City Tokyo, Japan Date 5 July 2000 Attendance 1,700 | Triplemanía VIII Triplemanía IX Venue Korakuen Hall | |
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Triplemanía VIII Verano de Escándalo (2000) Location Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan Promotion Asistencia Asesoría y Administración Other Instances Triplemanía XXIV, Triplemanía XXIII, Triplemanía XXII, Triplemanía XXI, Triplemanía XX | ||
Triplemanía VIII was the eighth Triplemanía wrestling show promoted by Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA). The show took place on July 5, 2000 in Tokyo, Japan. It was only the second show to take place outside Mexico and the first show to take place in Japan. The Main event featured an Eight-man "Atómicos" tag team match which saw AAA regulars team up with various Japanese wrestlers. The team of Octagón, Jushin Thunder Liger, Latin Lover, and El Alebrije took on Cibernético, Shiima Nobunaga, Abismo Negro, and Electroshock.
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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 lucha libre. He joined forced with a number of younger, very talented wrestlers who felt like CMLL was not giving them recognition they deserved and decided to split from CMLL to create Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA, or Triple A; Spanish for "Assistance, Consulting, and Administration"). 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 2000 Triplemanía was the eight year in a row AAA held a Triplemanía show and the fifteenth overall show under the Triplemanía banner.
Storylines
The Triplemanía VIII show featured six 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.
Reception
John F. Molinaro from the Canoe.ca website wrote that the Triplemanía show that kicked off the tour was well received by the crowd.
Aftermath
The rest of the AAA tour of Japan drew very low attendance figures, drawing only 409 in Nagoya and 507 in Kobe for the next two stops of the tour as AAA failed to gain the interest of the Japanese fans even by bringing in several well known Japanese wrestlers. AAA had plans to do further tours in Japan in 2001 but after drawing such low interest they dropped the plans for regular tours. AAA only made brief tours of Japan since then, teaming up with a Japanese promotion for the tours.