Dorian Roldán states that the issue was not on Conrad Thompson’s end.
Episode #127 of The Business of the Business podcast featured AAA Director Dorian Roldán as the featured guest. As the conversation rolled on, Roldán confirmed a November 2022 report from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The report noted that Roldán had been in conversations with Conrad Thompson about running a show during WrestleMania 39 week in California.
Roldán stated that the reason the show did not happen is not because of Conrad’s end of things. He said it was a busy time for AAA and the plans did not pan out.
Yes, for sure (there were talks between AAA & Conrad Thompson). When we create this event and I was there, the Last Match of Ric Flair and with response that the Mexican talent have over there, (Rey) Fénix, Bandido, (Black) Taurus. Everybody was super happy and was super excited and super pumped about the opportunity that we could have in the American market and the idea was to start during WrestleMania weekend. The problem wasn’t Conrad, it was us because we were so full with the different projects. We opened the venue of Cancun the same weekend that WrestleMania weekend was. So, after the numbers weren’t as happy for us in Phoenix, we decided to stop and to focus again — imagine, 2022 was the beginning after pandemic. So 2023, for us, should be really good in the numbers and in the profitability of the company. So we are refocusing our strategy and the core of the company to be super profitable again as we were before pandemic and the U.S. wasn’t good for us in terms of economics at the end of the year so we were taking a reshape and refocusing of the whole company and we are, right now, just really, how do you say, I don’t want to say ‘focus’ so many times but it’s like, we are taking our position again and that’s the reason of why we didn’t do that show…
In December, AAA ran a show in Arizona and former UFC Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez was in action. When it comes to running a string of events in North America, Dorian feels AAA needs a partner who is aware of what markets to run that would be interested in the product. He added that they’ll keep trying in the U.S. until success is found.
We produced a show in December in Phoenix. In terms of attendance, in terms of the quality of the show was really, really good, everybody was happy. But in terms of economic costs, wasn’t as expected for us. So basically what we are looking for and that’s the kind of conversations we’re having right now, we need a partner and we need a partner in America who knows how to run live events for the Mexican market. So, there are not so many companies that do this in America. There are just a couple of them that are super successful so we are having conversations with them to know if there’s some stability to run some of kind of (unable to make out word) shows in certain markets to know the potential about it. It’s also, again, the chicken and the egg dilemma… To get a network that can give eyeballs to the property, or to launch our live event and a touring of 10 or I don’t know how many cities. So, we are working on that. We’re working on that. It’s always on our radar. But we have been there. It hasn’t been as successful as we would (like). But we will try, we will be, how do you say, trying and trying until we have success over there.
To read Roldán’s comments about AAA being in conversations with ‘major’ American talents for Triplemanía in August, head over to this link.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Business of the Business podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
