy Metal talking in a park near a fountain. Sitting near a fountain while being filmed for a lucha libre TV show. What could go wrong? An older gentleman approaches them from afar... we only see him from behind at first & then THROUGH HIS OWN EYES! LOL Yes, the magic of Antonio Pena gives us a look as if this guy is wearing a mask & we are watching through it. We also get the POV of the tecnicos staring at this man. His face is never 100% visible but on the side shots it's 80% clear. Watching this live or on video in 1997 you'd probably be confused. Maybe also in 2007. But by 2008... you know exactly who it was if you remembered this skit. It's Blue Panther making his AAA return. UNMASKED! He confronts the tecnicos, calls them goofs who work for a circus, shoves them & they all brawl into the fountain. As they are brawling at various points you can make out the full face if you do the pause deal but I'm too professional for that. Now - they never say it's Blue Panther. On this Neza taping he appears in the Metal/Chicana match but isn't shown at all during the main event that airs on TV. But he's around starting next week so if you put two & two together... you should have known who it was. I can't even come up with an explanation as to why Pena chose to do this & why Panther went along with it. My best guess is Panther was told when it airs on TV we'll have your face blurred or we won't use any camera shots that expose your face? Otherwise it seems absurd he'd be like yeah put me on TV unmasked. Right? I'm open to any other explanations. I really wish I'd have remembered to ask about this last year when I had a few moments to talk to him alone at All In. Oh well. Main event is awful but has two moments of note. The first is the DQ finish where Histeria/Mosco De La Merced/Maniaco hit the ring to save Cibernetico from a beating by Canek & Dos Caras. This marks the *official* first appearence of the group in a few weeks we will come to know as Los Vipers. I'm sure at this moment in time a totally random group Pena created, not at all knowing it last the next 30 years & be a central group in AAA even if the original wrestlers would not. The other notable thing is the announcers keep screaming about how Gran Markus Jr shouldn't be allowed to wear his mask since he lost it days earlier on a Top Win show at El Toreo. They're right. The crowd is angry too & keeps chanting for him to take it off. So after the tecnicos win by DQ, Markus gets ganged up on & they triple team yank his mask off completely exposing his face. Again, in real time this makes sense if you know what's going on. 14 year old Rob did not. I remember getting this tape in the mail & watching in total confusion. I had always been told ripping a mask off is a DQ in Mexican wrestling & when it's done you cover your face as to protect your identity. Markus did no such thing. I was even more confused weeks later when a CMLL tape showed up & Markus was working there unmasked. Welcome to the days of limited lucha coverage in the WON & almost no lucha fans online to give any answers to the questions I had. I did eventually learn what happened here but it'll always stick with me as a big WTF lucha makes no sense moment.

We are in the trenches of AAA TV! Horrible episode but also a very notable one for the out of ring stuff. As you can see only two matches aired in the US. I would guess more aired in Mexico but have no actual proof. The show begins with Aracnofobia & Flying cutting promos for the Torneo Novato De Oro. I assume you wouldn't show those unless the matches were actually airing, at least in highlight form. I guess both R-15 & Kick Boxer advanced due to the double countout results + they both end up listed in the final later in June. Our first of two matches is the semi-main event. NO BUENO! Just a slow boring match. May Flowers has on this absurd wig to cover his baldness so naturally after some teases Super Muneco yanks it off. Sagrada Jr had a nice sequence with Cobarde & that was really the only action during the match. Leon Negro did an ugly as fuck dropkick from the second turnbuckle to the floor as there was no room to do any dives with this setup (Arena Aficion has fans sitting near the ring & AAA put up their barriers so it was pretty cramped). Rudos win in straight falls with a faked low blow. Noti AAA gives us our notable moments for two very different reasons. The first is a clip of Ciberentico being saved by Histeria/Mosco/Maniaco in Arena Neza the previous week. Arturo Rivera says Ciber has found some friends he can trust which takes us to a video package where Ciber introduces his crew & pulls out............... the Los Vipers t-shirt! Yes, this is the official debut of the Los Vipers concept which still exists in AAA to this very day. As I mentioned earlier, we have retconned the Histeria/Mosco/Maniaco/Abismo/Mach 1 crew as being the Vipers but they were actually Los Rudos De La Galaxia. Next up we get introduced to two new AAA characters. The first one is completely forgettable - Vegas. Antonio Pena's 3rd shot at this gimmick, this time a tecnico played by the ex-Drago & future Mr. Mexico. He does 2 or 3 TV shots using the gimmick & leaves for Promo Azteca. The second one is also just as forgettable in terms of longevity but not at all forgettable if you've ever seen this clip or the photos... it's EL NENE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The ex-Mastadonte & future Dollar. The concept of the gimmick is a man-baby. Yes, a grown child. You see this guy is fat so it's funny to see him dressed like a baby. Pentagon introduces him as "the son I always wanted" & El Nene walks into frame with a giant bottle & proceeds to suck on it. From the mind of Antonio Pena! Blessed genius! I found this hilarious but admit it's stuff like this that caused people to dismiss AAA as a total circus. Nene never makes it to TV beyond this intro but does work a match or two before Pena comes to his senses. I have to assume there's a story behind this & the gimmick was created to be a shot at someone who was annoying the boss. Pena was sometimes very Vince-like in that sense. Main event is another brutal match that was a struggle to get through. We get an angle early on where we cut backstage to Blue Demon Jr in his futuristic look down on the ground with his hand wrapped & bloody. The rudos run to the back to attack the tecnicos from the semi-main who are checking on him. I think the idea was Blue Panther did this to him but can't be 100% certain & naturally there is no follow-up I can recall. Sweet justice here as this time it's the tecnicos courtesy of Tinieblas Jr faking a low blow who win this match in straight falls. Watching Panther work here felt so odd. He was beyond out of place in this company where the wrestling was not the priority. Sangre Chicana did absolutely nothing & I wouldn't be shocked if he was out of it. He cut a largely incoherent promo after Aracnofobia & Flying when the show began. One more show to go! (I'll explain below)

Show starts out with interviews with two more Torneo Novato De Oro participants - Hong Kong Lee & Vudu. Then we get Blue Panther cutting a very inspired promo, contrasted next by El Cobarde cutting a great one. We start with the minis which very much made me happy watching on TLN here in Canada! Chivita Rayada is super over & super adorable. The announcers are almost immediately plugging a mask match for the 7/28 Madero show although they seem unclear as to who the actual participants are at the time of recording the audio. This is Mini Siniestro's 2nd TV match so immediate alarm bells that he is being placed in an apuesta match. Arturo Rivera takes a shot at La Parka & Super Parka on commentary, saying they are using gimmick that don't belong to them. Not sure what set that off on this week of all weeks. Usual fun minis match for the most part. Octagoncito has a great exchange with Mini Psicosis, foreshadowing their great work together in later years. He also busts out this very cool step-up corner somersault plancha dive that I haven't seen replicated since. It's very simple but creative. Chivita does the horns to the butt spot numerous times during the match. He does a somersault plancha where Mini Psicosis somehow barely catches him, not sure how that's even possible. Thankfully he was okay but man that looks tough on his little legs to land hard from that high up. Mexican Paul (who is still around for some reason?) helps the mini rudos win by blasting Parkita with chairshots. Post-match it turns into a full fledged brawl between Octagon/Parkita/Espectrito II/Siniestro so there's your apuesta match in Madero. We go to the semi-main event next which is............... strange. Abismo Negro is booked as a rudo but we haven't seen any indication on TV as him being anything but a tecnico. Even off-TV, it looks like nothing was booked where he would have had any issues with the tecnicos or more speficially the Sagradas. They play it off early on as Abismo being an unwilling rudo as he refuses to help his teammates double & triple team the tecnicos. He even purposely misses a dropkick to take them out & lead the tecnicos comeback. Nova/Abismo end up having a great exchange & Nova takes Abismo out with a moonsault over the post. Nevertheless the rudos manage to win the first fall submitting both Sagrada Jr & Parka Jr. The second fall is where we get even more weirdness. With the rudos in control (2 vs 4?) Mascara Sagrada runs out in street clothes to help his buddies out. But he immediately seems to distrust Abismo for some reason. What am I missing here? Abismo pleads innocence & extends a hand. He even grabs the house mic & says Sagrada can trust him. He's one of them (tecnicos)! Sagrada finally relents & shakes Abismo's hand. You know what comes next... Abismo attacks him from behind & joins up with the rudos... the same rudos he wasn't helping minutes ago when he could have & just destroyed these three tecnicos. I'm so confused. Both Sagrada's are beat bloody. Super Nova is press slammed into the crowd. Abismo cuts a TV promo saying he's a rudo at heart. Lots of heat for all this but for the life of me I can't undersetand the missing piece to the puzzle. Maybe a magazine I bought will eventually reveal a missing TV taping lineup where Sagrada/Abismo could have had issues? Otherwise this feels like Pena forgot where he was with the Abismo character or just flat out didn't care. Noti AAA is next. We get a quick look at the end of each of the Torneo Novato De Oro qualifiers. I am amused they keep calling him "Hit Guzman" when his gear clearly says "Kid" on it. Announcement of new champs Octagoncito + Fuerza/Mosco + promos with the new title holders. Highlights of Blue Demon Jr being attacked by the rudos in Pachuca where they targeted his hand injury. Finally we get the full rundown of the big upcoming Madero show. Main event time & the crowd is HEATED for it! Honestly this was probably the best match on the show. Perro Sr was super motivated like I haven't seen all year here. The tecnicos are all over the rudos from the start, beating Chicana bloody. This earns them a first fall DQ which nobody seems to mind. It continues into the second fall with Cobarde not taking the worst of it. Perro Sr does a silla onto Fuerza, then holds Cobarde on the floor for Perrito which seems like telegraphing a communication issue (the crowd definitely reacts as such screaming noooooooooo) but it turns out fine as Perrito launches himself with a silla to the floor! It looked awesome! I don't recall him doing that again until many years later. Chicana then low blows Metal but also fakes one of his own which ends another match in straight falls with the rudos winning via DQ. The match covers like 13 minutes of the 22 minute video so there's tons of post-match promos & repeats to take us out.

And thus ends a very important point in my lucha libre fandom. This was the final new episode to air on TeleLatino here in Canada. We had gone most of June & all of July without any AAA, just CMLL matches. Then one random Saturday in early August this show popped up so I was very happy! It was the above 3 matches & the show closed with a trios from Arena Coliseo featuring Tony Rivera making his CMLL debut I believe. I tuned in next week... no show. The next week... no show. The next week... no show. I checked the listings every week, nothing about lucha libre. I recorded TLN every night while I slept, woke up to check the video tape & see if it aired in another time slot... nothing. Very sad times coming to the realization there would be more more weekly lucha libre TV. This is where I ended up starting to trade for weekly lucha TV (shout out to my first weekly source Steven Jensen from California!). TLN was where I discovered lucha libre existed & it became weekly appointment viewing for me whenever I could catch it. Without TLN airing lucha libre, who knows where I'd be in my fandom or in life (is this good or bad? Maybe that discussion belongs in another more personal blog haha). So in terms of my own personal wrestling timeline, this is a huge dividing point. Acquiring weekly lucha TV I didn't have access to any longer became a mission & the best days were whenever the new tapes would show up in the mail. After Steven Jensen stopped being able to record for me, I turned to some random Canadian guy recording off an illegal satellite named Robert O'Connor! Being Canadian, he was able to ship to me for much cheaper. More importantly it began our friendships which still exists to this very day & has taken us both to many places we never imagined! So I lost TLN lucha TV but eventually gained a best friend, a more than fair trade-off I'd say.

Enter the era of Rob being weeks behind on his TV! I'd tell my new source to fill a tape before sending which soon turned into fill two tapes which soon turned into a bunch of new tapes being sent whenever. So I was always playing catch-up. I remember getting this first tape though, it was an all-AAA TV tape covering four weeks of TV but something was messed up in the recording so it had no sound. How do I remember this clearly? Well, it was after receiving this shipment that I got the idea to start making dive compilations. So I'd go through all my tapes (which was still a relatively small collection) & use my two VCR's to dub just the dives. The ones from this show were the first ones I dubbed. *wipes tear away* Yes, I was a huge nerd. Yes, I had no life. For quite a while considering I ended up with like 20+ volumes of just dive compilations! But we're here to recap AAA TV, not discuss where it all went wrong for me. The opener, mask match & main event are what makes the cut from this TV. I think my source was the same guy sending to Jeff Lynch so some of these upcoming episodes will be missing Noti AAA blocks as the goal was just to record the wrestling & cram as much onto one tape so stuff like news segments got cut out. I regret it now, not so much so back then when I had little understanding of how things worked. I liked the opener! Just a solid old school lucha trios with the bumbling rudos & tecnicos making them look like fools capped off with a great dive sequence ending with a Super Nova running somersault plancha where it looked like he broke his back the way he was caught at an awkward angle. For an AAA TV match this could have seamlessly fit onto a CMLL TV episode. The finish was a little strange as one of the Chivas rolled up Nitti (I think) & Tirantes clearly counted to three. The announcers started screaming how Nitti wasn't the captain, then Tirantes waved off the finish saying Nitti was in the ropes but Pepe Casas just raised the tecnicos' hands & their music started playing. Whatever. We got a good match before the mess! Next up was the hastily set up relevos suicidas match. Tirantes was a big focus being the rudo ref which led to lots of trash being thrown at the ring when he would get involved either by outright interfering or not counting pinfalls for the tecnicos. The tag portion was short & kind of inconsequential even with the upset finish. Parkita did a corkscrew plancha where he somehow came up short because he wasn't able to control his body on the spin. He ended up pinning Octagoncito & then Siniestro sneakily rolled up Espectrito II. It should have been a big deal upset because everyone expected Siniestro to lose here but they did the spot so poorly it got no reaction at all. Espectrito at first didn't want to do the match but when he tried to leave Antonio Pena met him on the stage to order him back into the ring. The singles portion of the match was also pretty disappointing with Espectrito just kinda going through the motions. If I didn't know any better I'd say he was legit bummed about selling his mask & letting his emotions get the best of him. Octagoncito did a wild for it's time top rope springboard moonsault. Minis were not doing stuff like that at this point! Octagoncito did a moonsault in the ring that missed even though Espectrito never moved. That was awkward as fuck. Mexican Paul interfered a bunch. There was a weird digression by Arturo Rivera discussing Dennis Rodman coming to wrestle in WCW (said by name). Rivera talked about that denegrates lucha libre & isn't it funny some of the Mexicans who work for that company always talk about how AAA are the ones denegrating lucha libre but they have no issue with Rodman coming to wrestle. Gee, I wonder who Rivera could have been hinting at! Finally Octagoncito gets Espectrito into the Octaclutch & after Tirantes won't call a submission at first he finally relents. Much celebration is had as outside the ring looks like a warzone with all the garbage thrown. Espectrito II unmasks as the legit brother of Espectrito I. He has a Nike du-rag covering his hair for some reason. Lastly on this show we have the main event which is dogshit. Not even Pentagon could save this one. The first fall finish was laughably bad with Cibernetico trying to do bumbling rudo spots where he accidentally hits his own teammates. Tecnicos end up winning by DQ although it was very sloppily done. Total waste of time. I can only imagine what Dos Caras was thinking here. Fans celebrated with Perro Aguayo ringside post-match. Rivera noted the show was almost a sellout although not quite. TV show started strong but ended on a whimper.

Back in Agauscalientes for a show where we get the main & the underneath stuff but nothing in the middle. I have no doubts more aired in Mexico because this match format is just too strange. We also don't have a Noti AAA again unfortunately. I will forever regret probably being the guy who said don't bother taping that, it'll leave more room for matches. What if we missed more El Nene skits??? Starting off with the minis we have a rough beginning stretch with Super Munequito/Pentagoncito on totally different pages... or planets. Thankfully they got it together & later in the match had this wonderful exchange that I clip out & post any time I see. It's nothing overly complicated, it's just the way they moved is nothing like guys seem to move today. Mini Psicosis looked fantastic in this one both in selling/basing for the tecnicos & trying a couple new things. I still don't know what to make of that spot where he did a handspring backflip, then pulled himself upside down to on the turnbuckles to headscissor Octagoncito down but it at least looked cool! Outside the box idea! In the first fall Super Munequito does a plancha onto Mini Goldust & then cradles/rubs his head for an uncomfortably long period that for some reason I still remember to this day since I knew it coming the moment he went for that dive. The result here is wrong - the rudos actually won. It was a very sloppy finish where Pentagoncito yanked off Octagoncito's mask after taking a springboard moonsault & then had complications trying to cover him. Both refs were locals & argued afterwards so I assume this was a bit just for the crowd who knows them. Overall a decent showing by this crew. Next up is the Vegas TV debut. It's the ex-Drago/future Mr. Mexico who at this time was... still... after 7-8 years in the business nothing more than a green bodybuilder with a touch of athleticism. He couldn't figure it out in UWA or Promo Azteca so Pena decided to give it a shot here but clearly told Super Crazy - help this guy! So Crazy, being a good employee, did as he was told. His entire job here was making Vegas look like a world beater. It worked! Vegas got over & did some impressive stuff the untrained eye wouldn't even understand was all Crazy. All the rudos started the match wearing their "Viper's" t-shirts - not Vipers, VIPER'S! It belongs to the Viper! Another pretty good match overall with the Chivas doing their thing & rudos looking good when they were in control of things. Even though the Vipers are the new thing right now, they clearly aren't the BIG new thing which is Vegas so they end up losing by DQ for excessive violence. We skip forward to the main event where a luchador sorpresa had been advertised & ended up being BABE FACE! Ancient luchador who in no way belongs in AAA in 1997 but Pena was just looking to scoop up anyone he could at this time. The strangest thing of all is his graphic said "DAVID FACE" & was a shot of him taken from this very match. So my *guess* that to this day I still can't confirm is when the show was being produced whoever was in charge of inserting the graphics did not know who this person was. He or she just heard "Baby Face", thought that sounded too dumb to be true not understanding the meaning of the name, then just went with David Face thinking that must have been what was lost in translation. Babe Face's real name is not David, just incase that's what you were thinking. The announcers never once refer to him as David Face either. That's really the highlight of this match. It's a two fall deal where the tecnicos control most of the way, then the Vipers all run down to the ring to help Cibernetico & attack Canek for the DQ finish. A novel finish for now but who was to know this would end up being an AAA finish for the next 20+ years LOL.

Two shows for the price of one! I suspect this is around the time Televisa cut back on their lucha libre coverage which left CMLL with one block & AAA with one block. I have no proof to confirm that but AAA had been running many tapings up until this point to account for having shows on Saturday & Sunday. Going forward you'll see shows being taped in 2's or 3's & then combined into one episode. The reasoning being they could charge local promoters more $$$ for a TV taping instead of a spot show but they still had to air matches to justify that extra charge. In late 1998 this changes & we get more of the single show tapings which coincides with AAA's business decline. So from these tapings we get 3 matches from Minatitlan & only Histeria's homecoming in Tulancingo. The Minatitlan opener is the minis match but remove Chivita & add Mini Cibernetico (ugh). Also, it's a Lumberjack Strap Match with all the guys from the opener as lumberjacks. This is Espectrito II's unmasked debut which barely even gets a mention. Strange. They appear to rib Mexican Paul, who for some reason is still around, by whipping him like crazy as the match begins. It's your standard type of this match with the rudos getting whipped early, the tecnicos getting a little during the beatdown & then the refs getting into the bit. Both mini tecnicos hit dives which I always found funny in these matches. The lumberjacks just have to stop hitting people so the dives can be caught. LOL A happy finish as the tecnicos go over clean. Enjoyable for what it was. Our next Minatitlan match is the Relevos Tijuanenses. First time this has been on AAA TV since... I wanna say April or May. It's a 4 way tag but anyone can tag anyone so you have Chiva vs Chiva & Viper vs Viper at various points. I found that odd since the idea is the Vipers are just starting out as a group, why would you want them fighting each other so quickly? They work it tecnico style so there's no implosion or anything but it's also strange because earlier this year we already saw Histeria & Mosco turn on Abismo when he did the failed tecnico run. None of that gets referenced here of course, Antonio Pena has long since deleted that. My complaints about that aside - loved this match! This was the kind of match I'd get on tape, post about online & tell everyone how AAA is actually great - don't listen to that shit you read in the Observer from Konnan or those telling you the company is dying! They have all these cool dudes! Watching Histeria/Mosco working together was my everything back in these days. Kick Boxer & Hong Kong Lee were new names but doing some wacky flippy mirror spots which in 1997 was way ahead of it's time. If the internet came along earlier perhaps their sequences from this match would have made them what Jerry Lynn/RVD were to many a year or two later. Ah, back when lucha was ahead of the game instead of behind. There's actually zero dives the entire way until the final two. Guys start dropping like flies as the action moves along very smoothly for the most part. It comes down to Chiva I or II (definitely Gran Apache) vs Abismo Negro (still definitely Winners). Tirantes starts to get involved which causes Apache to grab his hand for an assist into a springboard plancha. Neat! Abismo follows with a flip tope. Chiva immediately follows with a springboard moonsault dive. They do some nearfalls. Could have used a stronger finish but what can you do... Abismo catches Chiva with a power bomb out of nowhere for the win. Worth checking out! ****. I think the first time I've rated a 1997 AAA match in a while! Last match from this taping is the cage main event. Recording is JIP so Perro has already escaped the cage & Metal is a bloody mess inside. Perro tries to get a chair into the cage to help him out but Tirantes won't allow him. They get into it as Cobarde escapes. Perro/Cobarde then go at it on the outside. Metal makes a comeback & eventually manages to escape the cage leaving Chicana as the loser. This is our build-up to Verano De Escandalo which has a graphic flashed between every match. Metal/Chicana will be in a cage with Perrito/Picudo who set it up in the non-TV match here. Now we switch over to Tulancingo in this building I think I've only seen AAA use twice. It stands out because there's this giant wall on one side. An AAA TV featuring *TWO* Vipers matches! We were eating well, as the kids say these days. This is another good match - you'll notice the Vipers = good matches trend going on here. Hopefully that doesn't get interrupted by any untimely jumps any time soon! The audio is very much off on the video uploaded, I should fix that by uploading my own some day. I'll probably never get around to it. The first fall finish is fucking epic with a triple pinfall as Kick Boer is doing this wacky double leg cradle as Sagrada Jr does the upside-down headstand into a Victory Roll spot I fucking love so much. Histeria is bumping all over like a lunatic, really embracing his return home as a star. There's even a sign dedicated to him the camera keeps showing. Rudos take over. Histeria hits a gorgeous springboard spinning leg lariat, a move totally forgotten about now in 2026. Remember when Shinjiro Otani was using that as basically the setup to finish every match he was in? Did the superkick usurp the spinning leg lariat? Someone should bring it back. It certainly won't be someone in Mexico, I promise you that. There's an epic dive sequence in the third fall with a Kick Boxer tope suicida, Histeria SFTD, Parka Jr asai moonsault, Mosco Tiger Mask rope trick into an Arabian Moonsault & finally Sagrada Jr goes over Tirantes with a running somersault plancha but takes out his own partners. The tecnicos win by DQ when Kick Boxer is thrown back into the ring & the Vipers destroy him so badly including ripping his mask off. What was crazy for me is how little he attempted to cover his own face. The camera zoomed right in & without even needing to pause or watch frame by frame you could easily see his entire face for seconds on end multiple times. I'm shocked it aired this way. I remember back at the time thinking maybe it was planned that way & next time I see Kick Boxer he would be unmasked. Didn't happen. But this was Pena really trying to push him hard as a top tecnico. I think the 3rd or 4th attempt. He disappears soon after this only to return in 1998 as a rudo. In interviews these days he claims Pena only showed interest in him when things were going back with Octagon & Pena wanted to make him jealous by saying I have another martial artist type kid I can push if you keep giving me problems. Sounds about right. Hong Kong Lee & others have told similar stories about getting caught in the weird Pena/Octagon relationship. Anyways, very good match. Another ****! Two of them on one episode of 1997 AAA TV! We're living in great times! For now. Check back in roughly a month. UPDATE: I realized Roy's uploads of these shows are more complete as they include Noti AAA so for the sake of being a completionist I had to see if anything notable was shown here. Nope. We do get introduced to the new UWA (in 1997!!!) foursome of Babe Face, El Signo, Negro Navarro & Shu El Guerrero who say they are here to challenge the young AAA wrestlers who they don't respect at all. I can totally believe that. You can tell these tapings were in airing in strange order because these guys don't show up for another 2 or 3 shows.

From a show with two Vipers matches to a show with a Space Cadets match! RobViper dream world! I have such happy memories of this time period since this was when I fell into the rabbit hole of anything related to lucha libre. Such happy memories that I don't wanna even review it now & point out some weirdness haha. But here we go! We get three matches from this taping starting out with the Cadets vs Hampones & a newcomer making his TV debut - Guerrero 2000. Awesome looking mask & gear. I clearly remember marking out for him just based on the look & him appearing to be athletic. Future top AAA star, the next Juventud Guerrera were probably things I wrote on some random message board way back when. The TNM board maybe! I think there existed one before there was a mailing list. The match is announced as Relevos Japoneses which are usually reserved for 5 vs 5. Jesus Zuniga is completely lost since Relevos Japoneses needs captains but nobody has told him who the captains are so he just yells out "would the captains please identify yourselves by raising a hand!" Of course, you guessed it, the wrestlers have also seemingly not been informed who the captains are so nobody raises their hand. Ah... Antonio Pena your switch goes from genius to bafoon so quickly. It doesn't matter really, let's just enjoy the action because it was good! Cadets/Power Raiders vs Diabolicos always used to be a treat & this is exactly that. We see an awesome Venum exchange ending with a picture perfect springboard moonsault dive. This was peak Venum in terms of overall ability. If he could have just bottled himself from this month coming up, he'd have been a superstar. Much to my surprise Venum actually gets beat really early which is why he got his dive in so quickly. So the tecnicos are down 4 vs 3 as they head to commercial. Back from the break one of the Hampones bites the dust to even things up. I *think* this was so the captains could become active (if you remember what Relevos Japoneses rules are) but I wasn't keeping track of who had/hadn't participated yet. There's a funny bit that would be perfect for Botchamania but I'm kinda over laughing at those videos where Guerrero 2000 takes this cool bump over the post & Super Nova goes for cornerpost tope but Goyo cuts him off which clearly Nova was not expecting. There's like a 45 second bit with him & Goyo, then Ludxor & Goyo, then Guerrero 2000 re-enters the ring, grabs Nova, takes the EXACT SAME RINGPOST BUMP, followed by Nova getting him with the cornerpost tope this time. They do a bumbling rudo bit with the rudos leading to a triple running somersault plancha by the Cadets. This is why we love these matches! Crowd went bonkers. This was a novel spot at the time, not the traditional every show spot after clapping for 20 seconds to wow the tourists. The eliminations follow ending with Ludxor using a magistral cradle on Goyo so the tecnicos win. Fun stuff! Our first weird from the announcers is Andres Maronas (I think) screaming how Venum & Super Nova are in the Vipers due to this win. Hmmmmmm. I'll save my comment for later. Next up is Canek vs Cibernetico. The video run time is 28 minutes! HOLY HELL. I'm a trooper though. I watched it all. I actually had it on my tablet while entering old lucha results, full disclosure. Cibernetico attacks Canek from the jump & uses a barely disguised low blow to win the first fall. Vegas/Histeria are the seconds & get into it a bit. The announcers start discussing the Vipers ("Viper's) shirts the rudos are wearing. They seem to not understand this stable is specific to certain people. Second fall finish is the fucking shits as Canek makes a comeback including somehow Cibernetico basing for a spinning headscissors! They both freeze & it's clear Canek is telling Pepe Casas something... so of course for no reason at all Casas just turns his back to yell at Histeria so Canek can walk up to Ciber & give him a low blow to take the second fall. SO FUCKING LAZY! LOL Third fall goes way longer than it had any need to be. Histeria interferes so Vegas chases him to the back where Mosco De La Merced attacks. Canek hits a tope suicida onto Cibernetico, Vegas does a picture perfect plancha onto Histeria/Mosco. Canek wins by countout as the crowd goes crazy. That's one thing I'll admit - Canek is beloved. It's a cultural thing for sure. Like no matter how shitty this match got at times, the crowd was so hyped to see Canek win. They were counting along at the end & exploded when he had his arm raised. It would have been nice if he passed on some of this before he faded away into the sunset is where my issue with him stems from. Oh well. Main event is another cage match building up Verano De Escandalo. I'll be honest my interest faded in this one since they had guys escaping & coming back in multiple times. It just felt so repetitive & more than that this was a completely inconsequential match as the big one was going to be at the major show so this was just time wasting. The rudos end up winning with Arturo Rivera singing a song as Picudo escapes. This is where it hit me that none of these Televisa announcers are actually paying attention to the product because they proclaim Picudo & Sangre Chicana won it for their Vipers group. Que??? I *assume* at this point the announcers thought Vipers ("Viper's) was some sort of branding for this new era of AAA & everyone was part of it. Yes, that's the best I can come up with. We also get a weird mention by Zuniga about how AAA is coming to San Jose & Los Angeles to run shows before the end of the year. The US dream forever lived! Even when Konnan wasn't around! The memory of When World's Collide always existed here. You should watch the opener but you can skip the rest of this show.

Just the main event & after I finished watching I realized they did the sign-off so it probably aired as part of one of the above tapings. We see Perro Aguayo's entrance where he goes into the crowd to meet a special guest - some child who is very sick. The child seems super happy. Sweet stuff. Mascara Sagrada Jr then goes over to gift the child a mask & in an oops moment the child seems far less happy, more indifferent than anything. LOL We get another hilarious moment in the first fall as Fuerza Guerrera has Perrito in a camel clutch he very clearly starts blading him with Panther's help. The camera ZOOMS IN on this & we see Fuerza throw the blade away after he's done. I remember this clip made it onto Bob Barnett's Lucha Loonies tapes. He even slowed it down for max effect but in real time it was very obvious what was going on. You have to remember this was back at a time when many people were just getting on the internet so an actual selling point was exposing how pro wrestling works. I have no doubt Bob sold tapes to people who solely wanted to see stuff like this. One of my favorite Barnett stories is when he wrote a letter to the Observer complaining about some SMW match he attended where he could hear Chris Candido & someone I forget calling spots from his seat at the back of the building. Dave replied shutting him down simply by saying well until human beings are able to communicate via telepathy that kind of stuff will happen occasionally. LOL I don't think you should be calling spots loud enough for the crowd to hear but I also have no doubt Barnett was exaggerating as he loved to point out stuff that made wrestling look silly. Anways, even though Perrito is the one who gets cut - the bleeder in this match is Mascara Sagrada Jr who's entire white outfit is covered in red. Our third hilarious moment of the match comes near the finish where Sagrada Jr goes for a running somersault plancha onto Panther but seems to chicken out at the last moment so he comes up short & grabs the ropes when he flips over. It looked very embarassing. You can see Panther shake his head. The crowd is completely deflated after this. I think something was supposed to happen after this or who knows what but the match kinda grinds to a halt with people looking lost. A doctor comes out to check on Sagrada Jr as Panther keeps kicking him. Finally Picudo runs out for the DQ. The Perros make a comeback on the rudos but a man in a black mask hits the ring to attack Perro. He reveals himself as JAQUE MATE! Another ancient Pena find! Perros make their own comeback strangely enough even though they are out numbered. Curiously Jaque Mate goes on to wrestle ZERO AAA TV matches after this. It shows you how Pena was so desperate for any names at this time he would just get them to come in without having any formal plans set, then they'd immediately disappear. Same thing is about to happen with the UWA guys. Same thing just happened with Gran Markus Jr & Tinieblas. Speaking of disappearing... Blue Panther is about to! He still has a couple shows left but the theory is he hated working a feud with Sagrada Jr who he didn't respect at all. You can see his frustration in the matches where they are paired up. Pena wanted Sagrada Jr to be a top guy & knew Panther was the only guy who could carry him so he wasn't about to split that duo up. Eventually Panther just has enough & walks back into Arena Mexico, then tells the press about the low quality of rivals he was given in AAA.

The storyline of this show was the INSUFFERABLE & possibly drunk AAA announce team. I was so annoyed I almost mute the audio halfway through the show. They are just all over the place throwing out incorrect information but more annoyingly breaking into song at least twice per match. This is why I roll my eyes when people say they wish lucha shows had English captions. You don't need them. The announcers are rarely discussing anything going on inside the ring. We get three matches from this show starting with the women's opener! Yes, the women's opener! I think the first time we've seen any AAA women since May. Some new names here including Sexy Boom who the announcers refer to as Lady Boom, Lady Wow, Miss Wow, Lady Sexy & basically everything except her actual name of Sexy Boom. Arturo Rivera buries Arena Naucalpan by noting Sahori used to work there but suffered a leg fracture which they didn't want to pay for or help her in any way with so she came to AAA "where wrestlers are taken care of & bills get paid". Alrighty. Match is decent enough for 1997 women's stnadards. I thought Migala looked really good bumping around & carrying the two green tecnicas. Hamada wasn't in her best shape here so was moving around slower than the others. She ends up getting the win for her team with a sit-out power bomb. Nothing offensive at all, a nice reminder the women are still around here. They'd soon become far more prominent in the company. Next we move to the semi-main with the Perros vs Fuerza/Mosco. The rudos are the Mexican National Tag Team Champions but this is not billed as a title match. Our tangent by the announcers in this match is Rivera against boasting how not only are these guys announcers, they are also journalists. That's why they revealed the scam of Volador re-masking as Super Parka & in order to lie about it they had King Balam show up under the gimmick with Volador posing beside him for photos in the magazines. The fucking irony to complain about this shit when we are weeks away from Pena launching his own Psicosis amongst other gimmicks. It did make me pause to wonder if this was the impetous for that all. Pena had replaced gimmicks before but it was always discreetly or with a Jr/II added just incase he was given problems. Rivera screaming about the commission allowing this Super Parka fraude made me wonder if this set something off with Pena where he realized the commission can't do shit to him if he just starts recycling gimmicks where he doesn't even acknowledge the fact they are next generation versions. Food for thought. The match is decent enough. It goes a long time... 20+ which for AAA these days is quite lengthy. I liked watching Perrito/Mosco working together since I knew they grew up friends, Perrito was the main reason Mosco got a job with AAA to take him off the strets, so it's fun to see them doing their ideas. I think if Mosco had chosen a different path in his career Perrito would have taken him anywhere he went. Same finish as the match from the taping above where Picudo runs in after some low blows by both teams & interference from Perro/Fueza (who had been eliminated previously). We get a promo for Perro where he challenges the rudos to risk their hair/masks at Verano De Escandalo. The announcers still have no idea who the actual Vipers ("Viper's) are... they say Picudo & Sangre Chicana are in it, earlier they said Sexy Boom was in the group as well. I'm noting all this just so when the history books are eventually updated, it should be noted Antonio Pena even at this point didn't seem to understand what he wanted with the Vipers group he put together. It was more a branding for AAA as a company rather than a group of rudos. Our main event is a rematch of the Metal/Chicana street fight from Triplemania. They had been taking this match all over at the time, this was the Aguascalientes version. Unfortunately the lighting sucks & the camera can't keep up with them so half the match is in darkness just watching a crowd of people following two randoms fighting. They go outside the building & into the concession area as well. Perrito & Picudo are the seconds chasing them around, preventing them from falling off the balcony just like at Triplemania in El Toreo. Metal bleeds a bunch. Each of them throws a wicked punch at one point, I definitely remember that because it stood out as something you don't see today. Are CMLL wrestlers allowed to punch? I'm gonna obsess over that thought now. Camera misses exactly what happened but Chicana beats Metal (no DQ) afer a fast Tirantes three count. Sad post-match where Chicana has a mic shoved into his face & he's either concussed or totally wasted from whatever he did pre-match as he can barely get out any words to form a coherent promo. Metal does a better job screaming while covered in blood. There's another TV show to go but this is technically your final build for Verano De Escandalo on 9/14 where the main event is Perrito/Metal vs Chicana/Picudo in a cage match with the last person inside losing their hair.

Not sure about this taping date. The bottom three from this show aired with the cage match from Queretaro on one of the above tapings so I think this has to be out of order. Cubs has a video link for the main event but I think he's confused it with a different match. That channel is gone now so no way to know for sure but I don't ever recall seeing another Canek/Cibernetico singles from this time frame besides the one in Queretaro which I recapped above. The setup for Arena Lopez Mateos is fascinating here as I guess at this time they didn't use guardrails but AAA needed their logo for TV so they set up three sides leaving one empty. Just looked so odd. At one point Arturo Rivera claimed there were more than 1600 fans in the building, for anyone keeping track of capacities. So starting off with the opener we're gonna in reverse order of how I usually recap. The match was great! Tons of action, high energy crowd, very exciting finish. ***3/4! A great glimpse into how fun AAA TV used to be back in the day when you'd see total unknown pop up & you'd never know if you would ever see them again. Definitely search this one out! The wrestlers are mostly comprised of young guys they had working the Torneo Metropolitano that concluded in July. R-15 & Aracnofobia for example. Anguila is a newer name who I presume is a local in this building that Hector Guzman (promoter) got booked. No idea who this Boomerang is. It's not Skayde for sure who was the last guy doing this gimmick when it made it to TV. Whoever it was, he was fine. Body shape wise it may even have been Geo who Skayde passed the gimmick onto? Dick Angelo Jr is not the one who worked CMLL many years (but never made TV), this was apparently his brother. I know this because one day I posted clips on my IG & the guys who now wrestle for AAA as Histeria & Taurus messaged me since they come from that family. But the real story in this match is of course........ Flying. Oh my. We hadn't seen him since almost a year ago - the random match where his debut is advertised & he becomes a background player to Karis La Momia taking a tombstone from Perro Aguayo Jr that caused him to "leave lucha libre forever". So this is kinda like a reset mabe. I don't wanna overexaggerate or say something I'll regret reading many years from now... so total honest to god truth... this is one of the best single match performances I've ever seen from a luchador. He was that good. Start to finish he hits everything smoothly & comes off like if Pena decided he owned the Rey Misterio Jr gimmick, you could put Flying under the mask & easily confuse people at the time. He was so good that for many years I thought he was a ringer. Maybe another old school UWA guy who we just hadn't seen on video. To this day I'm still not convinced that isn't entirely the case. Maybe he started out there when the company was dying. I once asked Dr Lucha about him & was told "the only thing I know is he married a lucha libre magazine writer." Such a random fact that I presumed Steve Sims was fucking with me for being annoying. Totally understandable. But turns out it's true! Flying married Laura Lozcano, the famous writer for La Aficion who was always critical of AAA funnily enough. So I owe Dr Lucha an apology! I spent many years being sad this is one of Flying's only AAA TV appearences. We never even found out what became of him. He just stopped being listed in results at some point. Poof. His latest known whereabouts were a photo posted by the original Drago who shared an image of himself in his rookie gimmick of Morfo from street show in 2000 where he was teaming with Flying! I asked if he remembered who it was but he didn't. One of the greatest all-time lucha libre mysteries, at least for me. This was the best AAA TV debut (I don't count the '96 match!) since Rey Misterio Jr in '92 & until Pegasso shows up as Luchador Sin Nombre in 2000. The segunda has the TV debut of Electro Shock under that name teaming with the Destructores who are not long for this world - in fact, this may be their AAA finale after years of service. Sadly also one of the last appearencesof the original Space Cadets group. They go out strong! Venum looked incredible flying all over the place & taking bumps nobody in their right mind should have been taking if they knew they'd be quitting this promotion in a couple weeks time. Quadruple tope suicidas allow tecnicos to win first fall by countout. Rudos take second. Third fall doesn't involve any comeback spot, the tecnicos just randomly take control (after being prompted very obviously by the rudos) & then follow with dives of their own. Ludxor gets LAUNCHED over the post with a somersault plancha & then Discovery tries to asai moonsault onto one of the Destructores but with the guardrail being so close he basically just hotshot's himself onto it very hard. Oops. You think tecnicos are gonna wrap the match but the rudos take control again & end up DQ'ed for throwing Discovery over the top onto Ludxor. ***3/4! Next up is AAA vs UWA. Yes, a very quick & forgotten before you even know it feud featuring a company that technically died over 2 years before by this point. A few tapings ago one of the episodes had a promo by this rudo team so I have to assume that's where this show fits in taping order wise. Arana Negra really bothers me. Only because I have no idea who it is. It's very obviously an ex-UWA guy & the way he moves looks so familiar to me but for the life of me at least right now I can't put a name to the gimmick. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This will haunt me. Announcers make a special note about Demon wrestling in his old mask for one night only because this is against UWA guys. I was so confused. Then I realized oh yeah we're still in the futuristic Blue Demon Jr phase. Pretty good match starting with matwork which you don't often see in this time period of AAA. Rudos do a lot of stooging during the first two falls & it was nice to hear the crowd reacting so positively to it. Just laughing & having a good time seeing the tecnicos make fools of the rudos. I miss that. Great first fall finish with Demon doing a cartwheel into a headscissors pin & Arana doing the old Blackman special standing on Shu El Guerrero's back to submit him. Is that who Arana Negra was? The original Blackman? Maybe. Rudos end up taking over & they win the match pretty easily with no tecnico comeback to be found anywhere. No complaints here honestly. Work was good, crowd was into it. No angle or anything afterwards so I have to assume the plan was for this crew to move onto feud with someone but no idea with all the current developments going on as related to Promo Azteca jumps. It could also be this had something to do with the Top Win group that was basically a UWA attempted restart & they die during the time this would have been taped. Noti AAA finishes the show off just previewing all the matches for Verano De Escandalo. Very good TV episode!

The first ever Verano De Escandalo! Well... kinda. Antonio Pena branded a past show under this name - I think one of the US shows in 1995 - but this was the first time the name was used as a marketing gimmick for what would become a tentpole AAA event in their history. The English language talk around this time was how AAA had no talent, no big names, no interest, Konnan was destroying it with his Promo Azteca company, etc. The reality of the situation was so very different. Promo Azteca was running tiny buildings like Arena Naucalpan & Arena Xochimilco for their TV tapings, shows that did not even sell out most of the time using all the WCW guys (when they were available). Meanwhile this show in Tonala had a huge crowd over 10,000 for sure. We don't have an exact number but load the video, the first show is of the entire venue filled. It looks remarkable. So much of the English language history of lucha libre is painted wrong & most of that is due to Dave Meltzer. Just being honest here. I even fell into the trap & had to learn for myself how things really were. If you go back and read the WON coverage of this, it comes off as a largely nothing show which couldn't be further from the truth. But the combination of Konnan having Dave's ear & Dave not really being interested enough to watch or follow anything from Mexico really did a histortical disservice to those following in the WON. The show is outdoors so up until the Latin Lover match the show is under the sun before transforming into darkness. Another Flying appearence in the opener! He appears to be stepping in for Super Nova who probably already decided to jump to Promo Azteca. He doesn't show up on lineups until the following week as Oro Jr. Venum went the opposite way. He had to know he was leaving by this point as well but he decided to not only honor his final AAA date - he also did something no sane person would ever do in their final show for a company they are leaving. In the first fall he does a springboard plancha with amazing height, amazing distance........ and faceplants into the guardrail. FUCKING INSANITY. He sells being KOed brilliantly (maybe not selling?) & the rudos get DQed for refusing to stop beating on him. We get a great exchange with Flying & who I believe is Mr. Condor. The rudos take over in the second fall & then things get strange. They do a deal where Loco Valentino keeps throwing each tecnico into the ropes only for the Hampones to trip them, drag them outside & stomp them into the ground. On the last one Ludxor reverses causing the rudos to drag their own guy outside because they aren't paying attention & start a gang beatdown. Goyo gets carried away leading to his teammates taking issue with him. We get QUADRUPLE running somersault planchas from the tecnicos which is lunacy. Then Ludxor gets the win pinning Goyo (captain). Post-match Goyo gets a beatdown from his teammates Frank Nitti & Al Capone. Los Hampones are no more! I barely remembered this happening & for good reason. There is no follow-up. I think the Hampones have one more TV match & it's just a tag, I forget with which two. I also don't even understand if they hadn't disappeared what the idea was here. Goyo as a tecnico? Goyo finding a new partner & having rudos feuding with each other? This really baffles me. Good start to the show though. It should also be noted during this opener at some point Arturo Rivera hijacks the broadcast so call out Konna & cut a long promo on him about being ungrateful & how he should just shut up & leave AAA alone. Some hard feelings here. The others announcers keep quiet the entire way before finally Zuniga interjects to steer him back to talking about the match on the screen. It was getting a bit awkward in minute five of his ranting. The Chivas match goes unaired, sorry folks. So we go straight to the women's tag match which is Relevos Suicidas. None of this build, if it existed, had been show on TV & no Noti AAA or magazines ever mentioned any feud was going on so this seemed like just a way to get women on the show & have an apuesta match booked. Maybe it was direct competition to CMLL who was having Lola Gonzalez do a retirement match (haha) on the Anniversary Show this year. Sexy Boom & La Practicante barely even exist in AAA at any point which makes this all the stranger. It's an awful match. Not sure what else you'd expect with this crew of people. Martha is a fat & competely immobile but may have been the best worker of the four at this point. Totally embarassing moment when her second is supposed to hit Xochitl with a chair as she lays on the mat but it's legit the worst chairshot in the history of pro wrestling (would do historical RTs on Twitter if anyone ever bothered to watch this match). Everyone kinda freezes knowing how bad it looked but Xochitl just motions to Martha to sit on her & just get her elimination over with. Sexy Boom gets the next pinfall & so we are left with the two losers in a hair match. Xochitl bleeds to try to add something to this but the crowd couldn't give a fuck & neither could I. She ends up winning & Practicante get her head shaved + hopefully a nice little bonus payoff. This all stunk. Now they wonder why Rob has such low opinions of women's wrestling in Mexico. The next two matches did not air originally but were found on the Year End Review Show. I thought this is Panther's AAA farewell show but the DB shows him doing one more taping after this. The match doesn't air so technically this is his last appearence for the company to our eyes. He's still feuding with Sagrada Jr, a sure joy for him. Other than that we get some Killer/Miss Janeth miscommunication & the big angle at the end where El Hombre De Negro comes out from under the ring to attack Octagon & earn the rudos a DQ. He never revealed who he was but the announcers were saying this guy had been stalking Octagon for months now. So I assume this is the same Hombre De Negro who was randomly popping up in the crowd in January/February but Pena forgot about it for the months afterwards. I can't remember if we get an actual conclusion to this storyline or not. His identity remains a mystery here. If you're asking yourself - didn't Jaque Mate just do a similar deal a couple tapings ago? Yes. Yes, he did. But that doesn't exist any longer, try to keep up with me. The cage match is notable for one big thing but you need two things to set the stage. The first is Cibernetico blades way too deep. It's an amazing visual with the blood coming through his mask & running down his body, not to mention the mat covered in puddles. The second is they keep showing security (police) "guarding" the aisle. This is to keep Los Vipers away from coming out to help Cibernetico. What I believe this actually is meant to do is cover for the fact at the moment of this show there are no Vipers! Maniaco may be around but he certainly wasn't here. Abismo Negro is notable absence as well. But Histeria & Mosco De La Merced have bolted to Promo Azteca. I'm sure Pena was worried Abismo/Maniaco would follow so maybe that's why he kept them off the show. So inserting your own storyline that they are banned from helping out saves people from asking where are all these guys. So remember - it's LOS VIPERS who are banned from helping. If you know your pro wrestling that means someone else will be the one who ends up getting involved. Sure enough Cibernetico at one point starts motioning to the back for someone to come help him. The camera pans to the same shots of the security but if you focus on the background you can kinda make out someone watching on from near the stage... the camera pans back and forth before starting to zoom in a bit more... IT'S PSICOSIS!!! A great reveal. Made better with the announcers screaming "HE'S BACK! HE'S BACK!" This is the WCW Psicosis, in his new futuristic gear! Except... it's not. It's Leon Negro (who was originally booked on this show in El Mexicano's spot) making his debut as the new Psicosis. But this is the big moment where Pena thumbs his nose at everyone by just passing off someone as the original. Psicosis hits the ring, scales the cage, drops down, fouls Canek & helps a very bloody Cibernetico climb out. They leave together & post on the stage as pyro goes off. A huge turning point in AAA's history. The fallout of this as you can imagine was immense. Most people who cover lucha libre were disgusted Pena would try to pass off someone as the original Psicosis. The original Psicosis was furious & infamously said he would kick the shit out of the fake Psicosis if ever saw him, an event that apparently did take place. If you were dividing AAA's history into chapter points, this is definitely closing the book on one era & moving into another. Especially when you combine it with all the jumps taking place at the same time. To close the night out we have our cage match featuring all the unmasked guys currently feuding. Remember Tonala is Perro Aguayo territory so the crowd is super hot for him escaping to keep his hair. Chicana is out early too. It comes down to Heavy Metal & El Cobarde so the result isn't even in question. Metal escapes, Cobarde loses his hair. Crowd was into it, I wasn't as much. This entire feud has felt very lackluster & unfortunately I already know Pena is gonna drag it on due to not really having any other choice so we'll basically end up seeing this same match in December. Overall a monumetal historic show for AAA but in terms of matches you need to see - maybe just the opener.

As I start writing this for some reason it's not letting me upload images, maybe I've reached my limit? Maybe blogspot is just being stupid? (EDIT: It was a temporary error.) Anyways... this is a weird block of TV. I just recently went through a Box y Lucha covering this Monterrey show which is at Arena Solidaridad. I'm almost sure it ended up being taped BEFORE Verano De Escandalo whereas the Neza taping seems to be post-Verano De Escandalo since they reference events on that show & Psicosis is present. He only debuted at VdE. So packaging these two shows together is an odd one. Monterrey show has a minis tag to start which is really good! I'll never get the answer to the questions of who Pentagoncito & Calaquita were but both are borderline minis so my guess is veteran workers because they do so many little things & their movements are way too crisp to be rookies. Their shtick in this match was almost Diabolicos level with the timing & precision. Calaquita mocks Parkita's dancing a couple times & each time ends up looking the fool at the end which is exactly the goal of a good rudo. Pentagoncito is flying all over the place any time he gets touched, another goal of a good rudo. In the second fall Octagoncito does this mind blowing springboard moonsault plancha off the top rope which pops even the announcers who take a break from their singing. They replay it a few times. He got some crazy hang time. These days it probably doesn't register but in 1997 this was mind blowing, especially from a mini. I remember getting the stills before the video & losing my mind. There's a dive sequence in the third fall which gets delayed a bit when Pentagoncito loses his balance on the top rope. Tecnicos win by DQ on a weird finish where Octagoncito fakes a foul but only after he clearly committed one of his own. It made him look like a rudo & I think even the crowd caught that so the pop wasn't what you'd think when he began faking his own. Nevertheless a very strong effort here! ***3/4! Next we get a makeshift Vipers team as local rudo Mongol Chino steps in for Histeria. This is still the original Mosco at this point. Tecnicos are on offense throughout the match with the rudos bumping all over so I was enjoying the action, as was the crowd. There was a hyper active female fan in the front row they kept trying to do spots in front of since it made for good TV. At one point Arturo Rivera loses his mind again & goes on a rant about how Vegas quit AAA for "another company" (Promo Azteca) but he did it the right way & left his gimmick behind. He can't be Vegas any longer because the name & outfit belong to AAA. He compares that to Mascara Sagrada & La Parka (the originals) who also quit but refuse to stop using gimmicks that don't belong to them. He then starts bashing La Parka including calling him ugly & washed up. "It's better he keeps the mask anyways so nobody has to see his face." There's like a 1000% chance at some point Adolfo punched Rivera. I promise you. Another DQ win for the tecnicos here. Good enough. Noti AAA recaps Verano De Escandalo a bit but mostly focuses on emphasizing all the concepts AAA/Antonio Pena created as this is the hot button issue at the time in the press with AAA/Konnan going back & forth. It's mentioned in passing the next newest gimmick match AAA will present is the "lucha aquatica"! Pena always wanted to run a swimming pool match like the FMW death matches minus the explosions. It gets brought up over the course of 2 or 3 years in the magazines but he never ends up pulling it off. We're told the entire Vipers will team together for the first time on 9/30 in Pachuca. The ones listed are Abismo Negro, Histeria, Mosco De La Merced & Psicosis. So Maniaco is left out. Either way when the time comes he's in the match & Abismo is moved up to the main event. I'm still unclear who is officially in the Vipers at this point which puts me & the announcers on equal footing. Arturo Rivera emphasizes "Psicosis from Tijuana is back!!!" so we're still trying to dupe the fans & pretend it's the original using somewhat clever wording. Switching to Arena Neza for the main event, it's as bad as it looks. We see the mysterious man in black hanging out in the crowd so that's still a thing, even with him doing a run-in at Verano De Escandalo. The rudos do a triple team piledriver on Heavy Metal... or at least that's the idea... it may be the worst piledriver in the history of piledrivers. They even replay it so you can see how Metal's head comes nowhere near hitting any part of the canvas. He has to sell it like death though. There's a weird edit to the man in black just as Perrito is doing a tope suicida onto Picudo so I don't know if he fucked it up or it was just poor production. We get a bunch of run-ins starting with the Vipers, then the AAA tecnicos including Perro Aguayo in street clothes. It ends with everyone fighting which would become a staple of AAA going forward.

So on the previous TV show we had matches from 9/23 Arena Neza & as you can see this TV show is split between 9/21 & 9/30 matches. Some of these dates cannot be accurate. It fits with the choatic time period. I'm sure Antonio Pena was a very stressed out man at this time with so many jumps taking place & the impossibility of putting any storylines or feuds together without knowing who was sticking around. We start in Manzanillo where the only match that airs in a tag with the Perros vs our current Mexican National Tag Team Champions - Fuerza Guerrera & Mosco De La Merced........... kinda. This is the TV debut of the new Mosco aka Mosco II aka ex-Loco Valentino. I don't think we knew this at the time. With the way news travelled it wouldn't have been for another couple weeks until maybe in the Observer or some random website where it was mentioned Pena had subbed new people into the gimmicks. In the case of Mosco, it was hard to tell. It's a full bodysuit. You'd have to really be a lucha expert at the time to notice the difference in wrestling styles. I was not at this point yet so I'm sure this went well over my head. Match is decent enough. It's a rare standard tag match on AAA TV at this time with very minimal nonsense aside from the usual Tirantes helping the rudos bits. We have Hombre De Negro watching on from the back of the crowd which leads to a funny (probably drunk) Arturo Rivera call: "Oh not this guy again..." haha Yes, this guy, again. Will a payoff ever come?!?!?!?!? Perrito had a nice armdrag spot on Mosco in the third fall which then comes down to him vs both rudos. He defies the odds, including Tirantes not wanting to count the pinfall, to defeat both rudos. Perros want a tag title shot. Not much else going on in Manzanillo based on that lineup aside from it being Blue Panther's farewell to AAA as he's back at Arena Mexico the following week. In the opener there's a lack of Venum which means at this point in time Pena had no chosen the new guy for the role. It was probably the new Super Nova's debut although who knows without video. Moving forward to Arena Aficion in Pachuca we get two matches, both random undercard ones. No clue why these were chosen over the top stuff but again... Pena probably had zero direction at this time & just needed TV content to produce. So we get the Chivas opposite R-15 & Al Capone. They had a camera set up in the second level of Arena Aficion which provided a great view of the action. I suspect this was like most Apaches tag matches in the 80's in this building... just super solid with lots of changes in momentum since they were both good workers. R-15 was probably learning as he went & Al Capone was a veteran himself so he could go. For a completely pointless TV match I had no complaints with this one. It was the kind of match that brought charm to AAA TV as a normal booked promotion that only aired matches with the stars would never have shown something like this. At this time CMLL was not really airing matches with their undercard guys so it's what differentiated AAA. Chivas end up winning by pulling a switch when Tirantes wasn't looking. A gentleman's ***1/2! Our main event is a weird one. It's the Space Cadets vs a wild assortment of WTF rudos. This Scare Crow is not the Scare Crow from earlier this year, it's whoever was around at the time in the gimmick Pena loved throwing out there. Espetro is Silver Cat & we all know Electro Shock. I think Cubs has Huracan Negro written because that comes from the tape listings? The announcers never mentioned whoever it was by name. On the poster he is listed as Tercera Dimension which matches the outfit. It looks 90% like the same gear of a guy who will be debuting soon named 3D aka Tercera Dimension. But 3D is not who this guy was... if that makes any sense. If you're confused already, I don't blame you. Try to keep up. Our tecnicos are the new Space Cadets. This one didn't need any Observer exclusive, just two eyes & knowledge of who these guys were. Discovery & Ludxor remain the same. Boomerang is the same fake Boomerang from the Tlalnepantla show teaming with Flying. This is the first appearence of Venum II. From our records this is a Monterrey wrestler who was marreid to Princesa Sugeith for a time period. I assume he was working the local AAA shows there & Pena liked him. The story I always heard, including first hand from one guy who tried out, is Pena would hold castings in the ring before shows with the locals around this time to see who could play the new characters. This version of Venum is much smaller both in height & size than the original but more than that... he's not spectacular at all. So right away that is miscasting someone. A rare miss from Pena. I wonder why he didn't make Flying the new Venum? That seems like it would have worked out much better & Flying was the guy they were pushing as "the next Rey Misterio Jr" which is absurd pressure in the first place. Tecnicos win the first fall by DQ for excessive violence on the rudos which just seemed like a normal rudo beatdown & not excessive at all. Rudos tie it up in the second fall. In the third fall each tecnico gets to do a sequence with only Discovery's looking remotely good. There is very little room between the ring & crowd so there are no dives to speak of. Even though this is 2 of 3 falls & an atomicos instead of 5 on 5, they do the third fall under Relevos Japoneses rules so we get everyone eliminated one-by-one until it's down to the two captains. Very confusing. Ludxor ends up beating Electro to win the match for his team & we are off the air quickly. I remember this being a huge bummer at the time. The Space Cadets were my favorite team & very influential in me becoming a lucha libre fan. To see the new version thrown on TV like this & in a very dull match made me sad. Well, actually, it made me want to search out Promo Azteca to see the good Cadets doing their thing but since that wasn't really possible at the time it made me sad that AAA was falling so far so quickly. A sign of the times TV show & not the last unfortunately!

I think I can safely say the four times I watched this show. The original time when my new batch of VHS Lucha TV arrived. Again when I was pulling spots for my Lucha Spotfest compliations. Once more out of curiosity to identify gimmicks at some point. This most recent time. I am almost assuredly never going to watch this show again. LOL We start off with a "promising youngsters" match. Three guys who had been getting work over the past few months as part of Pena's rookie crew along with a certainly re-gimmicked person now wrestling as Disc Jocker or DJ for short. You can't miss it upon seeing this kid - it's a Super Calo knock-off gimmick. No doubt about it. If you had any doubts, he also does (or at least attempts to do) all the moves of the person who's gimmick he is trying to steal. This was right in the midst of the AAA/Promo Azteca aka Pena/Konnan war so there was a lot of childish behavior going on. I think around this time Promo Azteca debuts an ugly hunchback manager gimmick called "Tono La Pena" or some shit. Very important gimmick rollout for a company that couldn't fill the smallest buildings in Estado De Mexico but OK. So Pena countered by recycling gimmicks & creating copies of the ones he couldn't recycle - you see to have a new Super Calo he'd need the band Calo's permission & they publicly said they only supported the original. I remember being immediately embarassed for AAA trotting this gimmick out there, especially with his poor he looked in this match. All four guys looked poor honestly. It was a very indy match on national TV with slo-mo spots gone wrong, terrible brawling & very green kids afraid to do things (both Aracnofobia & DJ got caught up in the ropes trying stuff because they got scared). Tecnicos won via countout. Next up was the minis which was your standard decent minis match. Calaquita was very impressive once again, way too impressive to be in this division. You'll understand that comment soon enough if I keep these recaps coming. All three mini tecnicos hit great dives to close out the first fall. We get some slight miscommunication with Calaquita/Siniestro in the second fall to set the stage for the finish where they completely fall apart & the tecnicos roll up the rudos to win. Post-match Mini Psicosis/Siniestro beat up Calaquita & tear up his mask. He cuts a promo on them & declares himself a new tecnico. A very strange turn of events out of nowhere here which will make sense on an upcoming TV show as we're getting a Calaquita/Siniestro apuesta match out of nowhere! Pena must have really taken a liking to Siniestro beacuse he debuts, is an apuesta match immediately, now is back in another one shortly thereafter. Next is the first full appearence of the Vipers we'd come to know as the regular ones. We saw Loco Valentino as Mosco last week, this is Leon Negro as Psicosis & ex-Quarterback as Histeria. The announcers (via Pena I'd guess) have finally decided upon who are the actual Vipers so they list them one-by-one. Picudo, Sangre Chicana, El Cobarde, etc. are now officially NOT Vipers. It's just Cibernetico & his boys. As shown by the finish in this match & the next one. Match is pretty good, lots of fun action & cool spots. Chiva does a bodyscissors into a crazy around-the-world armdrag on Maniaco I've never seen before. Psicosis & Histeria take some great bumps. Demon Jr, back in his futuristic look, seems motivated & is doing a few flying spots. In the third fall Maniaco gets knocked into the crowd & is nice enough to alert the old lady sitting beside him that she should move because he's about to be taken out by a Chiva plancha over the guardrail. Psicosis does a tope over the top rope onto the other Chiva. We then get the rowboat spot with three Vipers trying to submit two tecnicos. As Chiva is crawling back in to break it up, Cibernetico runs out & in full view of El Chocolate (ref) just yanks off Chiva's mask & bolts to the back. No idea where Pepe Casas disappeared to during all this. Chocolate counts the pinfall & the Vipers have their first win as a team. History! Crowd very unhappy with this finish. It was very absurd. Next up we get a Noti AAA with highlights of Cibernetico interfering in the Vipers match from Pachuca getting them DQ'ed just as they were about to lose anyway. Then one of my favorite Ciber promos where it seems like he's introducing the Vipers one-by-one but instead starts rising to his feet while laughing & you realize he's actually being flanked by minis. "Los Vipers??? hahahahaha No no... Los... Mini Vipers! hahahahahaha" I have replayed that promo in my head many times. The only two visible ones here are Mini Abismo & Mosquito but Mini Histeria would join soon enough. There was never a Mini Maniaco. More importantly this Noti AAA segment has a clip from the one unaired match on this taping where the Brennan Twins are sitting ringside & get into it with the rudos. Most notably Abismo Negro. This is our introduction to these "celebrities" who host a show called Duro y Directo. It was a tabloid show where they became famous by airing uncensored video of wild altercations in Mexico. Thinking viral videos before viral videos were a thing. Arturo Rivera says they have agreed to come back to settle their differences with Abismo Negro at a future date (which will end up being Guerra De Titanes in December). Our main event shows the lack of depth here currently as Frisbee is teaming with Perro Aguayo & Octagon. This is a new Frisbee with a fancy outfit. The announcers refer to him as a "venezuelan wrestler" which is... strange. I don't really know who that would be. It doesn't matter too much since this Frisbee isn't around long but throwing in that piece of info makes me think I'm missing something obvious connection here. Aside from Abismo taking some good bumps, this is a pretty nothing two fall match ending by DQ when all the Vipers run in to beat down the tecnicos. They then pose together afterwards for the shot that would end up making it into magazines & that is probably the #1 Google search result if you type in 'Vipers AAA lucha orignal'. Another sad episode of AAA TV showcasing the lack of talent depth & creativity of Pena. The crowd was full, that isn't the issue. But if you remember what AAA once was, watching this is certainly a kick in the nuts reality check as to what it currently is.

Well if the last show didn't make you sad for the current state of AAA, look at this lineup. Woof. The opener doesn't air but we'll see two of those guys on the show! We start with the minis. On the last TV episode (taped one day before this) Calaquita turned tecnico. Apparently he was having second thoughts here or momentality forgot because in the first fall he refused to help La Parkita. I left out the "attention to detail" option where Pena wanted to remind the viewers they were rivals because Pena was never subtle about anything. I'm chalking it up to Calaquita forgot what his role was here. But after that he gets into the act & we have your standard well worked minis match for the most part. Munequito is the best worker here but he always lacked that extra spectacularness guys like both Mascarita Sagrada's or the new Octagoncito had. Calaquita was great as a rudo but seems miscast as a tecnico as due to his size the rudos can't really base for anything he does. In the third fall he gets carried away with his anger to Siniestro by grabbing a chair & KO'ing him leading to the tecnicos being DQ'ed. At some point Parkita grabs the chair & hits Mini Histeria as well although this seemed to be him just doing his own thing. The feud to focus on here is Calaquita/Siniestro who are having a mask match on the next show or maybe the one after depending on the order of airing. Next up is a total WTF match. On the rudos side we have someone named Quinto Dan (not Down). A total random gimmick but the look should be familiar - it's the same outfit of the guy who played Inquisidor back in May. Who is under this mask? Well, this is the AAA TV debut (as far as we know) of the future Chessman! Nice easter egg here. If you know that in advance of watching Quinto Dan work, you can't miss it. He has a way of bumping & reacting. On the tecnico side we have Kick Boxer who was getting the hot new tecnico push a month a half ago teaming with other martial artists Kung Fu Jr & Kato Kung Lee Jr who are apparently part of AAA now? No introduction, just tossed onto TV & it gets better! Kick Boxer is still very green, yes - still - after 5 years working here, so Electro Shock is just trying to figure out anything he can do with him in the first fall. It does not go well. The other juniors on the tecnico side have always stunk so they offer nothing here. Just a very dull match until we get to the pivotal moment where Kick Boxer accidentally kicks Kato. They argue. There's another miscommunication & this time Kick Boxer has had enough (of his own errors?). He starts beating up his own teammates with some very bad kicks. The rudos quickly pin the tecnicos to win. Kato/Kung Fu then get up & beat down Kick Boxer. The rudos don't seem to know what to do but decide they will join the beatdown. So we are left thinking Kick Boxer is still a tecnico & perhaps starting a feud with the other two martial artists so he'll need to find a partner. OR... Kato/Kung Fu are rudos. I'll just spoil it for you - none of this matters. It goes nowhere. At least not for a couple months but I have no intention of recapping 1998 AAA any time soon so you'll have to do that investigative work yourself. The hits keep on coming in the semi-main. Imagine billing this as a semi-main on a TV taping! Our rudo team is a mix of Psicosis from the Vipers but no other Vipers are present for some reason. Picudo, who just main evented a major show, is here slumming it with undercard acts like May Flowers. Then we have Coco Negro. The Payasos have not been on AAA TV in a while so they may not even be in the company. Coco Negro was not a color we had associated with that team - it was Rojo/Azul/Amarillo & they had introduced a Coco Blanco back in August. So this is a temporary gimmick given to someone to fill up a roster spot until Pena got them a more definitive gimmick I'd guess. On the tecnico side we have 2/4 the new fake Space Cadets - the two originals left. They team with La Parka Jr. & a debuting character named 3D. As mentioned previously, sporting the finished look of the guy who worked as Tercera Dimension on the previous taping. This is not the same person under the mask. Who is it? Well I'm even confused on that one. Marabunta of the Diabolicos said he did the gimmick but has always been unclear on the time frame. He has a specific working style that would be hard to disguise so I don't think this is him. The other 3D is a small time arena wrestler who was half of a tag team called Los Streepers (Strippers spelt wrong). His partner was the future Brandon of the Kumbia Kids. He fell into the 3D role at some point. He is also unclear on the dates but the body type matches this match & the next one that will air on AAA TV so I'm going with him. He blows his first spot of the match & the announcers openly make fun of him. So things have started off with a bang! The look was cool, I wish Pena would have given it to Flying who had the same color scheme. There has to be some story why he didn't. Pena was usually great about giving cool looking gimmicks to guys who could do spectacular things. Although as we saw with the new Venum, maybe Pena was losing his touch. This is a two fall match with the tecnicos in control the entire way. Some dives sprinkled in to give these poor Chilpancingo fans some action tonight. After coming back from commercial between falls Picudo is busted open & soon so is May Flowers as well. This ends up leading to a run-in by........ who??? It's Sexy Piscis & Face's from the opener! They are painted up to look just like May Flowers. The announcers say "these guys are all friends!" Well, that's news to me & I've been tracking everything going on here! But alright. Face's is the future Polvo De Estrellas. They save their friends & we have a look at pieces of what would become the future Vatos Locos but that's not for a few more months. Having opening match guys saving Picudo who is still in a main event feud with Perro Aguayo Jr. is... uh... a strange detour. Let's just leave it at that. No Noti AAA available so we go straight to the main event which has even more weirdness if you can handle it. Killer is refusing to help Cibernetico or Fuerza Guerrera. Please don't ask me why. Frisbee is once again boosted to a main event spot with the talent depth issues here & again referred to as a "Venezolana". He moves a lot like the Arana Negra from the Arena Lopez Mateos show & I pegged that guy as an ex-UWA guy so I'm positive this Frisbee was the ex-Blackman II. Mystery solved. So this entire match is just the rudos not co-opearting & Latin Lover stealing a kiss from Miss Janeth which angers Killer. The crowd popped like crazy for that spot. It was a time before Twitter. Ah... memories. The tecnicos end up winning easily & one last bit of strangeness is we are IMMEDIATELY out after the pinfall. The announcers were in the middle of talking so whatever happened post-match was something Pena decided didn't need to be on TV. Very amateur-ish stuff. A total WTF episode & another smack in the face on how short-handed AAA/Pena were at this moment in time. Everyone said Konnan taking the guys in 1996 crippled the company but that's not the case. Pena having his replacements taken in the war with Promo Azteca is what depleted AAA. He was basically using third string guys in top roles & reaching for any sort of attractions to fill up these TV tapings. You'll see two guys he's about to dig up from the grave (literally).

THE VIPERS! My memory of this taping was it aired in conjunction with the 10/20 show in Madero the next day. However, it does not appear that way as I watch it back. The Monterrey stuff has it's own Noti AAA & the Madero show has it's own intro. So I'm seperating them. Perhaps the confusion is the Space Cadets match here gets shown JIP leading into the rematch in Madero. So this Monterrey show begins with an AMAZING skit straight from the mind of Antonio Pena. We are in an abandoned warehouse that has things on fire in various corners as the cameras starts jumping around to various parts of the building. We see Killer who vows Cibernetico made the biggest mistake of his life & he's got some surprises for him. We get a cut to a gentleman descending from the ceiling via chain who is revealed to be CYBORG! Then we get a cut to someone who isn't named but on his outfit is written "Cripter", it appears to be a knock-off Crypt The Keeper gimmick. But right beside him is who else but... ICE KILLER! Yes, the Ice Killer from AAA's early days! These are Killer's new friends who he is bringing in to feud with Los Vipers I guess. All the memories came flooding back from this. I lived for this shit. AAA was so fuckin awesome. There is nothing wrong with some campiness in your pro wrestling. If I wanted realism, I'd be watching real sports or MMA garbage. This is all supposed to be over the top & distract you from real life problems. The only shitty part about this is I don't think any of these guys end up on TV outside of this episode. I'll talk more about Cyborg in a bit. First we have the Nuevo Leon vs THE VIPERS match. A weird mix of tecnicos & rudos on the Nuevo Leon side. In my lucha watching days at this point in time I didn't know Mexico's geography, nor did I understand why random guys like this would pop up on TV if they weren't meant to be important. So I thought all these guys were new & I'd be seeing them regularly. I was wrong. This is a Monterrey specific deal & the angle that takes place here is specific to this building AAA was running weekly (twice at times). Pena would end up doing this a lot which again was another charm in watching AAA TV back in the day. The only real tecnico here appears to be Sergio Romo Jr aka Vaquero Romo. He's very over with this crowd. Speaking of this crowd - this was one of those out of control super hot crowds. Constant garbage throwing at the rudos & people actually taking swings until security stood in the way. We even get a weird cut to a random crowd shot at one point & when we cut back to the action security is escorting some kids back over the guardrail as presumably they interfered with the action. THE VIPERS have a bit of a new look here. Psicosis II is in the original orange/white Psicosis gear, presumably to confuse viewers even more. The new Mosco has also gotten himself some all white gear which the original never wore. I guess just to color co-ordinate. Histeria did not get the message. There were no groups texts in 1997. In the first fall Psicosis takes a CRAZY full 360 sallida de bandera before being crushed with a tope by Panther. As we're seeing replays of the tecnicos winning the first fall, somehow the rudos take over & it stays that way the rest of the time. They win the second fall with multiple quadruple submissions that looked really neat. It's almost like these guys were trying to develop their own identities! In the third fall there's some friendly fire that leads to everyone beating up Sergio Romo as you'd expect with him being the only tecnico here. THE VIPERS try to go for the pin but Pepe Casas won't count it & awards Romo the DQ win by default. Boy these Vipers really didn't get many wins early on. Romo is carried away all bloody. Noti AAA reminds us what happened in Chilpancingo with Killer not helping his team & then we get another incredible segment where Arturo Rivera tries to interview Cyborg. It's a classic Antonio Pena no directions given skit because Rivera asks the question in English, then just as he's about to translate to Spanish Cyborg starts talking but then pauses thinking he jumped the gun. Then he & Rivera start talking over each other, Cyborg in English, Rivera in Spanish trying to translate. But you can barely hear what Cyborg is saying with Rivera talking over him & Cyborg is clearly staring at Rivera off camera so he's all distracted & loses his train of thought multiple times. A total trainwreck segment I will put on Twitter at some point & win the day, whatever that means. I forget who Cyborg is but I know he's some Texas guy because I remember getting my earliest SuperLuchas issues around this time & he was in along with this jacked up black guy named Kro 2000. They both got articles as being new AAA signings. After Noti AAA we immediately jump to a mysterious figure walking towards the building. It's shot in first person so you don't know who it is. There had been a big surprise teased for this show that would change AAA forever. Who is it? Well, you guessed it. Guns n' Roses starts blasting throughout the arena - it's VAMPIRO! I don't know if I'm confusing segments & spoiling something upcoming but I believe the deal was some kids are playing in the cemetary - as one naturally does - and they dug up Vampiro to bring him back to AAA. Bob Barnett claimed Pena told Vamp to show up in a suit, the only one Vamp had was the suit from his wedding, then Pena made him lie down in a ditch wearing it to film this bit. Vamp has to fight through the fans to get to the ring but finally makes it to where Latin Lover is waiting to embrace him. Then they fuck. Ah sory, some Robert O'Connor fanfic slipped in there. Latin gives him an AAA t-shirt & we celebrate Vamp's arrival with THE VIPERS hitting the ring to beat everyone down. One other Barnett story is Vamp was so out of the loop he saw Psicosis attacking him & didn't know it was a fake Psicosis, he thought it was his buddy from the old days. This story could go either way. I totally buy Vamp not paying attention to anything not happening in his world but also there's a bit of a size difference between the two Psicosis' & the story sounds too good to be true. So I lean towards the usual Vamp BS. You should always lean that way. They drag Vamp through the crowd & out of the building throwing him into the wall along rhe way. Meanwhile back in the ring the match has started. That's all for Vamp tonight. But hey if you like annoying egotistical assholes, don't worry! Here's Mil Mascaras! He has many moments in this match where he is flat out refusing to sell even when two rudos are trying their hardest to beat him down (maybe for real in Chicana's case). Perhaps Mil was a bit miffed Vamp got their big entrance & Mil had to just jog to the ring during the angle taking place. It's a somewhat quick two fall match with the tecnicos winning the first by DQ & then the second totally clean with Mil getting the deciding fall using his plancha on Cibernetico. Latin Lover jumped on top for the double pinfall & Mil did not seem to pleased with that. LOL Crowd overjoyed by all this. A very fun roller coaster ride episode that takes me immediately into the next night in Madero...

Curiously the bumpers for this show say "Neza" instead of Madero. You know I'm doing an AAA deep dive when I can bust that one out. Our show begins... back in Monterrey. We join the Space Cadets match in progress. Discovery & Ludxor are doing cool things. Hey wait... isn't that Karis La Momia??? It is!!! HE'S BACK??? NOT CRIPPLED FOR LIFE??? More on that in a minute. The rudos take control & put the tecnicos away easily which *appears* to be the end of what looks like a second fall according to my expert lucha eyes. The announcers get cut off mid-talking, the rudos aren't celebrating like they won & the crowd isn't reacting like a match just finished. We cut to a graphic saying "La Revancha..." which brings us to Madero for the same combination of wrestlers & what appears to be the match joined in progress in the third fall. I don't hate it. Clever way to get matches from seperate tapings into the TV rotation. Tecnicos make a comeback & then they each get to hit big dives although it's a stark reminder of how far this group has fallen. The original Venum was always the most spectacular, this one does his dive first... a simple plancha off the second rope. Super Nova is up next... a simple plancha off the top rope. Ludxor gets assisted into a somersault plancha over the ringpost where Karis barely breaks his fall leading to Ludxor hurting his ankle. Discovery brings back some respect to this group by ending with a wild somersault plancha after scaling the ropes. Back inside the new Super Nova submits Monje Maldito with a submission who's name I can't recall but Mascara Magica used it for years in CMLL. Both Ludxor & Karis need help getting to the back. Next up is our hastily booked mini's mask match. AAA has another wild crowd on their hands that loves to throw shit & this entire match is built around Tirantes refusing to count falls for the mini tecnico so the ringside area is littered with garbage. Siniestro takes the first fall quickly. In the second fall Calaquita rips up Siniestro's mask (which includes a wig attached - he's like a red Espectro). The problem is he ripped it too well... the mask is dangling off Siniestro who has to spend the rest of the match trying to keep fixing it so his face isn't completely exposed. Basically Calaquita jumped the gun. We get a wild tope suicida from Calaquita which ends him upside down into the guardrail. Finally Tirantes agrees to count a fall & we are tied up. Calaquita hits a plancha in the third fall & is barely caught as Siniestro is still trying to hold his mask in place. Wouldn't be the worst plancha catch of the night. Calaquita submits Siniestro with a neat little submission & wins his mask. I always question matches like this where Tirantes is very clearly favoring the rudo early on but by the end - without any provocation - has no problem just giving the tecnico the win. Just seems like everything leading up to that was a waste of time, no? Siniestro unmasks as the guy we would eventually come to know as Jose Ramona (parody gimmick of a Televisa personality). Long time Acapulco local who I think may be related to Polvo De Estrellas as they both come from that area. Makes me wonder if maybe Calaquita was another Acapulco local who came to AAA & that explains this random pairing. Acapulco had some long time minis (closer to regular sized) who never got a shot in CMLL but were always said to be good. Next up we have Latin Lover vs Sangre Chicana... for the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Title? It's definitely a national title being used here. The last known person to hold this title was Pierroth Jr - in fact we saw him win the title on TV (May in Nuevo Laredo). It was a controversial finish so I guess it's *possible* the commision which controls these titles voided the result which would explain Latin Lover still having the title here. The official title history on LuchaWiki has Mascara Sagrada winning the belt from Pierroth which seems unlikely since the Sagrada who "defends" the title next is in AAA & Pierroth never returned to AAA after leaving post-Triplemania this year. This Sagrada is then listed as dropping the title to Sangre Chicana in May 1998 but perhaps that was just Chicana retaining the title he won in this match in Madero? Or perhaps there was some controversy all that time about who the real champion is & that match was to put an end to it? I'll investigate. I won't drop everything to investigate. I'll just investigate at some point, some time. This is another match where Tirantes is favoring the rudo so more garbage is thrown. Sangre Chicana has definitely been having a good time pre-match as he appears maybe not blackout drunk but certainly happy drunk. He's busy introducing himself to every fan at ringside & clearly has no interest in actually wrestling. Latin Lover should be commended for being a total pro here as he was clearly carrying things & telling Chicana what to do. He also takes it upon himself to do shtick with Tirantes at times to distract from Chicana losing attention in the match & focusing more on young ladies in the crowd he wanted to hit on/argue with. They split the first two falls. All of a sudden we see Hombre De Negro has made his way right up to the guardrail. The Panther goes over to salute him. The Panther??? He must have made a good impression in Monterrey for Pena to have flown him all the way to Madero & not even have him wrestle. Tirantes openly trips Latin Lover which gets lots of heat & causes him to lose the second fall. Panther trips Latin in the third fall which distracts Tirantes allowing the Hombre Sin Nombre to run into the ring & foul Latin so Chicana can win the title. Crowd keeps throwing stuff to express their anger. THE HEAT! I was not very interested in any of this. Next up is the Vipers match from the post with one change - Heavy Metal in for La Parka Jr. It's explained Parka went into convulsions after his match in Chilpancingo (10/11, two weeks ago on TV) & the doctors told him he had to take time off. It's mentioned he still appeared here to apologize & danced for the fans which is strange since we didn't see that on TV. It also makes me wonder... so Parka Jr was here & didn't work... and suddenly the Karis La Momia gimmick is back? That can't be a coincidence, can it? Is it possible Pena was considering switching out the person under the Parka mask? Is it maybe just for the Halloween themed episodes he wanted the Karis gimmick back & decided to give the Parka Jr a few weeks off? We'll never get the answer but no way this was just a totally random deal. FWIW The Karis we saw definitely moved like the original... well like Parka Jr.... the original was El Greco aka father of Super Calo/Alan Stone/Chris Stone but only a nerd like me remembers shit like this. Vipers are in control as we join this match & the crowd is still throwing shit. Maniaco ain't afraid, he's brawling with Heavy Metal amongst the people. Vipers take fall one with the same quadruple submission they used in Monterrey so they have a signature move! Hooray! Metal leads the tecnico comeback which doesn't really amount to much. It's just a way to skip to the end of this fall which has a Histeria tope suicida. Vipers getting some shine! Next Mosco sloppily knocks 3D to the floor & then climbs up top... he seems to be setting up for something other than a plancha but ends up doing a plancha & 3D is standing way too close to where Mosco is jumping from to make any sort of catch. Mosco just kinda falls to the floor, rolls, then appears very unhappy yelling things in 3D's direction. I dunno man. 3D might be an idiot but I have to figure he was standing so close to Mosco because he was expecting something else & if you're gonna change it on the fly to a plancha it's on you to aim better. Maniaco sends Metal outside & decks him with a wild tope suicida. Then we get a super sloppy finish where the idea is Psicosis is gonna counter the Octaclutch into a pin but Octagon is not really playing along - probably unhappy about jobbing - and he makes Psicosis' life difficult by refusing to turn over. So Tirantes just counts the fall anyways as Octagon is laying on his side. Awful. But so much for my complaints about the Vipers losing a lot - they win in two straight falls! Hooray! Post-match we get some brawling up onto the large staging area where we see Antonio Pena watching on & it's one of our first looks at the AAA staging that would become normal over the next couple years. They include hand drawn backdrops & stairs from the stage down to the aisle that heads to the ring. Next we get the Noti AAA logo but there's no Noti AAA... it's just the skit I referenced on the previous TV show where some kids are playing in the cemetery & accidentally awake the undead Vampiro. Airing this here after showing the Monterrey taping previously makes zero sense but I'm just happy this made video. Super campy. Also, at some point someone asked for this & called it #LostMedia so I shared it on my YouTube channel knowing it wasn't lost - I had it. Ended up doing insane numbers until someone stole it (not that I own it...) for their own channel that had way more subscribers than me so everyone just went over there to watch it going forward. I don't mind if you steal videos but it would be nice to at least mention hey I got it from this guy. I mean, I could have just not uploaded it & it would have remained #LostMedia forever, you know? Finally on this very full TV episode we have a random 4 way match where the stipulation is the winner gets a shot at Cibernetico's Campeon de Campeones Title. Except... wait a minute... Cibernetico is *IN THIS MATCH*. I'm so confused. Is Latin Lover the champion now? I know he won it at Triplemania but could havs sworn he lost it at some point in between. Maybe I'm wrong. Either way... what a weird match to put on as the main event after the show that was presented. Imagine going from everything I wrote about above to Mil Mascaras & Canek working holds like we're in the 70's. In front of this AAA audience that just wanted to throw shit at the ring & whistle for Latin Lover. Needless to say it was a cold match. Cobarde is here wrestling in a blonde wig to cover his bald head after being shaved at Verano De Escandalo. Watching Mil & Ciber attempt to wrestle was pretty funny. This match goes about 20 minutes... absolutely ridiculous. Cobarde is out first & naturally loses his wig. He sticks around ringside to give an out for Mil to lose as Cobarde grabs a chair & goes to hit Mil who makes very little effort to avoid it. Cobarde just drops the chair & Mil picks it up. He sloppily swings it at Cobarde but hits Tirantes instead who is knocked down & dazed. The announcers scream about how Mil has been DQ'ed but there's no announcement made & the ref who could call the DQ is laying dead in the corner so I think Mil just DQ'ed himself. NO YOBS! This leaves Canek & Cibernetico who barely get any time (thankfully) before Octagon, La Parka Jr, 3D & Venum hit the ring to start beating up............ CANEK??????? ALL THE TECNICOS HAVE TURNED RUDO??????? No. It's beyond clear these are not the originals due to the body sizes of everyone... oh & you can see the Vipers masks underneath the other masks they are using. This is a classic Pena trope he used many times where it makes no sense why these rudos would need to disguise themselves at all instead of just attacking like normal but it's a way to then have the originals run out & attack them. I think it stems all the way back to a 1994 angle where the Gringos Locos dressed up as Los Payasos to attack many of the top tecnicos which brought out the actual Payasos who unmasked them & chaos ensued. Honestly one of the best angles/reveals you'll ever see. Super hot angle. But that worked because the Gringos were unmasked dudes & also they went all the way hiding their identities. You had no idea what was going down until it happened. It doesn't work when I can see Psicosis's mask/hair hanging out of the 3D mask. But this is our Antonio Pena charm I guess. Latin Lover helps in running off the Vipers. I guess this means Canek won by DQ but no official announcement was made & it was left unclear. There is definitely no Latin Lover vs Canek title match or any Canek/Cibernetico match coming up any time soon so who knows. Canek/Mil are left in the ring having problems as the tecnicos try to pull them apart & by the end everyone celebrates together which is the traditional AAA show ending when it isn't the rudos beating everyone down. A very eventful epsiode!

This is just one of those shows that is etched in my memory forever. Or until I go senile. It just always stuck with me. It's probably the Mini Cadets vs Mini Vipers since that was the only time it ever happened but really it's just this time frame was peak me wanting to see/hear everything about lucha libre. Pump it into my veins! So like a child learning basic things for the first time, it just sticks with you forever. We are in Arena Lopez Mateos & starting off with the women who are rarely seen in AAA. Sexy Boom is the new attraction Antonio Pena wants to push as Verano De Escandalo showed but I'm not sure he knows how to fit her in. The announcers mention Sahori was in Japan at one point & got over for her looks. She was even offered money to do a nude shoot as was common for wrestlers there & accepted the offer. I know this is true only because recently I came across a Box y Lucha magazine which covers this & has the (censored... darn) photos. Of all people Arturo Rivera comes to her defense saying she received a lot of criticism for doing it but the shots were done tastefully & it was her choice to accept the offer. Who are you to criticize someone for doing something they WANT to do? Arturo Rivera wouldn't last a day on this thing called Twitter. Maybe that's what killed him. I saw the run time on this match & was expecting the worst so I made sure to be entering results into LuchaDB at the same time so I could be honest & actually have the match on but not be bored into a coma. The truth is - I got sucked into the match! For a time reference as to when I'm writing this - this match was MUCH better than either of the shitty women's matches CMLL presented at the Anniversary Show last night. And not a single luchadora in this match has anyone near the actual athletic ability of the Stardom girls, Candela, Kira, Starlight Kid, Persephone, etc. This was just a really well executed match where I think the women were working especially hard hoping to get another chance like this on TV. Remember - being on TV was a big deal at this time. If you could sell yourself as a TV wrestler, you could charge local promoters more money. So you wanted to be on TV & you wanted to do well so people remembered you. La Migala has seemingly alwasy been an underrated worker & showed it here as she was doing a lot of carrying for Sexy Boom. I liked the first fall finish & how agressive the rudas were to the tecnicas to get heat. This is a small building so if you can get the crowd really angry it turns into a lot of noise which sounds great on TV - something that helped the main event feel extra special. In the third fall they do a big dive train with some stuff you know these women weren't doing regularly but again... they wanted to impress. Like Migala doing a twisting somersault off the top & cracking her head on the floor. YIKES! Rudas get the win. We gotta give this one a rating! Maybe the only star rating you'll ever give me see the AAA women until 1997 when the Morenos show up. Let's go ***1/2! Next up is the Mini Space Cadets vs Mini Vipers........ w/ Mini Faces. Like I said, there was never a Mini Maniaco & I guess Mini Psicosis was occupied elsewhere? There's a lot to break down here & like a true AAA nerd I'm going to reach some very obscure places. So the first thing... these are all seemingly new Mini Space Cadets. In the sense of the gimmicks. Not sure who was under the masks of course. My *assumption* based on them appearing all together here & nowhere else ever again is Pena used locals who were working these Arena Lopez Mateos shows. Or Estado de Mexico guys that were working as minis. I say "guys" but I think the better term is children. You cannot watch this match without noting Mini Ludxor & Mini Discovery especially come off as young kids anywhere from 13-16 years old. Authentic minis have dwarf features. These two definitely do not. They have a body type that resembles a skinny child who hasn't hit the gym yet. Mini Venum & Mini Nova could fall into the same boat but their outfits hid it better. On the other side the obvious kids appear to be Mini Abismo & Mosquito De La Merced. But wait Rob, Mini Abismo??? So here's my new theory that I'm sharing without editing I have written above. La Calaquita is the guy we famously known as Mini Abismo Negro. That's why he's so good. It makes perfect sense now. Especially how he worked so well with Octagoncito & La Parkita. Pena realized how good he was & tried to give him a push as a tecnico. There's an off-TV storyline coming up where Abismo Negro gives Calaquita a tombstone piledriver which "ends his career". I believe this is the cover for him slipping into the Mini Abismo character. I don't know at this point who I can ask in AAA to confirm all this but I'm almost positive I have this one nailed. Mini Killer appears to be the Mini Killer we knew back in 1996 & Mini Faces is our friend Siniestro who just lost his mask on the last TV show & is already re-gimmicked. Funny bit early on is his wig comes off & they can't get it back on so if you couldn't tell who he was due to the wig, you definitely can for the rest of the match. Now you're probably thinking we have minis... we have Space Cadets vs Vipers... this is the RobViper ultimate dream match. Right? Well, in theory, yes. But as I noted... half of these are kids. Very green kids. This match is not good. LOL A lot of sloppiness & moments where you cringe seeing guys/kids completely lost & knowing this was being taped for TV. Mini Discovery even does the step through the bottom/second rope bit to exit which is always a sign it's a kid because a trained wrestler of his height would always go in & out the proper way. The only real highlight of this match is a Mini Venum springboard moonsault off the TOP ROPE which was insane for his size. He almost comes straight back down onto the apron but luckily just makes it & also luckily has ex-Siniestro catching so someone who knew what they were doing. Mini Nova takes advantage of Mini Killer/Mini Miss Janeth running into each other to hit a huracanrana for the win. One of those matches that is best imagined than seen. We skip the tercera on TV so Kick Boxer's first match as a rudo is lost forever! Oh no I won't see a Kung Fu Jr match, I'm so broken up. We move straight to the semi-main which is another one of those holy shit zero talent depth matches. Sexy Piscis in a semi-main! Hijo Del Espectro! Yowza. Send help! The match wasn't too bad but it's just sad this is what was being presented as a star filled match at the time. Early on the crowd has an Electro Shock specific chant going on? What the what? I guess some sound that annoyed him & caused him to lose his mind like back in the days when the gimmick was named Esquizofrenia. I can't imagine anyone remembered that & Electro was not exactly a big name yet so I have no idea why the crowd would have a chant specifically for him. I must be missing some connection here or something that happened off-camera. This was the match where I fell out of love with 3D. The look is a RobViper special. But his wrestling was very weak. He did nothing spectacular & then to top it off he ends the match with the world's ugliest dive. I hate to even call it a dive. If you want to lose my respect forever, find this video & do what he did. In the second fall Sexy Piscis did a really cool bridging submission I don't think I've ever seen since. Something for someone to steal if video tape study is still a thing. Ludxor hits his specialty dive in the third fall which comes with Andres Moranes making a call I'll never forget. LUDXOR! LUDXOOOOOOOOOOOR! LUDXOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR! One of the highlights of my first ever Lucha Spotfest tapes! 3D wins the match for his team with a diving huracanrana off the top rope which sounds better than it looked. Noti AAA is next. Hosted by Arturo Rivera we see him talking to Mascara Sagrada Jr & Aracnofobia who got awards of some sort. Abismo Negro/Pentagon assure us they are attending the upcoming Televisa Telethon show as professionals & won't start trouble. I *think* this is to set up an angle they shot there with the Brennan Twins. It might end up on a future Noti AAA but I have a vague recollection of some magazine photos of it. We also talk to Black Demon who is a new wrestler in from South America & guess who he wants to feud with? You got it. This is the ex-Mr Jack from UWA's dying days. Main event time - Vampiro's return match to AAA so the crowd is HYPED! And let me tell you.... this match may look like nothing on paper but it worked! Abismo Negro was working his ass off to make sure it worked. This may be one of his best AAA performances ever covering for two laregly immobile rudos & taking stuff from all three tecnicos any chance he got. Rudos are in control right away. Abismo throws Sagrada into the unforgiving Arena Lopez Mateos hard seats. Then he jumps on him as the fans scurry. These days the fans won't even move, wrestlers are not to be afraid of. In 1997? YOU GOT THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY IF THE RUDOS CAME NEAR YOU! It's a quick fall won by the rudos. Second fall is also quick with the tecnicos making their comeback to even things up. Now we get Abismo running from the tecnicos. Also Miss Janeth running from Vamp which gets a huge reaction. They do a bit where Abismo's mask is loose & comes flying off when he gets his head rammed into the turnbuckles. This reveals Abismo is BALD! I remember this photo appearing in a SuperLuchas magazine. I always wondered if he shaved his head to throw people off the scent that he used to be Winners. If you freeze frame the video it's very obvious... you can see his face. But in 1997 nobody was really doing that, the technology was around but not common in Mexico households. That's why Dr Wagner Jr could get away working matches with his mask dangling at times. Heavy Metal KO's Chicana with this great punch that would make the DVDVR folks super happy. Mascara Sagrada is so very clearly the future Alebrije in this match, you can see it in the work & posing spot he does after sending Abismo flying out of the ring. Vamp takes Killer out with a pescado, Metal traps Chicana in the corner & then when nobody is looking Abismo tries to foul Sagrada but he's one step ahead & blocks it... only to then fake that he did get fouled & tecnicos win by DQ. Crowd is OVERJOYED! You won't find many good AAA main events in this calendar year, certainly not many I'd even bother giving a rating to because who really cares if something is ** or **1/2? But I'm giving one to this match... ***3/4! That's basically the full five stars for AAA in 1997! This show was a great trip down memory lane & the main event is something I probably hadn't seen in many years, probably not since I clipped it for a music video ages ago. This kind of show makes me happy I'm doing these re-watches.

This is another show that gives me all the feels upon re-watch. We are now firmly into the AAA 90 minute block on Galavision so one match will be cut every week. CMLL has their own 90 minutes on another day. In time these shows end up being packed as a 3 hour TV block back-to-back but the time distribution would be vary. The match cut this week is the Mini Cadets vs Mini Vipers which after last week I don't mind so much but also the visual would have been cool (even if the results say Espectrito II wrestled in place of Mini Histeria). The TV show actually begins with a Rossy Moreno interview followed by a Miss Janeth interview. Rossy has returned out of nowhere. She ends up doing a guest commentator deal later in the show where she claims she was away promoting lucha libre. I mean, that might be true, but in reality she was gone making many babies you see running around on WWE TV & in Mexico these days. Also two twin girls I met who came much later & do not wrestle... yet. We are thrown into an insta-feud as Janeth lets us know Rossy is just jealous that Janeth is sexier & a better wrestler. Very Antonio Pena watching the Attitude Era begin vibes. Our opening match is said to be the a "futuras estrellas de AAA" exhibition. The two new names here are El Novillero who is Oscar Sevilla, a VERY skinny kid who is doing the Torero gimmick. They take 0.2 seconds in doing the Rey Misterio Jr comparison which is the kiss of death. On the rudo side is El Mohicano who is a ringer just like the Apaches as the Chivas. Los Mohicanos date back to the 80's so he was a veteran presumbly here to lead Sevilla along. Wise move, Mr Pena. First fall goes somewhat okay. DJ has a couple neat bits with R-15. But there's still lots of very green moments by everyone - even Mohicano somehow. In the third fall we get a horrible dive sequence. Sevilla's asai moonsault is pretty. Then we see R-15 almost fall on his head, DJ go splat on his side, Mohicano somehow bounce off everyone doing a plancha injuring his back, and finally Aracnofobia barely clears the top rope trying a tope. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!! Back inside R-15 fouls Aracnofobia, then fakes one of his own. Tirantes is about to give him the win but Pepe Casas is like hell no motherfucker & awards the match to the tecnicos for a big pop. If these guys were the future of AAA, you'd have to imagine the promotion died within a year. Not good. But the ?good news? is none of these guys are actually the future. Sevilla sticks around the longest. DJ ends up getting multiple gimmicks (an Andrade!) but is a nobody. Mohicano goes away. Guerrero 2000 (said to be from Puebla) disappears. R-15 gets a group in 1998, a hair loss in 1999, then disappears. Aracnofobia goes by bye soon into 1998. I will publicly embarass myself & in a way apologize to Jose Fernandez, who is never going to read this anyways so it's all good. We were like the HARDCORE lucha duo back in these days & at one point we tried to do a Top 100 luchadors list but we had to both agree on the rankings. We had disagreements but it all got settled peacefully. We agreed on the important people. I was a bit stubborn (imagine that) when it came to the AAA guys & especially the new colorful AAA guys. I remember pushing hard for a couple guys in this match. In one of the Huricurana (sp) newsletters John Molinario even did an opinion piece on El Mohicano & somewhere in writing exists Robert Bihari aka RobViper comparing Sevilla vs Mohicano to Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis. Oh the things I would tell myself if I could go back in time. I mean, this wouldn't crack the top 100 but I'd definitely slip it in somewhere between my lecture on stop living & dying with the Leafs & get off the internet. Next up we have the authentic version of the Space Cadets vs Vipers in the form of the normal sized wrestlers. Match is JIP with everyone running around the ring, an old comedy spot. We get quadruple Victory Rolls from the tecnicos for a nearfall & then quadruple running somersault planchas - Venum II smashing his back onto the apron hilariously. They win the first fall by countout. We seemingly wait forever for replays & then somehow only have a shot of the Venum/Ludxor dives we saw originally, no camera angle exists to catch the Discovery/Nova dives. Then we seemingly stay on a longshot forever until the whistle blows to start the second fall. I'm assuming technical issues live & no post-production being done. The tecnicos each get a run of offense in the second fall but it's not pretty. Very basic stuff for the most part. Ludxor has the best of it with his run vs Histeria but it's just another reminder of how these are half knock-off characters. My idea would have been Pena come up with new gimmicks for all these guys. Just look at the previous match. Those guys weren't good but there existed the possibility they COULD be good one day. Someone like me had hope. There was nobody to compare them to... uh... except Rey Jr & Psicosis... fuck Rob. But any time you saw Venum II doing something, all you thought of was how he is so much worse than THE Venum. You see what I mean? Rudos take control & use this fall to show off some teamwork submissions they've been practicing. It's cool stuff! I will clip for my IG. I especially liked Psicosis/Histeria's tag submission on Discovery. A chair gets involved in the third fall leading to the local commissioner wandering to ringside to tell them to knock it off. The announcers openly make fun of him & how behind the times he is. After a brief tecnico comeback we go into more dives... except this time it's the Vipers turn to fly. I just want to explain how depressing this was watching in real time. The idea of the Space Cadets was this group of crazy flyers where all match long you'd wait for & build up to them unleashing their wild death defying flips. Here we are in late 1997 with the clones & they are the ones doing the catching. ABSURD! I don't see how at this very moment Pena didn't pull the plug. Anyways... we start off STRONG - the debut of the asissted Space Flying Tiger Drop by Psicosis/Mosco that Ultimo Guerrero/Mr. Niebla would go on to borrow & make famous in 2002. Psicosis then does an over the top rope that isn't quite original Psicosis level but is good enough. Histeria then does a belly-slide splash to the floor. A belly-slide splash. Not even a real dive. To say this broke my heart would be an understatement. That's when I knew these fakes sucked & I should find myself some Promo Azteca footage fast! Maniaco finishes with a tope suicida where he catches the ropes & comes down hard on his leg. Out from the back runs Mini Discovery to crotch Mosco on the top rope so big Discovery can submit him. Cadets win. I lose. A very depressing match to watch then & now. Next up is a lumberjack strap match with our lumberjacks being the wrestlers you just saw wrestle. The surprise wrestler is Black Demon who isn't much of a surprise as we saw him on Noti AAA last week. I've gone on the record stating I love these matches. You have to have no soul to not laugh at some of the strap spots, it's just good fun when done in moderation. This match is one of the best AAA has ever done. The rudos are just soooooooooo good pulling off the comedy of accidentally slipping to the floor & then being terrified. Electro in particular. I know he gets a bad rep later on but at this point Electro Shock was seriously one of the bright spots from these new AAA characters. He was finally getting a chance to do something after years wasting away in CMLL as Ultimatum. He wasn't gonna let this opportunity pass him by. Black Demon looked good in his debut largely working with Blue Demon of course. This is the match where Rossy Moreno suddenly pops up on commentary. I think we're supposed to get a dive sequence near the end but nobody clued the lumberjacks in so they just start whipping everyone who leaves the ring leading the dive sequence falling apart when nobody is there for Parka or Electro to jump onto. They seem to catch on after that & leave Abismo alone so he can catch Sagrada's running somersault plancha which ends up with both in the crowd. Camera misses it but Black Demon unmasks Blue Demon Jr for the DQ. A good time was had by all! ***1/2! No Noti AAA, we move straight to the main event which is a total cluster in typical AAA fashion. It's just a backdrop for some run-ins. The rudos are not getting along, Killer still dislikes Fuerza & Cibernetico. The announcers are suddenly on the house mic (angle alert!) yelling at Miss Janeth saying Rossy Moreno thinks she's better than you. This leads to Janeth being shoved by a random female fan... who is Rossy Moreno. Wait... how did she get down there so quickly??????? Jesus Nunez is with her I guess so the real security doesn't rush over thinking we had an actual incident. Janeth grabs a chair & brains Rossy. It's filmed poorly but she does the same to Nunez which may be the one time ever he got physical in a TV segment. Rossy is busted open so she is carried away. Meanwhile some dude hits the ring to attack Perro Aguayo. It's Cyborg! The camera was shooting from so far away I couldn't even tell. He appears to have been given zero direction as to what to do & just freezes when the tecnicos start fighting back. Killer grabs the chair left over by Janeth but Fuerza gets it from him & chases him to the back as the Vipers suddenly run out to attack all the tecnicos. Cyborg kinda just wanders off seemingly confused as to what his role in all this is supposed to be. We cut to the back where Rossy is being tended to. If you want to identify some unmasked luchadors, this is your chance. A lot are standing around apparently unaware something was going to be filmed. Venum II is like a deer caught in the headlights. I may have spotted a young Rocky Marvin - perhaps he was one of the Mini Vipers? Back in the ring the tecnicos have run off the rudos somehow & are now celebrating with Perro Aguayo being carried around on their shoulders. They won by DQ in two falls but doesn't seem like it calls for this much of a celebration. Wild ending to the show. I had a good time watching this but it was ANOTHER stark reminder of how far this company has fallen & continues to fall. There were many mentions of the Brennan Twins on commentary so I presume the angle on the Teleton was shot & this must be the time AAA was getting some mainstream press due to their popularity & thus Pena wanted to capitalize on that. On a final note, at some point (I forget which match) it's mentioned Pepe Casas just came back from a special appearence in Japan. Where would he have been refereeing in Japan???

It would be nice to talk with someone who was around AAA's office at the time - since we can't speak to Antonio Pena obviously - about why certain decision were made as to what aired & didn't. For example the opening locals match makes TV air here instead of the Vipers match. It fits perfectly into the 90 minute TV window. Was it just a timing thing & nothing more? Did something go terribly wrong in the Vipers match? Just seems like AAA gets no benefit at all from airing a locals match. In the past they'd for time filler but now with a 90 minute TV block, you don't have extra time to play around with. Strange. The locals match is good! It's 90% the Dragones De Oriente (just called Los Dragones here) toying with the rudos. From what I gather the Dragones gimmick was passed around in Arena Queretaro, for example Rey Cometa plays one when he is starting out. The two here were the most famous ones & I can see why they were so popular locally. Lots of charisma, especially Oriente I. Hechicero Negro may not be a real name, the announcers were calling him Volcan Negro. I have a Viento Negro working in Arena Queretaro regularly around this time so it's probably him but who knows. Atomico was the stronger of the two rudos. His son is the one who pops up as a kid working spots on a 2006 AAA TV show & eventually works the CMLL Torneo De Escuelas under the same name. Atomico takes a headscissors off the apron to the floor in the trying to earn a spot... spot of the match. Nice dives from the Dragones who win the one fall match by countout. No complaints here, hot start to the show. Next up we have a couple new faces. Winners II is exactly as described. The newest version of Winners. If you're keeping track technically he's the 4th version but II is how many they are acknowleding existed. Just be happy they didn't bust out the NEW WINNERS name again. On the rudo side we have Espantapajaros who is a scarecrow. In later years he would multiply into a group of three or four depending on how many were needed. I don't have this as a fact but I'm gonna guess this was El Mohicano under the mask. Again, a veteran to work with the young guys. Oscar Sevilla is as skinny as me here. So skinny that when he does a tope over the top at the end of the first fall it looks like it hurts him more than Espantapajaros catching. Tecnicos take fall one with a triple huracanrana. Aracnofobia & Quinto Elemento fall all over each other on a spot in the second fall. Aracnofobia was green but also he just wasn't very good. The rudos take over & easily win the fall. This is a calmer AAA crowd in the sense they aren't throwing garbage but also a wild one in the sense Quinto Dan (Chessman) goes to grab a chair but the fans won't let him take it & begin fighting him off! The first of two notable fan incidents on this show. Sevilla is bleeding (we don't see how) & the rudos just stomp a mudhole in him, as they say. Really stiff shots to make the blood keep coming. Tecnicos win by DQ. You'll notice in the coming weeks how Pena was modeling Sevilla after how he pushed Rey Jr early on in his AAA career. Small skinny guy getting the shit beat out of him by the rudos in between his flashy highspots & dives. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Moving to the semi-main we have a pretty nothing match that goes two falls. Hombre De Nego is here & finally makes a notable move as he attacks Cibernetico with a chain. He chokes the lift out of him as Vamp watching on hands in the air very confused as to what's going on. I can buy nobody told him and/or they told him but since it didn't involve the world o Vampiro, he wasn't interested/listening. Los Vipers come out (in brand new Vipers shirts! I got one back in the day!) with barbed wire baseball bats & stare down Hombre De Negro... and keep staring him down... and keep staring him down... all the while he's choking the life out of Ciberentico. LOL Guys - you have a 4 on 1 edge & each of you is holding a bat - how about we go on the attack?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Hombre De Negro finally bails without being touched once. I thought it was interesting Cobarde worked the entire match in his wig. Usually that is specifically worn to be ripped off during a match. Maybe someone forgot. Our main event is a cage match which coincidentally will be the Guerra De Titanes main event as well. OH! I should have mentioned we have gotten Guerra De Titanes graphics/bumpers all show long so we are in the home stretch of 1997! It's your standard cage match with maybe a little more action than usual. Mascara Sagrada is bleeding a lot. Latin Lover escapes first, followed by Sangre Chicana who then plays the role of hitting any tecnico who tries to escape with a chair from the outside. Tirantes is holding Latin Lover back. HEAT! Of course this only works for a while. The twist on the usual cage match format here is after making a comeback BOTH Sagrda & Demon Jr escape at the same time leaving Abismo/Black Demon trapped inside & the match ends right there since the rudos aren't gonna fight each other & this is not an apuesta match. Post-match when the rudos walk out the door is where we have our other fan incident as some fans begin throwing chairs at Abismo who swings one back. It's very minor in nature but only notable because the camera was right there focusing on it. Kinda funny the ex-Winners is getting all this rudo heat. If those girls only knew! Yes, it was younger girls seemingly throwing the chairs. During the celebration before going off the air Latin Lover gets grabbed inappropriately by no less than 3 seperate groups of women before security finally comes over to help him get to the back.

I'm listing these both together but I don't *think* they aired together. There is some missing footage here. The way I have it is the Monterrey matches that aired w/ Noti AAA happening before the TV main event & then a sign-off. After that is a TV intro for the Texmelucan show followed by the minis atomicos match. In my old tape list (very very very old, stopped updating in like 2005), I have the minis match as airing on Dec 20 Galavision (US) by itself. I would guess my source (Steve Jensen) had some kind of recording or dubbing issue leading to that full show going missing. He was also Jeff Lynch's source so Lynch has the same thing I do. Or he may not even have this show because it has some VQ issues & sometimes Jeff wouldn't sell stuff like that. I was not a quality snob nor someone selling tapes so I didn't care, I just wanted it all. So I may be the only person with these tapings on video? Good thing they're sitting on my YouTube with the private box checked, huh? So since they're private, I have to fill in the DB blanks as to what aired. From Monterrey we get matches 3, 4 & 5. The new name in the opener is Magico who isn't really a new name. As the story goes this gimmick is owned by a TV station in Monterrey. They trademarked it a long time ago to create their own Tineiblas style TV luchador aimed at kids. But the gimmick didn't get rolled out right away. So at some point the future Mascara Sagrada just takes on the name. I don't think it was the same exact gimmick, not sure how he'd even know about that gimmick itself, but either way he works as Magico & ends up coming into Arena Mexico. He gets over & is about to be elevated to main event status when... oops... the TV company finds out their name is being used & threatens to sue CMLL. CMLL is not in the business os fighting any lawsuits which costs them money so he gets his name changed to Hombre Sin Nombre/Luchador Sin Nombre until Antonio Pena gives him the Mascara Sagrada character and everyone lives happily ever after because that name never runs into any issues. So the guy in this match is doing the Magico gimmick originally intended but I'm not sure if it's the same guy as it was in the late 80's when all that controversy took place. Whoever it is he's a bigger dude. It doesn't really matter as he doesn't play much of a role in this match. The match is centered around Oscar Sevilla getting destroyed once again. He's beaten to a bloody pulp & the medics come out to stretcher him off. Then he gets booted off the stretcher multiple times. The match continues on without him until... you guessed it... he heroically returns from the back all bandaged up. He's quickly met with a foul so the tecnicos win in straight falls but it isn't much of a win as Sevilla gets destroyed even more & Aracnofobia has his mask torn & ends up bleeding as well. Match was short but segment was very long. Next up we have the Vipers against the Chivas, Frisbee who now has tassles & may be a different Frisbee than previous week & Sergio Romo Jr once again gets on TV as AAA passes through Monterrey. Decent match but nothing to write home about. Or fill your blog with I guess. They do the tease of a straight fall finish but the Vipers get away with a fake foul to tie things up. This gives us an action packed third fall with the Vipers getting another chance to do their own flying. Mosco hits his assisted Space Flying Tiger Drop once again followed by a Psicosis tope over the top once again. Then we get a hilarious Botchamania worthy sequence as Chiva I o II messes up being backdropped over the top & crotches himself. Histeria then goes for a plancha after running up the ropes but fails hilarious & sends up spinning out of control to the floor where he bangs on the apron in frustration. Very embarassing. Even the announcers were laughing. Cibernetico hits the ring only to be followed by Vampiro & Latin Lover who clean house on all the Vipers even though they are outnumbered. We get another fan moment here as some guy grabs Histeria's arm - a dumb move since the guy is holding a barbed wire baseball bat - so he gets the bat swung at him and immediately backs down. Everyone makes their way to the back eventually. Next up is Noti AAA where we hear from Oscar Sevilla for the first time. He sounds like Mini Vikingo with the soft voice to go with his childish features. He may not even need to shave at this time. Heavy Metal lays down the challenge for Sangre Chicana's hair. Oh, I should mention - throughout the show we get the Guerra De Titanes bumpers again except this time it has an official date of 12/13 in Madero. We also get the full lineup during this segment. Cross referencing with the results we have - the opener was supposed to have a female version of the Space Cadets but Nova version woman goes missing so Xochitl Hamada is in the spot. Maybe Xochitl was gonna do the gimmick but the outfit didn't fit? In the second match Venum II subs for the announced Latin Lover who ends up bumped into the semi-main replacing Octagon who originally was just gonna be the second for the Brennans but they turned that match into a trios. Did you get all that? Don't worry, LuchaDB will be updated at some point. The other segment this had was the debut of a new wrestler - Mosco De La Merced II introduces his "cousin" from South America - La Abeja Africana. The African Bee! Very cool looking green & yellow outfit in the same style as the Vipers get-ups. This is our first look at this gimmick. He wouldn't actually get a TV match (at least not that we see) until close to March 1998. After that we have to forget this segment existed because he has no ties to Mosco any longer & three other insect based gimmicks are introduced - appropriately named Los Insectos who go on to feud with these same Vipers at one point. Our TV main event from Monterrey is the actual semi-main. Once again Cobarde gets through the entire match wearing his wig. What a strange deal. Cibernetico is beating up Vampiro at ringside at one point & these young girls in the second row are UNHAPPY! One starts swinging her purse at Cibernetico very hard but it must have been empty because he's largely unphased. Just a bit annoyed. Security comes over to tell her to chill the fuck out. Tecnicos take the first fall by DQ. In the second fall a masked man in black runs in so the announcers, correctly, assume it's the Hombre De Negro who has been around lately. Not so. It's actually The Panther, a Monterrey local we've seen before, who decided to wear a very similar mask because AAA is very disorganized. He attacks Latin Lover & pulls out handcuffs. Unfortunately for him he gets overpowered & ends up cuffed to Cobarde. This puts the rudos at a disadvantage somehow (why can't Cobarde and Panther still work together to get back into the ring?) so the tecniucos win in straight falls as a bloody Heavy Metal pins captain Chicana. Vipers ran out to cause problems & I'm realizing right now the Histeria incident may have happened here instead? Either way, it happened somewhere on this show. That's a wrap for Monterrey. As I said earlier, this is where my video cuts to the Texmelucan intro & then the minis match. We finally have all the Mini Vipers together. So you're probably thinking - mini Vipers, mini Cadets, atomicos minis match... you're in heaven Rob!!! Well, once again I have to inform you no, I'm not. There were some good moments in this match but also some really bad ones. This is still not THE Mini Abismo of course since Calaquita is still around. Mosquito was brutal. The Mini Cadets messed up asai moonsault at the same time to end the first fall. Octagoncito & Mini Psicosis looked tremendous. A good sign for the future since those are the minis who stick around regularly into 1998 & beyond. Mini Vipers end up winning with dual fake fouls. You'll live if I never end up putting this video up publicly on YouTube. There isn't much else on this show I regret not seeing unless the Flying opener aired (doubtful). And with that we're almost done 1997! With the delay in these episodes making it to the US, these November tapings are being shown in mid-December. Holiday season means pre-emptions. There is an Arena Lopez Mateos taping & a Zacatecas taping that both happened but no video exists. That means the only thing I have left are the December tapings which includes Guerra De Titanes which never aired outside of clips of the top matches on the Year in Review show. I guess I should start thinking about what I want to watch after AAA 1997. Keep going into 1998 or go back to 1995 which would be the deepest of deep dives since they had so much TV? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Hey it's the Auditorio De Tijuana! Konnan was still booking shows with his boys under the Promo Azteca name around this time so AAA was invading his territory. And this was the card Antonio Pena presented to compete. OK. We get the top four matches on TV which means some locals make the cut. Pena wasn't even flying in his regulars for TV tapings? Strange. Fantomas is a generic guy in a black out & white mask. Guerrillero does a Rambo gimmick & looks old. On the rudo side we don't have Psicosis in the match for whatever reason, instead a local rudo steps in named Firebird although I don't think that's who it was. This was an older rudo doing comedy spots at times & Firebird was one of the X-Men, no? Whatever. First fall is alright as the rudos are bumping all over. Loved Maniaco sitting Sagrada Jr on the top turnbuckle, then getting a running star & flying over the post to the floor when Sagrada moved aside. A wild bump you don't often see. Real man bump! The unknown local rudo had a funny spot where he ended up tumbling off the apron to the floor. Big crowd pop. Tecnicos took the first fall after ugly dives by the locals & dual huracanranas by Sagrada/Ludxor (his got messed up on the first attempt). Second fall rudos take over & a chair gets involved. Normal AAA crowds in this era were throwing garbage during matches, you can imagine what the notorious Tijuana crowd was doing. Vipers take second fall. In the third fall Ludxor gets nailed with a chair trying a tope suicida so he's done. Fantomas gets brained as well so he's done. Still the tecnicos manage a comeback but Psicosis is actually here & runs out to hit everyone with a chair for the DQ. The bell keeps ringing post-match like a US style bit. Yes, they had an actual ring bell on this show which was very common in Tijuana at the time but stands out in a world of whistles for every other show. Next up is a grudge match between Perro Jr/Picudo. Tirantes is of course helping Picudo out. I liked Perrito's intensity throughout. Especially during his comebacks. At one point they go tumbling into the crowd & an old lady wants to hit Picudo but her husband holds her back. They start swinging chairs & the fans scatter. Picudo won first fall, Perrito won second after Tirantes accidentally got hit by Picudo so he got him back by actually counting the tecnico pin even if it was a bit reluctantly. I don't mind this over the rudo ref screwing the tecnico all match long but then randomly counting a fall for him. Glad they did this bit. Third fall is an out of control brawl leading to both being counted out. They keep brawling post-match all over the ringside & aisle as the bell rings until security finally seperates them. Not a bad match leading into Guerra De Titanes. We join Latin Lover vs Cibernetico right after the presentations & Ciber wins the fall in like 10 seconds. LOL OK. I guess this was the title shot Cibernetico won in the four way w/ Mil/Canek/Cobarde & I was wrong about him holding this title. He ends up with it anyhow as he wins this match by DQ. Perrito & Picudo were the seconds so they just resumed their brawling on the outside all match long. They did more than the actual participants in the match. At one point Latin Lover "accidentally" knocks Tirantes off the apron before hitting a pescado onto Ciber. Ludxor runs out to save Perrito who was being beat down by Picudo but it's very obviously not Ludxor. A classic Pena bit as I've described before. Even the announcers are laughing at how small this Ludxor is compared to the one we just saw. Tirantes runs over to raise Ciber's hand & very agressively shows Latin how Ludxor is beating up Picudo which counts as interference for the tecnico, hence the DQ awarded. Crowd is not happy. Naturally the real Ludxor runs out to yank off this Ludxor's mask & it's of course Mosco De La Merced who is the smallest of the Vipers. The rest of the Vipers run out to beat down Ludxor & Latin. Vipers stand tall & pose together as Ciber holds up his new championship. Classic Pena! No Noti AAA, at least not on video, we go straight to our trios main event. I have nothing to say about it. LOL Just a lot of brawling. A LOT OF BRAWLING. Very Tijuana spot show type match. Fuerza/Killer cannot get along once again so Chicana is easy pickings for a bloody Heavy Metal to beat. And that's that. Not a particularly inspiring show if you were regularly following the company at the time. Really felt like a spot show that just happened to fill a gap of TV time.

I'm putting this here but there isn't much to say. Only the top two make TV & it's in year end show clips. We see the trios match where Rossy Moreno has alligned with Cibernetico. She even has her face painted up to look like him. He seems to not want her assistance though. The idea here is she is doing this to be out there to fight Miss Janeth who is with Killer. They go at it multiple times as the rudos try to keep peace. I should note there's no Vamp here, Latin Lover takes his spot. So you get some Latin Lover spots where he messes with Janeth leading to Killer getting mad at her as well. Just realized Cobarde is on the poster but Fuerza Guerrera is in this match. Hombre De Negro shows up to attack Cibernetico so the tecnicos get a freebie win. The Vipers run out to attack the mystery man but he escapes once again. So if you're keeping track - the Hombre De Negro bit started back in Feburary where he was after Pierroth Jr, went on hiatus, returned to fuck with the tecnicos, ended up hunting Cibernetico, now on the year end show his identity is still a mystery. It's almost like Pena has zero idea where he's going with this. ALMOST! Our main event is the cage match JIP which goes like any cage match. Picudo is out first & naturally finds his way back inside. Guess who's losing? Chicana ends up out, so does Perrito, Perrito ends up getting attacked & beaten down. He runs back to the ring after getting his midsection taped up so he can help Heavy Metal being double teamed. Metal/Chicana escape the cage. Perrito ends up giving Picudo a tombstone which the announcers are furious about saying that's illegal... but not inside a cage with no ref to award a DQ! Perrito escapes & as expected Picudo loses his hair. So Perrito unmasked him at the 1995 year end show, now has his hair at the 1997 year end show. Some nice continuity there although in 1995 it was a midcard match & here due to the weak roster it's the big apuesta match. We go off the air with Octagon & Los Brennans celebrating Christmas together & happy that they humiliated the rudos on this show (which we will never see). This *should* wrap up 1997 AAA but they actually went to Monterrey the next day to tape TV which airs in 1998 but I have to recap it as 1997. There's also a mysterious taping in the Mexico City area that may or may not be 1997. I'll investigate before deciding whether I include it here or not.

The Mexico City taping ends up being in January next year so we've reached the end of the line for 1997 AAA! This was a very skippable show which you can surely understand as it was taped the day after Guerra De Titanes. AAA usually took late December/early January off as TV was airing Best Of shows anyways so I'm sure everyone was mentally checked out. Not to mention Guerra De Titanes was in Madero so you're talking like a 5-6 hour bus ride back to Mexico City where they then had to catch flights to go out to Monterrey for the early 6pm start here. I don't think anyone was really up to working. Top three matches air from this show so unfortunately I do not get to see what 1997 Aero Star looked like nor Abeja Africana's official debut. We start with the tag title match which gets the majority of the TV time. It's a very technical match by AAA standards but I wouldn't say a good technical match. As exemplified by the first fall finish where Fuerza tries to hop onto Sagrada's shoulders for a Victory Roll but it gets all messed up. He lands on his face & then kinda waits for Sagrada to just put him in a submission to end the fall... but Sagrada doesn't know any submissions. So Fuerza looks back at him like "really?" & then has to get up so he can put him in a Swastika to mercifully put an end to the fall. The second fall has an even shittier finish as out of nowhere Tirantes awards the rudos the win for a perceived low blow. Fuerza wasn't even really selling it, Tirantes just brought all the attention onto himself. Third fall picked up a bit but still nothing approaching good. At one point Fuerza tried to flip over the ropes onto the apron to do a dive & got stuck upside down. No joke. He was just flailing like a fool for 3-4 seconds before tipping over. Crowd was loving it, Fuerza not so much. Mosco followed with a somersault dive off the top onto Sagrada Jr. Rudos retained the belts when Fuerza submitted Sagrada although he never indicated he gave up, Tirantes just called it & the announcers push the idea there was no submission. Well, thanks for wasting all my time with this match then! It should be noted the actual champs here are Fuerza Guerrera & the Mosco De La Merced who is currently in Promo Azteca, not this one. Next up is a chain match (not dog collar, no corner touching here) with Cibernetico & Killer. A no doubt classic as you can probably imagine. Less of a match with those two bums & more of a way to get Rossy Moreno & Miss Janeth fighting once again. Hombre De Negro interferes & at one point he is holding Rossy back while Killer holds Janeth back & in very ECW fashion they both agree to just let go & watch the women roll around fighting. Los Vipers run out & it's a total cluster. Somewhere in here Killer fouls Cibernetico with the chain & wins. I think. It was never really made clear. Noti AAA talks to Fuerza Guerrera w/ Abismo Negro & then Pentagon w/ Abismo Negro to clear up the Guerra De Titanes finish we didn't see. Ah but they have highlights here for us! It seems Octagon & Pentagon switched masks causing Fuerza to attack Pentagon thinking it was his long time rival. The Brennans took advantage to get the win during this confusion. Fuerza claims it wasn't his fault. Pentagon implies there should be a rematch without Fuerza involved. Abismo likes that idea. We get a video of some new faces in AAA who will be a big deal - Oscar Sevilla (yes), Electro Shock (yes) & ....... wait......... is that.......... yes! It is! INTOCABLE! Except he's not Intocable yet. He's Valentino who got a special introduction at Guerra De Titanes & was promptly attacked by Los Vipers. This is VERY early Intocable. He doesn't even pop up again until April 1998 as part of a random undercard trios match. Then we don't see him once more until 1999 when he shows up as part of Los Spice Boys. I was very surprised to see him here this early even though I know he had been mentioned in the magazines as well as a partner of his named "Tony Banderas". I believe that was Ricky Banderas aka Mesias but he also never makes it onto TV until late 1999. Where the fuck was Antonio Pena hanging out in late 1997? Victor Quinones has to play in a role in all this. Moving to the main event, I really have nothing much to say. Picudo is bald & has scarring on his head presumably from whoever shaved his head the night before doing a terrible job. There's nothing to this match at all. Fuerza Guerrera ends up interfering to help the rudos win in straight falls. The tecnicos don't seem to mind & are actually the ones celebrating as we go off the air. Really the most important part of this main event was seeing Pepe Casas get physical with Tirantes. A sign of the feud that would actually carry AAA in 1998. Weak show.

Goodbye 1997! And not soon enough! My hot take which shouldn't be a hot take since I watched this all & not many others can say they did is as much as everyone talks about how Konnan taking his boys in 1996 crippled AAA, I think the real damage was done this year when Promo Azteca started recruiting anyone & everyone. Pena had guys in the reserves to step in after Konnan's buddies all left for WCW. He may have stumbled in the first month or two but he got it back on track & then had the WWF deal to lure people in like Hector Garza. But while he had a second string team, he did not have a third string team. The talent just wasn't there. Losing another group of wrestlers also clearly messed with his head to the point he was more concerned with getting revenge by sticking new people under the gimmicks than he was doing the thing Pena was best at... coming up with new ideas & hunting for new talent. You can see the cliff AAA falls off right after Verano De Escandalo. Basically right when the new Psicosis debuts. The last quarter of the year was a chore to get through & sets up a dreadful start to 1998*. The good news is Pena snaps back to reality in the summer of 1998 introducing a bunch of stables that would carry AAA for the next couple years & he's back to throwing out all these wacky gimmicks that just work in an AAA environment. 1998 is still going to be very much a down period for AAA but not as down as it looked to be at this point in time.

If you are gonna re-watch any 1997 stuff you should definitely focus on the first quarter of the year. AAA was far from dead & not at all a dying company as Konnan via the Observer would have you believe. There's plenty of good stuff to find beween the minis & Cadets/Vipers. The WWF stuff has to be seen to be believed I guess.

* -> So dreadful that I'm not going even going to go re-live it for the time being. I'm going backwards in my AAA re-watch. I'm thinking 1995 since that was the year I discovered lucha libre & while I didn't see my first AAA shows until the latter half of the year, I love bringing back my old memories so I'll work my way there. Along the way I'll have LOTS of stuff to watch because it feels like AAA had the most TV they ever had in 1995 with multiple weekly tapings & somehow most of it airing. Some of it will also feel brand new with the Roy Lucier finds in recent years. I think AAA was well covered in 1995, Meltzer was 100% on the AAA is the best promotion in the world train, so I don't expect many easter eggs or anything of the sort. I look forward to seeing the shift from beginning of the year where AAA is coming off When World's Collide, which wasn't that big of a deal in Mexico, to the end of 1995 when the ECW influence has fully taken over & internationalization is upon us.