According to a new report from Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, Mexican promotion AAA has made the decision to no longer award AEW talent AAA Championships following difficulties with booking previous champions such as Tay Melo, Sammy Guevara and FTR.
AAA “Don’t Want Titles On AEW Wrestlers” Except Kenny Omega.
Writing in the January 2nd edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer would comment on AAA’s decision to have FTR drop the AAA World Tag Team Championships to Los Hermanos Lee [Dragon Lee & Dralístico] on the same night that fellow AEW stars Tay Melo and Sammy Guevara were stripped of the AAA Mixed Tag Team Championships.
Meltzer would first reveal that AAA had in initially planned for Guevara & Melo to drop the Mixed Tag Team Championships earlier in the month at a TV taping however visa issues would prevent the couple from entering the country, a fact that led to Abismo Negro Jr & Flammer winning the vacant titles despite the physical belts not being able to be awarded as they are still with the Jericho Appreciation Society members in the US.
Meltzer would continue stating that, excluding Kenny Omega, AAA will not award AEW talent any championships moving forward due to the difficulty in confirming dates on them.
“Right now the plan is that unless it’s Kenny Omega, who they still want as their Mega champion because of his work and name value, if they can get dates on him, they don’t want titles on AEW wrestlers because of the difficulty in confirming dates on them.”
Meltzer would note that FTR had received high praise from those at AAA who noted that they would love to have them back if they can confirm dates and praising Dax Harwood for getting heat during the AAA World Tag Team Championship bout against Los Hermanos. Lee who Meltzer notes were awarded the belts despite Dragon Lee’s confirmed WWE signing in order to elevate Dralístico and to tie up their chase for the titles which has been an ongoing feature of AAA TV over the past year.
Finally, the wrestling veteran would state that AAA is keen to work with the WWE moving forward and this was partly the reason that a WWE talent in Lee was the one to pick up the victory over FTR during the bout, an event that Tony Khan was aware of and did not try to boycott in favour of a decision that would leave AEW talent looking stronger.
“Obviously the company is wanting to work with WWE, given they gave a WWE talent the tag title and a win over an AEW talent (Tony Khan was aware of this going in and didn’t block it because it was scheduled to be FTR’s last date in AAA so he approved the title change, and he did know Lee had signed with WWE and didn’t even insist Dralistico, who is an AEW talent, would be the one to score the pin.”
FTR are set to defend their last remaining tag team championships, the IWGP Tag Team Championships, against the team of Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI, better known as Bishamon, at NJPW’s WrestleKingdom 17 PPV on January 4th 2023.