WWE and its affiliate promotion, AAA, just delivered a massive weekend of wrestling in Mexico and throughout South America! It would be far too much to try and run down all the individual matches considering we had Smackdown, 2 nights of TripleMania, Raw, and even a house show in Chile, and major things happened at every single event on all of the nights. So, rather than do my usual PLE match breakdown and ratings like I typically do, I’m just going to kind of talk over and run down some of the crazy stuff that has happened in WWE over the last few days. If you’re here and you made it this far you’re probably into wrestling already so you know what’s going on. Let’s get into it!
WWE had itself a major shake-up down south this past weekend and I’m honestly really happy to see it. All of this change, some of it honestly completely unexpected, shows that maybe WWE has been hearing some of the chirps that they’re getting at times stagnant or boring or predictable and they decided to show that they’re not afraid to shake it up and prove they have balls. I hope that’s the case at least. Pro wrestling really is more interesting when you truly don’t know who’s going to win in a match, and WWE lacks that suspense at times for me because I’ve been in the game with them for so long. Not that they don’t still hit me with a curveball and catch me by surprise at least once like almost every PLE, but when they really pull the rug out from underneath everyone and have someone win a match or even more so a title when no one was expecting them to, that’s the true magic and WWE pulled it off a couple times this weekend. To kick the weekend off Sami Zayn shockingly took the WWE title off CM Punk in the Smackdown main event and let’s be real here, like it or not, absolutely no one saw that coming heading into that match. I like Punk a lot, but I really am not mad about the title change at all because this opens up the door for so much intrigue in the Undisputed WWE Championship picture. With Sami winning, you can now feasibly see any of these guys that are currently chasing the belt (Gunther, KO, Finn) winning the title and I sort of hope we pass it around to a few of those guys for a little while maybe before it sees itself back to a Cody or what have you.
Like I said, I like Cody and Punk and they’re not the only guilty ones in this scenario, but I think part of the complaint that WWE has felt stagnant at times is the fact that the top of the card and the major title picture is always circled by the same group of men and somewhat women as well and that some of this other major talent that they have on the roster feel like they’re never going to get the big one. Now is the time for that to happen! This could be the shift that sees these other talented men and women who’ve been trapped in the midcard begin to get major title opportunities and runs. I mean hell, Sami Zayn and Chelsea Green are the men and women’s World Champions on Smackdown right now as I write this, and if you told someone that at the beginning of the year, they’d call you crazy. I think that’s pretty cool. Chelsea is so good too, her character work is at the very top on the women’s division and I’m happy to see after all the trials and tribulations she’s went through in her time with WWE booking wise that she’s finally getting recognized for her ability and love of the game. Speaking on the women’s division, Stephanie Vaquer beat Liv Morgan for the Women’s World Championship which in itself isn’t really that big of a surprise, but the surprise is that it happened at a house show in Chile. An untelevised event, that’s something that WWE pulls off very rarely. Chile is Stephanie’s home country and I’m sure that’s the reason why and I’m really happy for her that they did do it in front of friends and family and her home crowd, but still quite a shock.
The scary part about that though is that WWE made the match available to watch, but exclusively on their brand-new Club WWE service. Which I don’t even know what that service fully entails aside from getting early access to tickets and merch because that’s all it seems like so far, but if they start having banger matches and major changes at house shows now that they brought them back and then making the matches only available to watch on Club WWE, I’m going to be so mad. With these money-hungry corporate shills at TKO I know that’s the plan or at least the hope and I hate admitting it’s a really smart business move, but I hate it so much. They already have us spread out across like 3-4 streaming platforms to consume all the weekly content over here in the US and if they find yet another way to try to get their fans to fork over their money just so they can line those pockets deeper as things get worse and worse for us out here, I’m going to be pissed. I watch wrestling to get joy and escape my thoughts, not get more broke damn it! Perhaps the Steph/Liv situation was just a one-off thing and this entire rant on corporate greed was for nothing, but regardless I think it’s still applicable to rant on corporate greed at any time. Happy for Stephanie though, the Women’s World title scene needed to be freshened up after a lackluster Liv run that wasn’t really her fault. They just didn’t book her well as champ.
TripleMania 34 also had it’s fun and excitement, headlined by Mexico’s favorite son El Grande Americano taking the AAA Mega Championship off of ‘Dirty’ Dominik Mysterio in a fun and overbooked No Disqualification match reminiscent of the vibes of Cody/Roman Mania 40. Omos and Rey Mysterio had a classic David vs Goliath style matchup to headline Night 1, one of Omos’s best matches I’ve ever seen from him. The end saw him chokeslam Rey Mysterio through an announce table while he was on a stretcher board. Crazy spot for a 51-year-old Rey Mysterio to be taking but he wrestles legitly unlike any 50+ year old I’ve ever seen so shout out Rey Mysterio. One of my all-time faves, one of the bests to ever do it. La Catalina also defeated Flammer in Night 2 to end her 1,128-day reign as Reina de Reinas Champion, Omos won the Copa Bardahl battle royal for the 2nd straight year (he had a hell of a TripleMania), and Rey Fenix successfully defended his AAA Cruiserweight Championship in a wildly fun Fatal 4 Way. The long weekend was capped off by the Raw main event that saw Roman Reigns defend his World Heavyweight Championship against Penta in the heart of Mexico. It was honestly really neat to see Roman stepping into a hostile environment and the Mexican crowd so heavily backing and supporting Penta. You don’t see Roman modernly face an environment like that too often and those kinds of electric crowds enhance a match so much.
Roman won the match, no shock there, but you could still hear a pen drop in that arena after the 3. Seeing him wrestle a guy like Penta was definitely different, Roman selling for the lucha style of pro wrestling was pretty cool. Didn’t have Roman Reigns taking a Mexican Destroyer from Penta on my bingo card at the beginning of the year either, but as I mentioned earlier every year comes with its surprises no matter how “stagnant” or “boring” it can feel like the product becomes at times. Regardless, they delivered a full, exciting, action packed, and fun weekend in Mexico and South America this past weekend and hopefully they continue to carry this energy moving forward.
That’ll do it for this one though folks! Thanks for taking some time to read along with me and make sure to like the page on social media or come back to the website often to keep up with all my latest posts over WWE, NFL, horror movies, and more dropped weekly! Thanks again and until next time, be good to one another!
