AAA on Azteca 7

AAA will start on TV Azteca 7 on February 15th as Lucha Azteca AAA. The show will air Friday afternoons at 4:30 pm. They will be 2 hours shows, a half hour more than they’d been getting from Televisa/9 the last few years. That time slot is a movie this week and last. It leads into soccer (though there’s a 15-minute gap) and it leads off of children’s program. The announcers will be Rafael Ayala & Carlos Aguilar, who did wrestling announcing for the network both on SmackDown and for Lucha Libre Elite. (Some reports also have Gerardo Melin.)The reviews were not kind. The Lucha Libre Elite broadcasts featured Shocker (and later Veneno) also in the booth. Record says a luchador will be added to Azteca team. The only two wrestlers AAA has used as announced have been Konnan and Vampiro, Konnan has so many commitments that flying doing announcing regularly as well may not be possible, so prepared for the worse.
Apolo Valdez mentions the AAA show will also repeat on Azteca’s A+ on Sundays, though no time has been announced. There is no mention of the show airing in the US. This is the same sort of schedule Elite had, I think there’s a good chance it means AAA will likewise air in the US, but there’s no firm information to be had. If you’re a person who watches AAA on Twitch, Space or Multimedios, nothing is supposed to change. I presume the same will be true for YouTube, but nothing has been said yet. We’ll get an idea of a lot of that starting on Friday.
Leo Riano’s column has some details on the deal. TV Azteca has picked up AAA for one year, will pay all the production expenses and will pay AAA some amount in rights fee. Riano says AAA had been paying for production themselves (unhappy with how Televisa’s work). It’s been reported previously that Televisa was not paying AAA anything for the rights.
Riano also mentions Televisa is still interested in having lucha libre content and people in CMLL have told him Televisa’s talked to them about picking up their promotion again. CMLL has not been on Televisa since 2013. The story at the time was Televisa wanted CMLL to make some changes to “modernize” the product and CMLL was no interested. This could be as simple as Televisa seeing if CMLL’s position has changed – and maybe it has with different people having influence, The key point is Leo Riano is mentioned this in hopes he can get back on the air there with CMLL, since he’s not going with AAA.
El Planchitas tacks on that there’s some regret on CMLL’s side that they broke up with ELITE last year when they had a deal to be on Azteca’s A+ network, because they could be having this deal today instead of AAA. The column also mentions how much Alberto is looking for matches ($10K) and has gossip about Paige’s current relationship that I’m on touching. WWE female wrestling fans are not to be messed with.
A press event was held today at Azteca’s offices to promote the show, with a couple of matches. La Parka, Chessman, Blue Demon and Psycho Clown joined Dorian Roldans & Marisela Pena in a ring as part of the presentation. Parka & Chessman were holding the urns. Demon was prominently featured in the presentation and seemingly going forward on the show. Mascarita Sagrada, who hasn’t been seen since his Lucha Capital run, was also mentioned in the press release. About 30 luchadors were present, including people like Pagano and Lady Shani and Parka Negra and Tiger Boy (who does exist.) Hijo del Fantasma was there with La Mascara & Texano. No Rey Escorpion; he, Aerostar, Dr. Wagner, and were among those not present. No Vampiro or Konnan. The wrestlers were doing appearances on Azteca shows all today to promote the show. This is far more promotion than Televisa gave AAA.