Why I love the new AAA – It rekindled my passion for that style of wrestling

I’ve been a fan of lucha libre since I watched the pay-per-view When Worlds Collide. I thought it was so different from anything I had seen at the time, from the presentation to the in-ring performances. The crowd was also much more into it than anything WWE or WCW was doing at the time.

Then I wanted to see more, but back then it was hard to find anything that wasn’t WWE or WCW, so I wasn’t able to catch more lucha until The Fight Network launched in 2005. Back then, the network was just trying to fill time with programming, so they would pick up pretty much any wrestling programming they could get. Thanks to them, I was able to watch Japanese wrestling through their deal with NOAH. I saw some of the early years of ROH and even Deep South Wrestling, which had made a deal with them without WWE’s permission. But the biggest thing for me was the fact that they were able to get a deal to air CMLL programming on the network.

Finally, I was able to watch lucha libre on television again, and I was so happy because it rekindled my passion for that style of wrestling. Sadly, it only lasted a few years before the show was canceled, and once again I was left without a way to watch lucha libre on television.

After that, there was Lucha Underground, but I didn’t really follow that product as much as I wanted to because it didn’t air on Canadian television and was kind of hard to find on streaming. I heard good things about the product, but I only saw a few episodes, so I can’t really give my opinion on it.

This brings me to today and WWE owning AAA. At first, I was really skeptical of this, as we all remember how they completely destroyed ECW after they bought the company, and having Undertaker as the head of creative for the company didn’t help.

But I gave them a chance and started watching AAA programming on the WWE YouTube channel, and I have to say that this has become my favorite show of the week to watch.

I have to give it to Taker. He was able to create a brand that was still loyal to the traditions of lucha libre while also injecting some of what makes North American wrestling great, which is character work and storytelling.

This brand revitalized the careers of a lot of guys who probably would have been on the unemployment line if it weren’t for AAA. Guys like Omos, Rey Fenix, Dragon Lee, the War Raiders, Garza and Berto, and especially El Grande Americano have all benefited from being sent to AAA.

That’s while also giving the current AAA roster a lot more exposure, which has helped them become household names and, for some of them, even get included in the WWE video game.

Already, thanks to AAA, we have two Match of the Year candidates, and we’ve seen how great El Grande Americano is as a wrestler. They took what was supposed to be a comedic character aimed at making fun of Trump’s “Golf of America” fiasco and turned him into a serious superstar in Mexico. The same goes for his sidekicks, who probably would have been released if it weren’t for this.

The AAA product brought back my love for lucha libre, and while I can miss random episodes of other WWE programming from time to time, I make sure to never miss an episode of AAA. That’s thanks to WWE and, especially, Taker, who’s been doing an awesome job with the creative direction of the brand.