Triplemanía XX was a professional wrestling event scripted and produced by the AAA promotion, which took place on August 5, 2012, at Arena Ciudad de México in Mexico City, Mexico. The event was the twentieth annual Triplemanía, which is AAA's biggest show of the year, and marked AAA's debut in the new Arena Ciudad de México. The event was headlined by a match between Dr. Wagner Jr. and Máscara Año 2000 Jr., where the loser was forced to unmask himself. In the semi-main event, El Mesías defended the AAA Mega Championship against the 2012 Rey de Reyes, El Hijo del Perro Aguayo. The event also featured Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) performer Kurt Angle's AAA debut and an induction into the AAA Hall of Fame. This event marked the first time in four years that a Triplemanía was not broadcast live on pay-per-view. Instead, the event would be broadcast in three parts on AAA's official website, starting August 19. The event was attended by 21,000 people, the largest crowd for a professional wrestling event in Mexico in almost five years.
Production
Background In early 1992 Antonio Peña was working as a booker and storyline writer for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), Mexico's largest and the world's oldest wrestling promotion, and was frustrated by CMLL's very conservative approach to professional wrestling, specifically the style of wrestling known as Lucha Libre (Spanish for "freestyle wrestling"). He joined forced with a number of younger, very talented wrestlers who felt like CMLL was not giving them the recognition they deserved and decided to split from CMLL to create Asistencia Asesoría y Administración, later known simply as "AAA" or Triple A. After making a deal with the Televisa television network AAA held their first show in April 1992. The following year Peña and AAA held their first Triplemanía event, building it into an annual event that would become AAA's Super Bowl event, similar to the WWE's WrestleMania being the biggest show of the year. The 2012 Triplemanía was the 20th year in a row AAA held a Triplemanía show and the 25th overall show under the Triplemanía banner.
Storylines The Triplemanía XX show featured seven professional wrestling matches with different wrestlers involved in pre-existing scripted feuds, plots and storylines. Wrestlers were portrayed as either heels (referred to as rudos in Mexico, those that portray the "bad guys") or faces (técnicos in Mexico, the "good guy" characters) as they followed a series of tension-building events, which culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.
At AAA's previous major event, Rey de Reyes on March 18, 2012, rudo stable El Consejo picked up their first win in AAA, when Máscara Año 2000 Jr., El Texano Jr. and Toscano defeated Dr. Wagner Jr., Electroshock and Heavy Metal in a six-man tag team match, with Máscara Año 2000 Jr. pinning Wagner Jr. for the win, following interference from El Consejo'''s masked accomplice El Hombre de Negro ("The Man in black"). In the weeks that followed Rey de Reyes, Máscara Año 2000 Jr. kept making challenges towards Wagner Jr. for a singles match, while El Consejo as a whole also feuded with Chessman, Silver King and Último Gladiador of rudo stable La Sociedad. This would, on April 30, drive longtime rivals and real-life brothers, Wagner Jr. and Silver King to make peace with each other and team up against Máscara Año 2000 Jr. and El Texano Jr. After losing as a result of another interference from El Hombre de Negro, the brothers shook hands to signal the end of hostilities between the two. On June 1, Máscara Año 2000 Jr. pinned Wagner Jr. in a rematch from April 30 and afterwards challenged him to a Mask vs. Mask Lucha de Apuestas, which Wagner Jr. accepted and named Triplemanía XX as the place, where he wanted the match to take place. A third match between Máscara Año 2000 Jr. and El Texano and the Wagner brothers took place on June 16 and ended with El Consejo picking another win with help from El Hombre de Negro, who during a post-match beatdown unmasked and revealed himself as Máscara Año 2000, the legitimate father of Máscara Año 2000 Jr., who on April 30, 1993, had lost his mask to Perro Aguayo in the semi-main event of the first Triplemanía. In an interview on AAA's NotiAAA program, Máscara Año 2000 Jr. accepted the Mask vs. Mask match for Triplemanía XX and vowed to prove his family's superiority over the Wagner family by placing Wagner Jr.'s mask in his family's display cabinet. On June 30, Máscara Año 2000 Jr. defeated Wagner Jr. in a singles match with help from his father, after which the Mask vs. Mask match was made official for Triplemanía XX. On July 27 at the final AAA television taping before Triplemanía XX, the promotion recreated a famous segment from 1993, when Máscara Año 2000 hit Perro Aguayo with a glass bottle prior to their Triplemanía match, by having Máscara Año 2000 Jr. hit Dr. Wagner Jr. with a glass bottle to a win a No Disqualification match between the two, leaving his adversary bloodied in the ring heading into their Mask vs. Mask match.
After defeating his rival Jack Evans at Rey de Reyes to win the 2012 Rey de Reyes tournament and earn the right to challenge for the AAA Mega Championship, El Hijo del Perro Aguayo recruited Teddy Hart into his Los Perros del Mal stable to take care of Evans so he could concentrate on chasing El Mesías for the title. On April 1, Aguayo, along with his stable, attacked El Mesías with a steel chair. The attack was in storyline used to explain El Mesías' three-month absence from the ring due to a legitimate arm surgery. While El Mesías was recovering from his surgery, Aguayo kept busy by feuding with his close friend Cibernético. El Mesías made his return appearance on June 30, accepting the match against Aguyao at Triplemanía XX and promising that he would be ready come August 5. At the July 13 television tapings, El Mesías was set to speak about his status, but was interrupted by Los Perros del Mal. After surprising the rudo stable by removing his arm splint, El Mesías first disposed of Daga, Héctor Garza and Teddy Hart and then beat down El Hijo del Perro Aguayo, showing that he was ready for their upcoming title match. Afterwards, it was announced that Cibernético and Héctor Garza would accompany the champion and the challenger, respectively, to the title match, with Aguayo also announcing that he had a surprise waiting for AAA, hinting at the possible AAA debut of the tag team Los Traumas.
One of the featured matches of Triplemanía XX saw three former tag teams, and current rivals, reunite and face each other in a Parejas Suicidas match. The first team is the former La Familia de Tijuana of Extreme Tiger and Halloween. Together, Tiger and Halloween held the AAA World Tag Team Championship from April to September 2008, after which the team disbanded, when Halloween left AAA to join Perros del Mal Producciones. Halloween returned to AAA on June 6, 2010, at Triplemanía XVIII as a member of Los Perros del Mal and has ever since remained on the opposite side of Extreme Tiger, who turned técnico during Halloween's time away from the promotion. The rivalry between Halloween and Tiger ignited in early 2012, when the two ended up on opposite sides during the rivalry between Tiger's tag team partner Jack Evans and Los Perros del Mal's leader El Hijo del Perro Aguayo. The second team in the match is the former The Hart Foundation 2.0 of Jack Evans and Teddy Hart, who joined AAA together in early 2008 as representatives of the rudo stable La Legión Extranjera (Foreign Legion). In May 2009, the team disbanded with Evans turning técnico, after which the two started feuding over the AAA Cruiserweight Championship. The feud ended without a proper conclusion in early 2010, when AAA suspended Hart indefinitely. Hart finally returned to AAA on March 18, 2012, at Rey de Reyes, and was on April 1 revealed as the newest member of Los Perros del Mal, taking over El Hijo del Perro Aguayo's feud with Evans as Aguayo moved on to chasing the AAA Mega Championship. The final team in the match is the former La Hermandad 187 of Joe Líder and Psicosis. After winning the AAA World Tag Team Championship from La Familia de Tijuana in September 2008, Líder and Psicosis, then known as Nicho el Millonario, held the title for 18 months, becoming the longest reigning champions in AAA history. Even after losing the title, Líder and Nicho remained together as a técnico team, feuding with the La Sociedad stable. In June 2011, AAA, in storyline, suspended Nicho, after he interfered in a six-man tag team match at Triplemanía XIX, where Líder, Heavy Metal and Electroshock, replacing the previously injured Nicho, faced Chessman, Silver King and Último Gladiador. On July 16, Nicho turned on Líder, believing that Líder had not stood up for him as he was, in his mind, being wronged by AAA. With Nicho joining Los Perros del Mal, he and Líder have had a bloody rivalry ever since. On April 6, 2012, the rivalry took another twist, when Líder burned Nicho's face with a fireball. Following the burning, Nicho began once again wearing his old mask and working under the ring name Psicosis, with the storyline being that Líder's fireball had not only severely burned Nicho's face, but the incident had also driven him insane. On July 11, it was announced that the Parejas Suicidas match would be taking place inside a steel cage. At the following day's Triplemanía XX press conference, the team of Chessman and AAA Cruiserweight Champion Juventud Guerrera was added to the match. Unlike the other teams in the match, Chessman and Guerrera have no prolonged history with each other, though they are on opposite sides in the battle between La Sociedad and AAA. In the months before Triplemanía XX, Chessman had been feuding with Vampiro, while Guerrera was busy with his former protégé Daga, who had turned on him and joined Los Perros del Mal. The losing team in the match would then face each other in a Lucha de Apuestas. If La Familia de Tijuana lost, the match would be a Mask vs. Hair match, in other cases it would be a Hair vs. Hair match.
The third Lucha de Apuestas announced for Triplemanía XX saw AAA's chief executive officer Joaquín Roldán and his son, La Sociedad leader and AAA vice president Dorian Roldán, pick teams to face each other with the loser being shaved bald. Dorian made the challenge to his father on June 16, and on June 30 revealed the first member of his team, former AAA Mega Champion Jeff Jarrett, who also promised to bring "one of the biggest names to have ever come out of the United States" with him to Triplemanía XX. After Joaquín had revealed Electroshock as the first member of his team, he was approached by L.A. Park, who volunteered to become the second member of the team. After months of problems between the two, Park and Jarrett had finally ended their uneasy alliance at Rey de Reyes, where Jarrett first cost Park the Rey de Reyes tournament and Park retaliated by costing Jarrett the AAA Mega Championship. On April 30, Park officially quit La Sociedad to continue his rivalry with Jarrett, but during the following weeks, had also made clear that he did not want to befriend any of the AAA técnicos. After moments of hesitation, Joaquín eventually accepted Park's offer and named him the second member of his team at Triplemanía XX. On July 17, Jarrett's fellow Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) worker Kurt Angle was revealed as the second member of Dorian Roldán's team.