It’s that time of year again! Triple A has been doing Triplemania free on Twitch.tv for a few years. Let’s see where this show lands!

This year’s Triplemania may have more attention than usual, thanks to the AEW partnership. Young Bucks and Lucha Brothers continuing feud. Cody Rhodes and his issues with Taurus. More people seem intrigued by the prospect of this show.

So for anyone who’s seen a few of these, there is really only one question. Will it be a train wreck or actually a solid show?

If you wonder why the question is relevant, watch Triplemania 25 and you will know. You won’t thank me…you’ll probably hate me. But at least you’ll know.

Ratings:

• Llave a la Gloria Twitch Exclusive Match: Dragon Bane, Astrolux & Arkangel Divino vs Aramis, Arez & Toxin: Dragon Bane wins via 630 Senton – ***
• AAA Mixed Tag Championship Match: Nino Hamburguesa & Big Mami (c) vs Lady Maravilla & Villano Tres Jr vs Sammy Guevara & Scarlett Bordeaux vs Vanilla & Australian Suicide: Maravilla wins via Low Blow/Roll-Up – ** – TITLE CHANGE!!
• AAA World Trios Championship: El Hijo del Vikingo, Myzteziz Jr & Golden Magic vs El Nuevo Poder del Norte (Mocho Cota Jr., Carta Brava Jr.& Tito Santana) vs Las Fresas Salvajes (Pimpinela Escarlata, Mamba & Máximo): Vikingo wins via Inverted 450 Splash – *** ½ – TITLE CHANGE!!!
• Copa Triplemania: Pagano wins – ***
• Reina de Reinas Championship 7 Way TLC Match: Chika Tormenta vs Keyra (c) vs Lady Shani vs La Hiedra vs Taya vs Tessa Blanchard vs Faby Apache vs Ayako Hamada: Tessa Blanchard climbs ladder for title – *** – TITLE CHANGE!!
• Killer Kross, Texano Jr & Taurus vs Psycho Clown, Cody Rhodes & Cain Velasquez: Velasquez wins via Kimura – *** ½
• Laredo Kid, Pentagon Jr & Fenix vs Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks: Pentagon wins via Spiked Fear Factor – *** ¼
• Lucha de Apuestas Hair vs Mask: Dr. Wagner Jr vs Blue Demon Jr: Blue Demon wins via Cinder Block – ****

Analysis:

Dragon Bane, Astrolux & Arkangel Divino vs Aramis, Arez & Toxin – Wow, this was all over the place. If you think you’ve seen a spotfest, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Tornillo, Shooting Star Presses and Fosbury Flops in succession, multiple multi-pin attempts just a lot of craziness. I wouldn’t say it was a good match, but there was so much going on at once, it was definitely entertaining and a good opener.

Wait…there’s a Une Fon short with Blue Demon Jr fighting a Mummy, Werewolf and Swamp Thing. This whole segment is a nice callback to the El Santo movies, even with a “flashback” to one of the old movies. This is already starting off more entertaining than the past two years, even with a few broadcast hiccups.

AAA Mixed Tag Championship Match: Nino Hamburguesa & Big Mami (c) vs Lady Maravilla & Villano Tres Jr vs Sammy Guevara & Scarlett Bordeaux vs Vanilla & Australian Suicide – This match started off fairly amusing. Sammy and Scarlett played up sexy and arrogant, Maravilla continued to flirt with Nino Hamburguesa to get advantages…but then it fell apart. I have yet to see Vanilla perform well at any TripleMania, this one included. A lot of half missed or awkward moves and it just got car crashy towards the end. The finish continues the Maravilla story with Mami and Nino, but the match was fairly throw away.

AAA World Trios Championship: El Hijo del Vikingo, Myzteziz Jr & Golden Magic vs El Nuevo Poder del Norte (Mocho Cota Jr., Carta Brava Jr.& Tito Santana) vs Las Fresas Salvajes (Pimpinela Escarlata, Mamba & Máximo): So watching this match was weird. Salvajes are an Exotico team. So a bunch of cross dressing men kissing the other participants and doing certain things added an element to the match that isn’t often seen outside of Mexico. It lightened up some situations, but my main takeaway is everyone seemed to be in love with the Flying Headscissors. Either way, it was an entertaining match for the vacated trios titles. We saw 3 very different teams, and nothing was bad. Hell I think there was a Diving Canadian Destroyer at one point, but the action was so fast it was a little hard to follow. Good match, just not a ton of storytelling.

Copa Triplemania – Eclipse Jr and Daga start off this Rumble style match, and after that we get new people every minute. The biggest pops came from Konnan entering in a Donald Trump shirt after an interesting promo earlier in the show. Then as he’s just drinking a Modelo on the top turnbuckle, Vampiro enters to a huge ovation. Vamp looks to be in great shape, goes right after Konnan and they slug it out a little. After brushing off Daga and a few other Rudos, Vamp eliminates Konnan and then eliminates himself. All he wanted to do was get Konnan out of the match, and it was a fun moment. The last few came down to Chessman, Pagano and Rey Escorpion…so with Pagano winning I guess that’s fine. Chessman I’ve never been impressed with, Escorpion had a good shot, but got distracted with trying to get the referee to count faster and Pagano was the last Technico to care about.

LA Park shows up afterwards, breaks the trophy, beats the hell out of Pagano and challenges him to a Lucha Extreme match.

Reina de Reinas Championship 7 Way TLC Match: Chika Tormenta vs Keyra (c) vs Lady Shani vs La Hiedra vs Taya vs Tessa Blanchard vs Faby Apache vs Ayako Hamada – So Keyra gets wheeled out in a wheelchair, basically to say she is vacating the title and someone will take her spot. Tormenta attacks the injured champion and we find out the replacement is Ayako Hamada, who last I heard retired after getting arrested for drugs in Japan and vacating the Sendai Girls title in shame. But that aside, this match was interesting. All of the women brought it pretty hard with weapons and high impact spots. But Tessa hit Tormenta with a cookie sheet, Tormenta was probably supposed to land on a ladder, but missed and crashed to the outside. EMTs stretcher her out quickly and the match ends rather abruptly. Not sure if it was called quicker because of a legit injury or if that was supposed to legitimize the injury to Tormenta. Either way, it was fine…just a little weird at times.

Killer Kross, Texano Jr & Taurus vs Psycho Clown, Cody Rhodes & Cain Velasquez – Well this was interesting. Cain Velasquez’s debut match with a few of the bigger names in the game right now, really made this sink or swim. Cody has issues with Taurus, Texano and Psycho Clown has had a feud for years and Kross and Cain makes sense. Kross did try to duck Cain initially, which was nice heel story telling. Cain looked fantastic, and this match was more of the Western style tag match as opposed to the usual Lucha/Tornado style. Everything made sense, little story threads had a good amount of heat added and the finish was great with Cain getting the visible tap from Texano.

Rey Escorpion attacked Psycho Clown and stole his mask, so one has to assume that is Cain’s story to continue with. Pairing him with the face of AAA as well as, Cain more than holding his own, is all a great start to a wrestling career.

Laredo Kid, Pentagon Jr & Fenix vs Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks – This whole match didn’t feel right. The crowd was dead for a lot of things The Elite did, unless the purposefully posed for heat. Obvious heel tactics like taking off Fenix’s mask and low blows everywhere were just overkill. A rivalry that started off as more of a best of the best, became a cliché foreign heel doing dirty heel stuff, it’s really quite sad. The match really wasn’t anything special, a few of the same ole same ole moves and poorly timed triple team moves. Also a very sloppy Reverse Frakensteiner out of the One Winged Angel, from Fenix, while recollecting his mask, did nothing for the match. So yeah, nothing special, it was a slightly above average match, but nothing to write home about.

After the match Kenny Omega challenges Fenix for his Mega Championship with his typical “trying too hard” to sound cool and evil Cleaner style promo. Ugh.

Lucha de Apuestas Hair vs Mask: Dr. Wagner Jr vs Blue Demon Jr – Blue Demon’s mask is one of the older family lineages in lucha libre. Demon himself is 20-0 in Apuestas matches while Wagner is 10-1. This was a brutal war, not a match, just a straight up fight. Broken beer bottles, chairs, hammers, and cinder blocks were all used on one another. This was a hell of a fight, lots of blood and the each man’s entourage interfered a little, but just damn. It also looked like Wagner broke a finger at some point, so Blue Demon using a modified Fujiwara Arm Bar often in the match, just looked crazy. I thought it was clever that Wagner used the fact the referee was out of position to visibly tap out, getting Demon to break the submission thinking he won. Wagner eats a cinder block to the skull, and after bandaging the bleeding portions of the man, the hair shaving begins.

Overall Score: 7.25/10

So this was a pretty good show. We saw the beginning of Cain Velasquez’s wrestling career, and seemingly the end of Dr. Wagner Jr’s career. I think Wagner retired after getting his head shaved and Blue Demon just rubbed it in. Getting the surprises of Vampiro, Konnan, LA Park and Ayako Hamada was nice for me. Maybe not everyone, but it popped me nicely.

Also it’s nice to see some stories continue logically, like the Maravilla match. Tessa being the new Reina de Reinas will probably play into Impact’s upcoming Mexico City tapings. So I appreciate the threads there. And of course, even if they were about as over as a funeral, the Elite stuff does still play into All Out and could possibly be used for AAA’s MSG in the future.

Nice show Triple A.