The AAA Mega Championship is the top championship for the Mexican Lucha Libre promotion, AAA. If the belt looks familiar that is because the current AAA Mega Champion is Kenny Omega who has routinely worn the belt in his appearances on AEW and Impact Wrestling during his “Belt Collector” character. The AAA Mega Championship is still a relatively young title, having only been established in 2007 but its lineage so far has been a pretty wild ride.
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The Start Of The AAA Mega Championship
Since AAA’s inception in 1992, the promotion placed little restrictions on the number of championships the company promotes, with AAA routinely allowing wrestlers to defend titles which do not belong to AAA throughout company history. However this changed in 2007 as AAA announced they will end that practice and will no longer recognize or promote any championship that does not belong to them, thus establishing the AAA Mega Championship.
The AAA Mega Championship was established via an 8 person single-elimination tournament, the "Torneo Campeón de Campeones", or Champion of Champions Tournament which unified 4 different championships into one Mega Champion.
The tournament participants were:
El Mesías: IWC World Heavyweight Championship
La Parka: GPCW SUPER-X Monster Champion
Chessman: UWA World Light Heavyweight Champion
Charly Manson: The Mexican National Heavyweight Champion
Kenzo Suzuki
Cibernético
Mr. Niebla
El Zorro
The finals of the tournament happened at the eleventh annual Verano de Escándalo PPV in 2007. The IWC World Heavyweight Champion, El Mesías, who is better known to US fans as Mil Muertes in Lucha Underground or Judas Messiah in TNA, made it to the finals to face the UWA World Light Heavyweight Champion, Chessman.
El Mesías won the tournament and the championship… by disqualification.
A bit of a limp start for a brand new championship but it was unplanned as El Mesías suffered a back injury during the match. AAA continued with the original plan even though El Mesías was injured and El Mesías would hold the title for 182 days before losing the belt in just his second defense to Cibernético.
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The AAA Mega Championship’s Title Reigns
The entire lineage of the AAA Mega Championship is filled with reigns like this, relatively long-running champions with very few title defenses. There have been 18 champions so far, most of whom lost the belt by their third defense. There is a main exception to the rule in El Texano Jr, who held the title for a massive 735 days, defending the title 9 times. Though the current champion Kenny Omega is sure to break this record very soon as he held the belt for 724 days (at the time of writing) while having just 5 title defenses.
The shortest reigning champion was none other than Jeff Jarrett in 2018, holding the belt for just 83 day and would lose it in his first defense. Though this wasn’t the first time Jarrett had held the AAA Mega Championship as Jarrett first won the belt in 2011 while he was still signed with TNA. For some reason TNA never referred to him as the AAA Mega Champion, he was simply known as the Mexican Heavyweight Champion, TNA also changed the belt's appearance, putting a Mexican flag plate on top of the regular belt. Why they would change what it looked like was unknown, for its wild history, you can’t deny it’s a good-looking belt.
While AAA have done their best to make the AAA Mega Championship mean something since its inception, it falls victim to the same rationale as many other Lucha Libre promotions. In Mexico, it’s all about the masks. The mask is the most important accessory in Lucha Libre and they mean way more than any championship could. The Mask vs. Mask or Mask vs. Hair matches will always be viewed as more important than the championships, and they're almost always the main event whichever show they are on. Even in the AAA Mega Championship’s inception at the Verano de Escándalo PPV, the tournament finals to determine the first AAA Mega Champion was not the main event of the show.
The AAA Mega Championship’s Best Matches
If you are in the mood to watch some good AAA Mega Championship matches, here are a just a few recommendations from me:
Triplemania XVII: El Mesías vs. Dr Wagner Jr.
Guerra de Titanes 2014: El Texano Jr. (c) vs. Alberto El Patron
Conquista Total Gira 2019: Fenix (c) vs Puma King vs Laredo Kid vs Taurus
Heroes Immortales 2019: Fenix (c) vs Kenny Omega
TripleMania 2019: Kenny Omega (c) vs Dragon Lee
