WWE TV Megathread

[El-P]

The Karrion Kross news spamming is now reaching a comedic level. 

[The Thread Killer]

Last night's episode of SmackDown was shockingly good.  They seem to have decided to focus a lot more attention of their Tag Team division lately. I don't know why they're doing it...but I'm all in favor. The SD Tag division is ridiculously stacked, especially in comparison to the RAW Tag Division.

Fraxiom vs. The Miz and Carmelo Hayes was a lot of fun, although it's obvious where they're going with the Miz/Melo deal. DIY vs. The Street Profits was also fun. And now it looks like "MFT" is going to be throwing their hats into the ring as well, although considering the overall talent level in that stable, I'm a lot less excited about that idea.  I also hope they don't drop the Andrade & Fenix team, because those guys are great.

[Stiva]

On 8/13/2025 at 10:21 PM, El-P said:

The Karrion Kross news spamming is now reaching a comedic level. 

If it is all an elaborate work, my prevailing question is “why would you waste all that effort on Karrion Kross?!”

[NintendoLogic]

$100 for a puppet is absolutely bonkers. But it does make you wonder how much money AEW left on the table by not marketing a Mercedes Mone puppet.

[The Thread Killer]

I couldn’t figure out why they would even do that, but I just watched Triplemania and now I get it.

[WingedEagle]

Was anything on the AAAWWE show remotely worthwhile?

[The Thread Killer]

2 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

Was anything on the AAAWWE show remotely worthwhile?

I guess that depends on your perspective. I am not a regular Lucha viewer, not because I don't care for Lucha, but more because I really don't know where/how to watch the weekly AAA and CMLL TV shows, or the PPV's.  I used to have Bob Barnett's awesome Best of AAA DVD set from the early 90's (actually, I guess I still do have it somewhere) but obviously the scene has changed massively since those days.

I have two friends online who are both quite into Lucha. One of them actually only watches Lucha Libre and he doesn't watch any American stuff at all. The other is one of those guys who somehow finds the time to watch pretty much everything, (don't ask me how...I'm retired and I don't even watch all 3 WWE shows and 2 AEW shows plus TNA, and NJPW, MLW and NWA and then Lucha on top of that. There aren't enough hours in the day, especially when you follow others sports and TV shows.)

The friend who watches everything, saw the show yesterday, and was instantly bemoaning how WWE ruined AAA, how this isn't "real" Lucha, WWE is Americanizing Lucha, bringing a bunch of their castoff workers to AAA and are diluting it, and it's basically another example of how WWE ruins everything, up to and including the world.

My other buddy who only watches Lucha pointed out that fair enough...WWE has changed AAA since buying in. But he counter-argued that the increased production values are great, there are way more fans into AAA since WWE bought a stake in the company and (and this this was the important thing to him) he claims (and I have no way of knowing if this is true or not) that AAA has basically been hot garbage for years now, so no matter what WWE does to AAA it's going to be a lateral move, at worst.

I watched the show this afternoon.  I didn't see it live because I watched UFC 319 last night (and I thought WWE choosing to run AAA's supposed biggest show of the year against one of UFC's most anticipated shows of the year was an odd choice. I know they love to counter-program AEW but now TKO is basically counter-programming themselves.)

I actually liked this show.  Then again, I liked the new "Worlds Collide" show a couple of months ago.  Let me be clear, there were no "great" matches on this show (unlike Gable/Vikingo from Worlds Collide) but I still thought it was fun.  Firstly, the crowd was super hot, and very into the event, which definitely helped.  Plus, the thing about Lucha (at least the AAA/WWE brand of Lucha) is that even if it's goofy, or sloppy, or even phony and fake looking...it's too fast paced to be boring.  I have read that previous years Triplemania went on far too long, but this was a fast paced, easy to watch show that clocked in at around 3 hours.  So even if it wasn't great, at least it wasn't padded out and needlessly dramatic and boring. It's Lucha, so I kind of go into it expecting plenty of botches. It didn't bother me.

-> The "Copa Bardahl" match was first, and it was fun. I got to see La Parka (not the real, chair swinging, middle aged, psychotic L.A. Park, sadly.) Abismo Negro and Taurus are both built like bulldozers, are did some nice power stuff. I really liked seeing Mecha Wolf and Cibernetico.  I guess they treat these matches like The Royal Rumble, where pretty much anybody can show up.  Speaking of which, Otis made his return in this match. In WWE the guy was basically a midcard comedy act going nowhere, but I'll say this much...he was crazy popular with these AAA fans. Like, they were chanting his name and were so enthusiastic that the announcers even mentioned it. There was plenty of comedy with Pimpenela and Otis working together.  And of course what everybody is talking about is the return of Omos, and his "confrontation" with Microman. That certainly was an amazing visual. My friend told me later that AAA did the same thing last year with Microman and Satnam Singh from AEW, but I never saw it.  Anyhow, this was harmless fun.

-> El Mesias vs. El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. was fine.  The crowd was very hot for this match, and it was decent. Pretty much like a TV match. It only went 10 minutes. There certainly was lots of backstory behind this, because the announcers kept talking about the history between Mesias and Wagner's father, who was at ringside and ended up getting involved.  This was a nice contrast to the comedy aspects of the opener.

-> The Judgement Day vs. Lola Vice, Nino Hamburguesa and Mr. Iguana was basically a comedy match. Nino did the face-in-peril routine, until he finally made the hot tag to Iguana, and the crowd went nuts.  Iguana did his comeback, and then Finn pulled out his own Demon puppet, who got into it with the stuffed Iguana, but they both got distracted when Hamburguesa gave them both hamburgers. This was what it was.  Obviously, I don't know how this kind of stuff would go over with a normal WWE crowd, but I got the impression that the AAA fans in Mexico City are used to this kind of thing and enjoy it, based on the crowd reaction.  It only went 12 minutes, and it wasn't boring, so I have no complaints.

-> Los Garza vs. Pagano & Psycho Clown was okay.  Quite honestly, it was like any other garbage match you would expect to see in AEW or WWE these days, except it was a lot shorter at around 13 minutes. Once again, they did a decent job alternating between comedy in the previous match, and the more serious stuff like this. Los Garza dropped the titles, but I don't think it will hurt them any.  If anything, it will probably help their credibility if they go back to the main WWE roster.

-> Rey Mysterio inducted Konnan into the AAA Hall of Fame.  I fast forwarded through most of this, although I did catch the part where Konnan chewed out somebody in the crowd for heckling him and not letting him talk.

-> I have to be honest, I skipped most of the Women's Title Match.  Nattie has always been average at best, and when I saw that she was fighting a pudgy woman in a native headdress, I figured I'd skip to the last few minutes.  This went around 10 minutes and based on what I did see, I didn't miss much.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

-> So the Main Event...

Here's the thing.  When I saw Worlds Collide, the AAA fans seemed perfectly happy with Vikingo.  Well let me tell you, they aren't now.  They booed the SHIT out of this dude. You could tell AAA knew it was coming, and tried to head it off by having Rey Mysterio and Vikingo's Dad embrace him backstage before he went to the ring...but it didn't help, not one little bit.  These people do NOT like this dude anymore.  So I texted my buddy to ask him why, and what he told me is kind of creepy, if it's true.

As we all know, Alberto Del Rio is pretty much on everybody's blacklist because in addition to being a general pain in the ass to deal with backstage, he has a well documented drug problem, plus there have been serious allegations made against him of domestic abuse, assault, and even kidnapping, and rape.  Despite that, AAA didn't seem to have a problem with him working there.

When WWE took over, they got the belt off ADR right away, and transitioned it onto Vikingo.  Then, they recently had ADR lose a "loser-leaves-town" match. (How legitimate that match was is apparently up for debate.) Even though he's a heel, apparently a large (and apparently very vocal) segment of the AAA fanbase still love Alberto Del Rio, and they're pissed off that he lost the belt, and that Vikingo has usurped him.  So they have decided to show their displeasure by booing the shit out of Vikingo.  Supposedly it's not because Vikingo isn't a good wrestler, it's just that a large segment of the AAA fans want Alberto Del Rio.  I suppose you could compare this situation to the pop that Brock Lesnar got when he returned at SummerSlam, although what Lesnar has been accused of is pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to Del Rio.

The upshot was...El Grande Americano came to the ring, and received a surprisingly positive reaction.  I assume his gimmick was/is intended to insult or offend Lucha fans, but considering the fact that they sang along with his theme song, and cheered him louder than Vikingo, that plan doesn't seem to be working.  Dragon Lee got a decent reaction, and Dom Mysterio was received like the second coming of El Santo. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'm not lying when I say that Dom was by far and away the most popular guy in this match, and Vikingo was definitely the least popular, and you could tell that was not the reaction they had been hoping for, even if they knew it might be coming. Vikingo is still carrying himself as a babyface and these fans are not buying what he's selling.

The match was what it was.  All four guys were in there at the same time doing Lucha stuff, so it was pretty much total chaos. There were some good spots, one of the highlights was when Dom and Americano put Vikingo through the English announcers table so hard it looked like they almost killed him.  Highlights included Corey Graves pointing out that the English announcers were the ones who had to look out on this show, because they were on the other side of the border, and the sound clearly picking up Konnan saying about Vikingo: "He's okay. He's working."

As you would expect, there were a bunch of run-ins, The Judgement Day, the LWO, and the two fake El Grande Americanos (who some people speculate are Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate.) The end came when AJ Styles interfered, and even though the crowd wanted Dom to win, they were so excited to see AJ Styles that they blew the roof off the place anyhow.  Except when Vikingo got the pin...because they were not happy about that. But overall, in my opinion, this was the best match on the show, which as the Main Event, it should have been.

Today, I have seen a bunch of people on Twitter claiming that the way the fans reacted to this match, and all the run-ins proved that WWE is ruining AAA.  The only problem with that theory is, they were in Mexico City, and it was sold out, and I saw plenty of crowd shots, and I didn't see a whole lot of American fans there.  If the AAA fans really did turn on Vikingo over Alberto Del Rio, I think that's a AAA thing, I don't think you can blame WWE.  And from what I am told, multiple run-ins were hardly a rarity in AAA before WWE showed up.  But obviously I can't speak to that either way, because I didn't watch AAA before this.

So in answer to your original question @WingedEagle, the show was okay. Let's be honest...it was a free show on YouTube.  If I had been expected to pay for it or if I was a die hard Lucha fan, I might feel differently, but like I said earlier, it was fast paced, and goofy fun.

From what I have been told, business in Mexico is red hot all around right now, but apparently if you want "serious" Lucha Libre you need to watch CMLL because the WWE version of AAA is certainly not serious, but in my opinion that doesn't necessarily make it bad. 

[sek69]

So a couple of things, Alberto is a babyface in AAA (yeah, I know) and their fans see WWE putting the guy they want ahead of the guy *they* want. 

The last few Triplemanias were terrible both in terms of production and in the ring, so by comparison this show was miles better than any AAA show in a long time. However there were some clear WWE-ized moments. For one, AAA has long had intergender matches (they even have a mixed tag team title) but in the 6 person match it was clearly men vs men and women vs women only. That's a big change for AAA since every big show usually had the "Antonio Pena match" 8 person tag where each team was a man, woman, mini, and exotico. Clearly WWE frowns on men fighting women, and I expect AAA fans, or at least the hardcores, will resent that. 

Speaking of hardcore, that was probably the lamest Pagano match I've ever seen. His usual style is basically death matches with bumps that would make Darby Allin pause, so doing a (relatively) save WWE hardcore match style is going to be seen as painfully weak by AAA fans. 

AAA fans are totally in on the joke with El Grande Americano. Especially now that they have a German guy pretending to be an American guy pretending to be a Mexican guy. I think the only ones who were offended were the lucha equivalent of the terminally online fans who just get upset at everything. 

Also surprised @The Thread Killer didn't know who Faby Apache is (the pudgy lady with the headdress). She's a legend, and a daughter of a legend. Kind of like a lucha Charlotte Fiair without the rampant alcoholism in the family. What stood out to me is how the announcers botched the finish by not mentioning Faby had a long feud with heel ref Tirantes Jr which is why he ignored the foot on the ropes. Even Konnan, who booked that feud, didn't mention it. 

The highlight for me was  Dr. Wagner Jr showing up pimped out as fuck  in his silver fox era. I kind of feel bad for his kids, who are both actually really good, because their dad is just overflowing with swag no one could hope to match up to. 

[The Thread Killer]

46 minutes ago, sek69 said:

Also surprised @The Thread Killer didn't know who Faby Apache is (the pudgy lady with the headdress). She's a legend, and a daughter of a legend. Kind of like a lucha Charlotte Fiair without the rampant alcoholism in the family. What stood out to me is how the announcers botched the finish by not mentioning Faby had a long feud with heel ref Tirantes Jr which is why he ignored the foot on the ropes. Even Konnan, who booked that feud, didn't mention it.

Thanks for the info. Aside from Bob Barnett’s AAA collection and the original Worlds Collide, Lucha is a real blind spot for me.

We don’t have any TV channels or even streamers in Canada that broadcast current Lucha, so I’ve never been able to follow the product. I don’t even know a reliable way of seeing it by less than legal means.

I’m not going to lie, I have actually enjoyed both WWE/AAA shows so far, so I hope WWE gets AAA a TV or streaming deal.

[strobogo]

I thought it was fine but now having a WWE ring with WWE ropes, WWE steps, and cast off announce tables that WWE stopped using this year was weird. Not to mention the graphics on screen were straight from the WWE production team.

[El-P]

I did not watch it because it's just too damn depressing (before they began using Alberto, Triplemania was one of my favorite time of the year because of the sheer mind-fuckness car-crash quality of the thing) but here's Luchablog review :

https://thecubsfan.com/cmll/

"These are WWE matches with AAA luchadors (...) WWE fans seemed to like the show. They got an extra WWE show."

In one year (or two at max), Triplemania will mostly be WWE guys with no relation whatsoever to what AAA used to be, working basic WWE matches, mark my words. 

Konnan telling a fan at ringsde to fuck his mother was the only thing Triplemania-like sounding. 

Rey Rey acknowledging the Alberto chant by saying "I'll bring him, be patient" was certainly "interesting". 

Triple H called MAGATaker "a driving force" behind AAA. Ponder that for a second or two.

(gotta love the fact they saw Mr. Iguana get over with his puppet at the previous show... so they immediately used his hype to make a puppet... for someone else that on the main roster, because of course)

Bye bye AAA Lucha Libre Worldwide. This has been a fun (as opposed to, you know, good) ride.

[strobogo]

Yeah there was def weird shit and it felt more like a WWE show with some more spice, but not really. Not sure why Konnan was giving shout outs to The Undertaker in his AAA HOF speech, nor why Nick Khan/HHH/HBK were in the ring to start the show for the Mexican national anthem, nor why Khan/HHH had front row seats to be seen on camera not reacting for half the show until they got up and left.

[The Thread Killer]

I never ever thought I’d see the day that a WWE wrestler would pay tribute to New Jack on RAW, including dressing like him and pushing a shopping cart full of weapons…but there you go. And that bump Breakker took over the top rope into the shopping cart was sick.

[sek69]

So Naomi confirmed Big Jim put one past the goalie, good for them. 

[The Thread Killer]

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

So Naomi confirmed Big Jim put one past the goalie, good for them. 

Especially since it turns out she had so many health challenges in that area, she had an ovary removed, and polyps in her uterus. Apparently they thought they weren’t going to be able to have children, so it’s hard not to be happy for them.

[sek69]

Winning the world title, having her dad play her to the ring at Wrestlemania, and now this. Naomi's had a hell of a great year.