The D'Amore Drop is a weekly guest column on Uncrowned written by Scott D’Amore, the Canadian professional wrestling promoter, executive producer, trainer and former wrestler best known for his long-standing role with TNA/IMPACT Wrestling, where he served as head of creative. D’Amore is the current owner of leading Canadian promotion Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling.
Lucha and AAA fans may have been nervous going into TripleMania this past weekend, and maybe with reason, but WWE was as good as its word in not changing the authentic Lucha feel of the promotion it now owns.
WWE definitely smoothed over the production, but it still looked and felt like AAA on Saturday. It didn’t feel like a WWE show, or even an NXT show; it felt like AAA. One aspect they absolutely had to leave alone was the pageantry, which is a massive part of not only AAA but also Lucha Libre as a whole. And leave it alone they did.
Where WWE did switch it up was having Corey Graves on English comms. Corey, especially, deserves real praise for explaining the culture of AAA to what was the biggest — and freshest — audience AAA has ever had. He was as good at explaining the history and culture of Lucha Libre as anybody not named Mike Tenay.
I thought the main event had some incredible stuff in it, the Rumble was really fun and the women’s three-way match was highly entertaining. Overall, I thought it was a pretty successful event for the “new” AAA. I’m happy for Dorian, Konnan and JB and everybody there at AAA.
AEW is back on pay-per-view this Sunday with Forbidden Door emanating out of London, England, in what will be a sold-out O2 Arena. They’ll have 17,000-plus fans just a month after drawing close to 30,000 in Texas for All In. Incredible stuff for any North American brand — and it shows that AEW is the most powerful, best-established “challenger brand” to WWE the industry has ever had.
I love the “Forbidden Door” concept for AEW. Having talent from other promotions appear on your shows has always been a great draw in wrestling, but AEW really made it part of their DNA when they launched half a decade ago.
Tony Khan popularized the phrase “Forbidden Door” and this annual event has its own identity that is uniquely AEW.
The match I am most looking forward to on Sunday is AEW Women’s Champion Toni Storm defending against Athena, who’s the champion in AEW’s sister league Ring of Honor.
The fans have been increasingly vocal about Athena getting more time on the “main” AEW roster … which is of course exactly what Tony Khan booked to happen. Athena has been ROH champion since beating Mercedes Martinez on Dec. 10, 2022, and now she has this organic “Make her a top star now!” demand behind her.
She’s going to have a banger against Storm, who I now believe is a generational talent and character — all homegrown in AEW.
Athena wrestled a hell of a match for my Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling league against Gisele Shaw back in October. Check it out here:
It’s hard to think of two bigger singles stars who are as closely linked together in the minds of generations of fans as my two old roommates.
Edge and Christian, Cope and Christian Cage, Adam Copeland and Jay Reso. Whatever you want to call them, they're two of the very best to ever do this. They haven’t been an actual tag team in over 24 YEARS (!!!) — ever since Christian turned on Edge out of jealousy that Edge won the King of the Ring in June 2001.
And yet their tag act — the TLC matches, the five-second poses, the cool invented lingo and just how astonishingly strong their combined charisma was — remains so vivid in people's minds. It’s really unique how fans remember the E&C team so well but that memory has never overshadowed their even more successful singles careers.
Naturally, I am pumped to see them team together again at Forbidden Door against Nick Wayne and Kip Sabian. Because of my history with Adam and Jay, this is a match near to my heart.
I know some people say AEW rushed putting them back together. … I say, like I did with John Cena’s heel turn and other storylines, let’s give the booker time to tell the story. We have to give AEW the room to tell the story they want to tell, and then we are all entitled to say what we loved or didn’t love about it.
And, really, what can any booker add to a story that fans already know so well? Maybe “Hey, we all know these guys are basically brothers, and brothers fight and then quickly forgive” is all we need anyway.
During my first stint with TNA, Jay (Christian Cage) and I would talk every few weeks, just shoot the s***. Whenever he’d call me, I’d go into this gimmick when I picked up and say, “How’s my future NWA World Heavyweight Champion doing?”
He’d laugh and then I’d continue in a very “TV lawyer” voice: “If you completed all obligations to your current employer — and were free and clear of any other obligations to third parties — we’d be interested in exploring a mutually beneficial contractual relationship.”
I’d go on like that and Jay would laugh.
Only, one day, he didn’t laugh.
Instead, he waited for me to finish and said the end of his contract with WWE was coming up and he wanted to leave WWE. He said when he was clear of that contract, he wanted to have a real conversation about what TNA could offer him.
I had to switch hats several times. As his friend, I felt like I had a duty to say, “Well, why?” He was in a good spot in WWE. He was having featured matches against top stars, he had his own "Peep Show" segment where he had a lot of creative freedom. … Why leave?
He said he had something to prove — he wanted to go outside WWE and succeed somewhere else. He wanted to prove he was a legit main-eventer that a pay-per-view could be built around, not just someone who went out and had to steal the show in the co-main.
Well, beginning in 2005, that’s exactly what he did. Christian Cage’s TNA run — with feuds against Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe — is legendary.
Jay coming to TNA, and having the run of his career up to that point, showed other talent in WWE there was somewhere else to go. Kurt Angle arrived less than a year later, and that whole never-to-be-forgotten TNA golden era arrived.
One night in 1997, Adam, Jay and I were driving to a show in the middle of nowhere and my truck broke down. We called a tow truck and, God save us, the guy who shows up was a massive wrestling fan. Bless this fella, because he quickly volunteered to drive us to the show before taking the truck to a service station.
Only, there was no room in the cab for more than one of us. So Jay rode in the cab and talked wrestling to the guy and, highly illegal as it was, Adam and I sat in my truck even though it was on the tow truck’s flatbed.
We were hours away from the venue, so Adam and I were chatting away when I noticed him “steering” the wheel. He was even hitting the brakes every now and then. He looked like Maggie Simpson in "the opening credits of "The Simpsons," steering a wheel that wasn’t going to turn a thing.
It was freaking me out. So I said, “Adam…” — and he cut me off and went, “I know, damnit! It just feels weird to sit in a driver’s seat and not have my hands on the wheel!”
Adam kept his hands on the wheel the entire two hours to the show…
Adam and Jay are both 51. They are both still insanely good, but time has almost caught them. I think they are in the right place to retire — whenever their incredible careers come to an end.
AEW have proven that they send legends off right.
Congratulations to Trinity (WWE’s Naomi) and her husband Jimmy Uso on their pregnancy. It was an amazing moment for Trinity on "Raw," giving up her belt and really getting shown unbelievable love from the fans, who cheered and then chanted “Ba-by Us-o!”
She cut an amazing promo, too, floating in and out of her heel persona so well. What a moment for her — and on top of the amazing moment she had at SummerSlam, walking to a packed stadium with her father playing guitar and having a great match.
There’s some chatter that it isn’t necessarily right that a woman should lose her wrestling title because she’s expecting. According to this train of thought, Trinity is being “punished” by her employer here.
I don’t see it that way at all. Trinity will be a top character — and immediate title challenger — as soon as she decides it’s time to come back. She’s lost nothing, and the fans — and WWE — couldn’t be more supportive.
World titles are storyline props, and they need to be active in the storylines. Wrestlers defend the title … or they forfeit the title. The old rule, for decades, was that champions had to defend at least once every 30 days … and I understand pregnancies last a bit longer than that.
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