SirSmUgly

I spent quite a bit of time with DK Bananza yesterday. Quick impressions. I spent two hours smashing things up in the tutorial mine area. I would suggest that you don't do this! All the super-important unlockables, the skill tree, etc., gets unlocked with the first true level. Nintendo's first-party games have been killing it with their audio. Pauline screaming DEEEEEEE KAAYYYYYYYYYYY as you transform and then singing a catchy pop song while you smash the shit out of everything around you is incredibly satisfying. This game kept Super Mario Odyssey's doors to microlevels. I haven't run into a 2D level yet (and thankfully, no fucking minecarts...yet), but these levels do keep the deal where at least one moon/banana is hidden off the main path and you have to search around to find them. DK feels fun to play himself, mostly the smashing parts. His forward roll into a smash is nice. He can climb most (not all) things as well, but the climbing is just okay, especially the parts where you have to climb across things like you're using monkey bars. He's a little fidgety in those sections. They hid a ton of collectible shit in this game. Like with Odyssey, which has moons/kingdom-specific coins that are used to buy costumes, this game has bananas/kingdom specific fossils that are used to buy costumes. The big difference in Bananza is that the clothes offer buffs (quicker swimming speed, more treasure boxes found when smashing shit up, etc.). A skill tree and equipment that buffs your stats in a Donkey Kong platformer. I can scarcely believe it, but I like it. I hope we see this sort of system in the next 3D Mario. This game is addictive in many ways. It's not as good as Odyssey, but it has a vicious gameplay loop that Odyssey had maybe halfway developed. It's not just the bananas; it's not even the fossils. It's a) smashing the shit out of everything you can and b) number go up. That gold number just keeps going up, you know? You smash shit, you get more gold, and the number raises, and you just wanna smash more shit and get more gold. I don't even know if there is a point to having all this gold (outside of needing to gather it to transform). Doesn't matter, I want more gold like I'm playing an old-school Wario platformer. (They should make a modern 3D Wario platformer based on those old-school games, dammit!) Also: I'll sure say it's further beneath the surface than you expected! *goofy dad laugh* (Seriously, waiting for your next post when you have a sudden grand realization about something important after having spent a bit of time underground.)

I've spent some time playing RDR2 most days. I haven't left Chapter 2 of the game yet and am doing as much as I conceivably can as Arthur in this chapter before I speed along the rest of the game so I can slow down again and collect all the stuff in New Austin and the heavily-surveilled part of West Elizabeth as John. Mostly, now that I understand how to do a better job of getting perfect pelts, I've lately spent time gathering them and crafting outfits, saddles, satchels, etc. I had to go back to camp and get locked into a certain Strauss mission just to unlock the mission that opened up fishing, so now I'm doing that and only somewhat enjoying it because the fishing mechanics are sort of annoying. I guess the struggle of trying to catch legendary fish makes up for the easy legendary land animal hunts. I decided to use the internet more often for guidance, mostly so that I could figure out where to find a panther, but also to actually exterminate the rest of the Carolina Parakeets this time around (I don't feel as bad about this compared to killing bison in the first game because Carolina Parakeets were all dying of inbreeding anyway at this point in their existence). Today's happy little random thing: I was riding down to Annesburg after catching a legendary fish at the falls all the way up in the northeast part of the map when a cougar randomly popped out onto the path and tried to murder me. I popped off a shot as best as I could, but I only got the cougar in the leg before my horse bucked me to the ground. The cougar ran off a bit, and I was waiting for him to circle back and try to maul me when he collapsed to the ground. I got an artery. Not only was I able to study the cougar as it died to complete my compendium entry on cougars, but it yielded me a perfect pelt to boot. Happy accidents! I won't be done playing through this for months at the pace I'm going. It took me something like a half-year to do a third playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn that I started last year and ended two or three months ago. I like these slow replays of big open-world games that I love and will probably do this in the background more often. I'm thinking I'll play the first RD Redemption game on Switch after this. I'm sort of annoyed that I started playing RDR2 on PS4 right before rumors of an RDR2 Switch 2 port hit the internet, but whatever. Beyond that, I finished up what are probably the last five bots that Astro Bot will ever have to collect. It was nice practice for playing DK Bonanza over the next handful of weeks as I make my way through that. I'm also excited to strum a lute along with Atsu in Ghost of Yotei later this year. There are two hundred Peach Medallions in Mario Kart World! I'm at around ninety, but I'm thinking I'll come back to the free roam when it gets updates and I can use coins and Peach Medallions for things other than mostly-pointless stickers. I did start trying to perfect trophy the 100cc races, though, so I'll probably come back to that game occasionally. The OST is insanely good. I bought RetroMania Wrestling on sale the other night, and it's a decent enough WWF Wrestlefest clone. It took a bit to figure out how to win grapples. I'll probably talk about that more over in the wrestling games thread when I get in a bit more time with it during my travels this summer.

Season 1, Show 25: “The Way of the Drago” or Strategies for Fighting a Fire Bro It’s still too hot. Recap: The team unofficially named Dysfunction Junction (by me) managed to become the first team to capture the Lucha Underground Trios Tag Championships, but can they hold onto them? Here’s another pressing question if the first one wasn’t enough food for thought: Can Drago beat Prince Puma for the Lucha Underground Championship and avoid banishment from the Temple? I’m guessing not on that last one. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto lectures his dopey crew of flunkies on failing to beat Dysfunction Junction after the latter had already wrestled a match. He’s astonished that they blew a bunny (he actually uses the phrase "easy layup" and probably enjoys some Eurobasket in his spare time) and is aggrieved that they don’t seem motivated enough to win matches that they should win. To give them the proper motivation, he uses his key to take them to the cell holding his brother Matanza and tells his flunkies that if they fail him again, he’s going to toss them to his monstrous bro. I like Jeff Cobb as a worker and all, but it’s kind of meta-funny that the flunkies have these dramatic scared reaction shots to who is essentially revealed to be a masked Jeff Cobb. Rey Fenix opens our show tonight against Killshot, which is something that I wouldn’t mind receiving so that I don’t have to watch these dudes wrestle a match with one another. OK, I’m being a bit overdramatic, I'll admit. Anyway, here is where I’ll list only the things that I like about this match since you all know the things that I hate about this match (or at least I’ll try to, though if there’s an especially stupid spot, I’m going to type something about it). OK, they start by shaking hands to signal that Killshot’s a babyface and then do some nice counters into and out of wristlocks before picking up the pace, when Fenix dropkicks Killshot. Killshot bails to the floor, and Fenix fakes a dive before sliding through the ropes and landing a headscissors. Well, that’s what I get for giving up on this match before it started. That was a strong opening sequence. The match of course picks up into a dive-flips-‘n-counters bout that looks just a bit too choreographed, but I think it is a decent match for what it is. Fenix wins it with a weak running knee and the Rikishi Driver, which Fenix apparently calls a Fire Driver according to Striker. This was a perfectly acceptable opener in which Fenix was presented as a level or two above the promising babyface rookie Killshot. Seedy backstage interstitial: Does it feel to you like Dario Cueto has had it out for Drago since Konnan smuggled Drago across the border? It does to me…or maybe it’s that he sees something in Drago’s tenacity that he can use for his own gain. And why does Dario keep ambushing Drago when Drago’s in the pisser? Two things of note: First, Drago’s mask is red rather than blue-green tonight, and as we all know, red is the color of danger. Second, after wondering why he hasn’t received a “thank you” for giving Drago this Unique Opportunity, Dario decides that he doesn’t need the “thank you” because after motivating Drago to beat Puma with the threat of banishment, Puma’s loss will be all the “thank you” that Dario needs. Drago recognizes that Dario is using him and doesn’t like it; he hisses at Dario and stalks away. More seedy backstage interstitialin’: Prince Puma sits quietly in the dingy locker room, contemplating strategy before yet another title defense when Dario Cueto walks up to him and monologues. He tells Puma not to think twice about beating Drago and getting him banished, but to be a true warrior and send Drago packing to keep his gold. Dario, having done his work, walks toward the door…and is met by an angry Hernandez, who demands to know why Dario has booked him in a Triple Threat Match against Brian Cage and King Cuerno. Now, it’s important to note one thing here: When Hernandez asks if Dario’s got a problem with him, Dario thinks that Hernandez is mad about Dario talking to Puma and starts to explain himself before Hernandez cuts him off with a loud I DON’T CARE ABOUT PUMA, BRO! Puma, still sitting on a bench near his locker, hears this exclamation and takes careful note of it. Anyway, Dario once again manipulates a situation to create maximum discord between his foes. When Hernandez complains that the match will functionally be two-on-one against him, Dario says that he’ll motivate Cuerno and Cage to fight one another as well by awarding a title shot to the winner of the bout – and he adds a pointed barb cherry on top of the shit-talking sundae by noting that since Hernandez “is the only reason that Puma is still champion,” Hernandez does have a claim to at least a chance for a title shot. Puma is displeased to hear all this from his position out of view. In fact, Puma heard every word, but Hernandez didn’t know that Puma was even there because he cut Dario off before Dario could say so. That’s the sort of master manipulatin’ I expect from Dario as opposed to the more WWE-style hackneyed sudden rule change stuff he did last week. This segment confirms that LU’s bookers are making Puma look like a weak champ on purpose; Dario pointed it out specifically. That’s quite the choice when you’re trying to establish a young new wrestler as your title bearer! I’m not sure that Puma will end up any better off after this title reign than he was before it. We’ve got a Fatal Fourway coming up between everyone who got their arms snapped by Penta. I see where this is going. Argenis, Famous B, Ricky Mandel, and Vinnie Massaro all have wrapped arms. Anyway, this isn’t even a match, as I guessed it wouldn’t be; it’s just an excuse for Texano to run out here and destroy everyone in one of my least favorite WCW/WWF tropes around. I’d rather the guy just had a nice squash match against one of them as opposed to this bullshit run-in match destroying shit. Anyway, Texano is doing a brief stand-in to demand that Shawn Daivari meet him in the Temple to catch this ass-whipping. Seedy backstage interstitial: Marty “the Moth” Martinez’s creepy fuckin’ ass ambushes Dario Cueto outside the building while Dario’s in the middle of a phone call. He’s doing a “dorky fan who wants to be a wrestler” gimmick at this point, but he’ll evolve that into what I like to think of as a “depraved weirdo wrestling superfan who probably keeps bodies in his basement next to his prized '80s CMLL tapes” gimmick that I personally found to be excellent. Dario thinks Martinez is dreaming and quickly brushes him off before going back inside and making sure to gate the entrance behind him. Good move, Dario! The number one contendership Triple Threat Match is next: King Cuerno versus Brian Cage versus Hernandez. I just want to see someone nearly get their neck broken on a Border Toss. This is not a match type that I enjoy or appreciate for the most part, and it wasn’t announced as an elimination version, so I’m almost certainly not going to think much of the match itself. I’ll give it a chance to surprise me. As it turns out, Cage and Cuerno’s partnership breaks up pretty quickly when Cage tries a quickie roll-up on Cuerno. Hernandez takes the chance to bail and watch the action inside the ring while Vampiro muses on what Konnan will do if Hernandez wins this match and Puma retains the title later tonight. I wonder about this myself, buddy. It feels almost too obvious that Hernandez will win this as Cage and Cuerno have both had their shots at the gold already. Cage and Cuerno do focus on Hernandez when Hernandez is in the ring, but they both want to win, which is a long-term problem for their partnership. Hernandez hits an inverted Samoan Drop and then hits a smirk that should be a reaction JPG. That’s when, in a delightful twist to the proceedings, the Moth runs into the ring right in the middle of the action and screams MARTY THE MOTH IS HERE! Everyone kicks his ass and ejects him from the ring while Vampiro scoffs, “Did he just call himself the Moth?!” Hernandez wins the match right after that by dropkicking a still-distracted Cage to the floor and hitting Cuerno with a sloppy Dominator for three. I see that someone told Hernandez that he couldn’t kill dudes with Border Tosses, which is for the best and also deeply disappointing to me as a viewer. YEAH! Adventures in Interviewing with Vampiro: The announcer-slash-legend interviews Dysfunction Junction. Ivelisse comically rolls her eyes when Vampiro calls Son of Havoc his homeboy and daps him up. That was pretty funny. Ivelisse says that they won because she directed traffic as their team captain. Havoc notes that he’s the team captain because he won all the pinfalls. Angelico claims that they only won the titles because he leaped off the roof of Dario’s office. Ivelisse retorts that he just scored a basic crossbody, and when Havoc says that he thought it was a pretty cool move, she grits her teeth and responds, “No one asked you.” Heh heh heh. Vampiro tries to refocus the proceedings by asking if the title win has made their relationship any more solid. Angelico says that as great as it is to be champs, the answer is a resounding "no." Ivelisse is selling a leg injury; she’s in a cast. Vampiro asks her if she can go in a match anytime soon, and she says that she can. Havoc then makes a noble statement: “The three of us might not like each other, but we fight together.” Ivelisse promptly gets upset because she wanted to say that. The three squabble with one another as Vampiro wraps up the interview and leaves. Angelico wrapping up the segment by trying to remind Ivelisse that this is going to be aired to keep Ivelisse from losing her shit at Havoc was really funny. They really should do more of these Vampiro-led interviews. Alright, it’s main event time! Drago either wins the Lucha Underground Championship or loses access to the Temple tonight in his title match against Prince Puma (w/Konnan). My guess here is that Puma gets a big win without needing any help and that Drago briefly loses his way when ejected from the Temple, but is saved by El Dragon Azteca and added to Azteca’s motley crew of fighters. This season is building up to (I’m guessing because I don’t remember) Dario unleashing Matanza, maybe out of necessity or as a last-ditch way to keep control of the Temple, and the babyfaces having to figure out how to deal with that. I am very excited for that to happen. Puma and Drago have a match that is fine, but that isn’t for me. Lots of dives and counters and stuff. It’s better than tonight’s opener because the workers in this match are better than the ones in that match at this style. I have to give Fenix his props as a worker because he can sell a beating, project pain and weariness, and time comebacks perfectly when he’s working from underneath. When he’s the high-flying ace against another high-flyer is when I have a problem with his work, but in the right conditions, he’s actually pretty great. However, when it comes to LU, the heart of things is the story moreso than the in-ring work. This match needs to tell a story in which either Puma endures and survives and Drago has to cope with losing everything or Drago wins by any means necessary and Puma has to worry that his mentor Konnan will sideline him for Hernandez. The work is good enough to get us there, but it’s not the point. They do work some nice near falls in there, including on a nice Drago poisoned rana. The problem is that they don’t tell either story, and I think the story they’re instead choosing to tell is bad, frankly. There’s a ref bump in there, of course. Drago hits a Canadian Destroyer and gets a visual three count on the shitty-ass champ who can’t win a match cleanly. Hernandez enters the ring and barges into Drago, but only because Puma dies out of the way. Konnan demands that Puma finish off Drago and Puma reluctantly hits a spinning Rikishi Driver for three. Can Puma beat anyone at all ever by himself? There has to be a better way to make it clear that Konnan and Hernandez are shady fuckbois who are steering Puma wrong besides making Puma look like the worst champion in the history of champions. Drago leaves without further incident as the crowd chants THANK YOU, DRAGO at him… Seedy backstage interstitial…well, to completely without further incident. Drago comes across Dario Cueto and snarls WE WILL MEET AGAIN before stepping through the curtains and, as far as I can tell, spitting fire in a way that Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat would be envious of. Dario Cueto is a great character as usual, but I hope they get the belt off Puma as soon as possible. I don’t like how they’re choosing to book him. Their main title and its first holder look incredibly weak. Just put the gold on Mundo and have Matanza slaughter him at the end of the season, then have Puma finish off Hernandez and boot Konnan to the curb to salvage that whole mess. Despite my misgivings about Puma’s booking, I did enjoy this show, however. The wrestling was passable (per the usual), but most of the story and the talking was quite good. 3.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 24: “Trios Champions” or Triple Play 2015 It’s too hot to go outside, so why not do one more lucha today? Recap: Lucha Underground will crown its first Trios Tag Champions tonight. Pentagón Jr., meanwhile, was stopped from breaking Melissa Santos’s arm last week, but if we know anything about Penta and his tenacity leading him to finally break Super Fly’s arm, Santos is probably getting her arm snapped at some point. Seedy secret location interstitial: Black Lotus continues training with El Dragon Azteca. She’s eight weeks in and writes in her diary that Azteca keeps telling her that her anger only weakens her, though she firmly disagrees. That’s when Azteca enters her room without even knocking, geez, and has her kick the shit out of some mooks in stylized shadowy darkness. Whoever put these packages with Lotus together really loves them some Quentin Tarantino, huh? After Lotus finishes off the mooks, Azteca cuts the lights on and challenges her himself. She gets the better of him initially, but when she tells Azteca that she hates him, Azteca sadly shakes his head, immediately reverses their position, and then tells her that she’s not ready yet. Defeated by your own hatred once again, Lotus! Listen to the wise masked lizard guy! He clearly knows what he’s talking about! This interstitial was right up my alley, by the way. I dig this whole deal where Azteca is a wise babyface master who uses his wisdom and skill to help the other babyfaces out. We open with Sexy Star walking to the ring; Melissa Santos is once again available to do her duties as commentator after last week’s attack from Pentagón Jr. Let’s see if she can hold it together while introducing Penta. Yes, she can, but she rolls the hell on out of the ring when she’s done. It’s a nice touch that kind técnico Sexy Star supportively pats Santos on the shoulder as Santos books it to the floor. The crowd is like 52/48 in favor of Penta because the crowd, much like Dario or an ECW crowd, enjoys wanton violence over everything. Striker mentions Greg Valentine breaking Wahoo McDaniel’s leg as a comparison to Penta snapping arms, and I’ve been meaning to buy an I BROKE WAHOO’S LEG shirt. That shirt is on the Mt. Rushmore of wrestling t-shirts, I know that much. Macho Man’s lavender self-titled shirt, Austin 3:16, and the black-and-white nWo are the other three, IMO. You may disagree, but I am confident that I am objectively right about this. Penta toys with his opponent a bit, which could be a mistake as Star is known for her propensity at making comebacks and sneaking flash pinfalls. He even lazily kicks out of a Star pinfall and then wags his finger like he’s Dikembe Mutombo after sending an Eric Snow layup attempt into the fifteenth row. Penta pretty much beats the shit out of Star, but she continues to kick out. He tries to wrap her arm up, but she forward rolls out of danger and, of course, makes her comeback by turning a lazy airplane spin from Penta into a tornado DDT. Star follows up with a, uh, what do you call a plancha when it’s done from through the top and middle rope? A plancha has to be over the top rope, right? I don’t know. It’s a dive. She does a dive. It's a good dive. Both wrestlers have to beat the count and make it into the ring at nine; Star runs at Penta but gets powerbombed for two, then hit with a lungblower. Penta goes for the armbar again, but Star scrambles away. Hey, the bald dude with sunglasses is in the crowd again, and maybe it’s Shawn Daivari? It definitely looked like him there. Anyway, Penta doesn’t take Star seriously, which costs him victory when he shoots her in and she manages to tilt-a-whirl her way into lungblower position; she completes the move and, unlike Penta after he hit a lungblower on her, attempts a cover that earns her a three count. Dudes are going to learn someday to take Sexy Star more seriously and put her away when they have the chance, but until that day, she’s going to keep pulling rabbits out of hats. I wonder what sort of punishment Penta’s Dark Master will have for Penta after he took that L. I’m sure it will be callous and inspire him to break arms with more ruthless efficiency. Seedy backstage interstitial: Alberto El Patrón interrupts Johnny Mundo to wish him well in his Trios Tag Championship bout tonight before “remembering” that Mundo’s team lost last week and won’t be in that match. Alberto says that he watched the first episode of LU and says that seeing Mundo beat Puma there was an awesome sight, but notes that Mundo couldn’t beat Puma when it counted in Aztec Warfare. Alberto wonders if Mundo is just a lifelong choker; Mundo takes offense, of course, and Alberto tells him to relax like he didn’t just come into this dingy-ass gym to rile Mundo up in the first place. I am all for getting these WWE guys who fit better in that company off to the side to feud with one another, so I support this pairing. Wow, we are early in the show for the Trios Tag Championship Triple Threat Elimination Match. Team Cuerno (King Cuerno, Brian Cage, and Texano) wrestle Ryck’s Crew (Big Ryck, Willie Mack, and Killshot) and Dysfunction Junction (Son of Havoc, Ivelisse Velez, and Angelico). Obviously, this match is dumb until it gets to the point at which it gets down to two teams, so instead of talking through a bunch of spots in this stupid-ass match type, let me complain that this company didn’t just have eight teams in the tournament, working down to two teams in the finals. We couldn’t get Dario’s Crew in here to win a first round match against a few mooks before losing decisively to Ryck’s Crew just to reinforce Ryck’s dominance over them in the second round [Editor's note: Well, as I found out later, I wasn't the only one to remember that Dario's Crew existed]? This tournament feels suspiciously like a Nitro Era WCW tournament in that it is unfulfilling and would have been better had it been kept simple. I actually like a few of the workers in this thing: Mack, Cuerno, and Havoc are fun, and I also like Ryck as the heavy. He gets in there, hits his impact moves, serves as a great contrast for everyone running around and leaping everywhere. Striker manages to make a Rodney fucking Mack reference on PBP (“Call Teddy Long because the crowd is backing the Mack!”) that is so absurd, I can’t even be mad. Plus, Cage and Ryck face off and throw soupbones before Cage slams Ryck, which is unironically my favorite spot in the early going and a cooler spot to me than when he backflips onto everyone else at ringside. This feels disjointed and like a series of spots, but it is what it is with this particular match type, and at least I’m generally entertained despite not feeling into the flow of the bout. Yeah, that guy at ringside is definitely Daivari; he paintbrushes Texano disrespectfully when Angelico knocks Texano into him at ringside. Daivari then throws punches, chokes Texano, and then clears out the first few rows so that he can toss Texano into the stands. Striker suddenly seems to recognize Daivari, but shouldn’t he know him more directly? Weren’t they in the Dub at the same time? Anyway, Texano is food for a Killshot double-stomp back in the ring, and suddenly the odds-on favorites are eliminated! I know this company isn’t going to put the belts on Dysfunction Junction, are they? That would be hilarious, but they probably should stick the gold on Ryck’s Crew, especially because hiding Killshot on a team with a very good worker in Mack and a solid worker in Ryck is a good idea at this point. Ivelisse, by the way, has been selling a knee injury for the past five or six minutes at least. That seems fishy, doesn’t it? Meanwhile, Angelico gets isolated and can’t make a hot tag; Ryck goes so far as to toss Ivelisse back to the floor to make it harder for her to be a potential tag. Angelico works himself out of trouble by dodging or countering a number of corner charges from the other team, but when he tries to work his way out, Killshot catches him with a lungblower, the favorite throwaway move (and sometimes finisher) of everyone in this temple. Havoc hops into the ring without tagging so that he and Killshot can complete a visually messy Killshot C-4 spot for two. This is not my favorite pairing, to say the least. I like Havoc, but he loves his visually messy bullshit spots as much as anyone. Ivelisse suddenly climbs up top while Havoc, having regained control, goes up for an SSP. She dives right into Ryck’s arms, but Havoc hits a quick poisoned rana on Killshot, then dives into both of them, leaving Angelico free to grab Killshot and score a quick Fall of the Angels for three. The best part of this finish comes after the bell, when Dario Cueto steps out of his office with a look on his face that screams WTF, how did this fucking joke team that I put together for my amusement win the whole tournament?! It’s such a perfect facial expression that it almost makes this whole match – no, this whole tournament – worth it. Paraphrasing, Dario is like Good job, guys, but also there’s a secret team still in the tournament that I didn’t tell you about and also the match that you have to wrestle against them now for the trios titles is no disqualification LOL, so good luck! Then, of course, here comes Dario’s Crew as his backup plan just in case a team he didn’t like won the tournament. Meh, it would have been better if he shepherded them in subtly unfair ways right through the tournament and into the final as opposed to having them randomly show up here. There’s a giant arena brawl. It mostly stinks. Havoc practically no-sells being front suplexed across the railing so he can get up and do a dive. Angelico dives off the office and gets some huge air in a neat visual. The babyfaces do their best to make a comeback here and actually manage to function properly, with Ivelisse conducting twin dives from Havoc and Angelico that score pinfalls and end the match. I get it: They're trying to have this dysfunctional babyface team become functional by meeting the moment at multiple points of adversity, but the extra bit of adversity just felt cheap to me. Your mileage may vary (and I'd guess that many people would disagree with me here). I just think that this trios tournament was terribly booked. Dario’s evil is best when it is sneaky, when it is more subtly manipulative, when it is a slow burn, or when it is foreshadowed (as it was when Dario mentioned that everything in his Temple comes with a price before then giving Drago an LU title shot with the price of banishment for failure attached to it later in that episode). This is just hackneyed bullshit Vince McMahon Jr.-style heeling where he just openly changes the rules during the match out of nowhere. It’s entirely unsubtle even for pro wrestling. At least the babyfaces won, but I didn’t enjoy much about how it wrapped up. Dario subtly loading the tournament in favor of his crew would have been a billion times better. Meh episode, but I’m interested in Black Lotus, El Dragon Azteca, and both Dario Cueto and Penta’s Dark Master flipping their lids over taking unexpected losses! 2.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 23: “Fire in the Cosmos” or The Needler Time for more lucha. Sure, LU's shows are shorter and there are fewer of them to watch, but I’m still glad that it’s probably, hopefully not going to take me an ungodly long amount of time to actually make it through this thread. Recap: Would it really be a trios tag tournament here in Lucha Underground if Dario Cueto weren’t also using the lure of gold to ruin a bunch of people’s lives? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. Drago and Aerostar also careen toward a feud-ending deciding match in their best-of-five series. Seedy rooftop interstitial: Before that match, Aerostar contemplates his chances while staring into the night sky. Dario Cueto joins Aerostar on the roof and tries to ruin Aerostar’s moment of Zen by telling him that while he gets his inspiration from the cosmos, Drago gets inspiration from somewhere much darker. Dario then warns Aerostar that Drago will dabble in all sorts of dark wrestling arts to beat Aerostar before suggesting that Aerostar make a wish on a shooting star to help himself tonight, though he notes that even if granted his wish, “everything in [his] Temple has a price.” And everybody’s gonna pay. Because the Million Euro Man always gets his way, YAHAHAHAHAHA! No, he didn’t say the rest of the stuff after the direct quote, but I think he totally implied it. King Cuerno, Texano, and Cage are in it to win it against Prince Puma, Johnny Mundo, and Hernandez in tonight’s Trios Tag Team Championship tournament. Well, one team is on the same page and the other one is not, so I wonder what’s going to happen? Striker says that the winner here will compete against the other winners next week for the title. Wait, we’ve got only three more teams including the winner of this match. We’re not getting an eight-team tournament and the finals will be a Triple Threat? That stinks if true. Hernandez and Cuerno trade chops. Hernandez is just havin’ fun out there, blessing Cuerno before chopping him and rocking him like a baby when Cuerno tries a crossbody and gets caught. He’s actually incredibly cocky, celebrating while Cuerno tags Texano and still celebrating when Texano attacks him from behind. Texano doesn’t fare much better, though. Hernandez recovers and then tags in Mundo, who dominates and then tags in Puma, who does not dominate. Puma gets yanked over to the heel corner and eats a whole lot of kicks. Puma does make a comeback in short order and kick his way out of trouble, then tags Mundo in. The match breaks down; Hernandez comes in and wrecks shop, even boosting Mundo into Cuerno and Texano for a dropkick. Vampiro is impressed because he didn’t think a team with two people who associate with Konnan could possibly work very well together. I hope that Vampiro ripping Konnan on color each week leads somewhere interesting. The fun has to come to an end for the heels at some point, though, and when the match settles back down, Mundo gets isolated and beaten down, but only for like a couple of minutes if that. The heels are as surprisingly bad at combinations as the babyfaces are good at them. Cage and Cuerno get their wires completely crossed; Cuerno ends up superkicking Mundo, who makes a hot tag to Puma. The match breaks down again; Hernandez hits a dive over the top rope to Cage and Texano on the floor. Cuerno tries to follow with an Arrow From Hell, but Puma and Mundo trip him, then hit dives of their own to the floor. The babyfaces have the heels absolutely flummoxed. There’s a dumb spot with a bunch of corner charges in the same corner that looks contrived, but it should end the match because after a series of charges, Puma hits a springboard 450 on Cage for 2.9 that I totally bought as the finish to the point that the match continuing felt like excess. I guess the heels have to win to continue the story, but that spot was really best used in a match where the babyfaces were winning. Finally, Texano grabs the bullrope, wraps it around his fist, knocks out Mundo, then tees off on Puma. Cuerno quickly hoists the KO’d Puma onto his shoulders and scores a Thrill of the Hunt for three. Dario Cueto steps out of his office and looks thrilled about the result. The dipshits in the crowd WHAT their asses off while Dario demands that one member of each of the three teams in the finals get out here to have a Triple Threat Match. Ugh. As Cage, Willie Mack, and Son of Havoc enter the ring, Vampiro poses a salient pair of questions: “Why is Dario Cueto doing this? What is his fetish with this type of weirdness?” You could ask that about practically any wrestling promoter, huh? Anyway, this is a Triple Threat, so I’ve sort of checked out. There are some nice spots, Mack and Havoc having some aesthetically pleasing moves in general in here, but there’s a lot of micro one-on-one matches while the other guy lays around that completely disinterests me. There is a cool spot where Havoc has a cross-arm breaker on Cage, and Mack crushes Cage’s arm with a senton splash, though he follows up on Havoc instead of Cage for some reason when Cage should have taken the most damage from the splash. There’s also a Tower of Doom spot. I hate most Tower of Doom spots, so there’s that. I don’t know, let me just tell you the finish: Mack rolls out of the ring to avoid Havoc’s SSP attempt, but Cage is right there to bash the still-disoriented Mack into the railing, then hops in the ring and quickly downs Havoc with a Weapon X for three. That was a nice finish to a disjointed match. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario next ambushes Drago in the restroom. He gives Drago credit for winning the last time he asked Drago to impress him (way back in Season One, Show Four). Of course, Dario says that Aerostar is gunning for him, wants that Unique Opportunity, etc., and leaves Drago staring at himself in the mirror, his tongue slithering in and out as he pensively considers his reflection. Pentagón Jr. doesn’t have a match tonight, but he tries to do us all a favor by putting Melissa Santos on the shelf and maybe forcing Dario Cueto to hire a better ring announcer. After making her tell everyone that Penta is dedicating his next victim to his Dark Master, Penta knocks her down and tries to snap her arm. Vampiro considers getting in the ring to stop it, but before he can, Sexy Star runs out and, in what is a total babyface move to everyone but me, saves Santos. Star calls Penta an asshole and tells him that he’s crossed the line tonight. She’s one hundred percent right. I’m the heel here. Not as much as Penta is, but still. Hooray! Santos is too emotionally on edge to come back out here and ring announce, so Dario (who is smirking while he announces that she is “a little bit shaken” and says those words like he thinks she’s a fucking wuss) does the ring announcing himself for the final match in the Drago/Aerostar best-of-five series. Dario is such a dickhead, man. What a jerk. I love it, but also, he can get fucked. Though he is a considerably better ring announcer than Melissa Santos. Then again, I like approximately two ring announcers: Howard Finkel and Gary Michael Cappetta. Everyone else is either “fine” or “bad” to me. I have high standards, dammit! I’m not super into the match, all of which in this series have been perfectly watchable. What I want to see is the finish and the aftermath. I want to know what Dario’s Unique Opportunity is. I want to see if we get an immediate heel turn from one of these fellas or if we get a slower burn. The story around the match rather than within it is what I care most about. However, the match itself is once again decent. Dario sits ringside and watches this match with a look on his face like he’s Vince McMahon Jr. watching Stacy Keibler begin a table dance. Aerostar’s trust fall dive is bananas. Why would anyone do that spot? It’s a good thing the Miz isn’t in this Temple or by now, he would have stepped out of the way out of an Aerostar trust fall rather than actually trying to catch him. The match is slower paced and once again starts on the mat; Striker and Vampiro do a good job of saying that having wrestled each other so often has piled up nagging injuries for both of them, and further, that they’re trying not to make an early match-costing mistake. The production truck catches Drago completely whiffing on a side kick that Aerostar stumbles back into the corner on, so yeah, the illusion that commentary tried to build simply evaporates in an instant. Eventually, Dario grins with some type of sick hope as Drago finds a table under the ring; Vampiro (rightly) accuses him of having placed that table on purpose in the hopes that it would be used. They tease a table break that ends with Aerostar splattering himself while hitting a springboard splash onto Dario and through the table. This guy smashes the shit out of his face. Now, while I’m at this point in the bout, I should note that some bald dude with sunglasses has been shown intermittently in the crowd. Striker mentioned him twice without saying his name; this time, after the table dive, we get a shot of him exclaiming, “That’s what I want to see! Yes!” about the table spot. I feel like maybe I should know or recognize this guy, but I’m searching the databanks in my brain and coming up with nothing. We’re nearing the end of the match and the series; Drago scores a flipping DDT, then gets caught in that Oklahoma Roll-ish style pinfall that Striker calls both “The Dragon’s Lair” and “The Tail of the Dragon,” though the second one sounds better than the first if you ask me. Anyway, that gets three for Drago. He helps Aerostar up and they buddy up, shake hands, and hug. I’m sure Dario hates it, so let’s see how he ruins everything with his Unique Opportunity. Here's Dario to offer Drago that Unique Opportunity: Hey, it’s a normal opportunity in which he gets an LU Championship shot at Prince Puma! Well, that’s nice. I am happy that Dario didn’t do any fucky-fuck bullshit to ruin this mome—wait, hold on, Dario adds the stipulation that if Drago loses that title shot, he’s banned from the Temple forever. Ah, there it is! This felt like a bit of a placeholder show outside of progression on Drago/Aerostar, and it didn’t have a match that I would ever want to watch again, but it was pleasant enough. Dario Cueto’s show-long machinations (with an assist from Penta being a complete prick) carried the show once more. 3.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 22: “Mask vs. Mask“ or We’ll create a world without friends where only the lonely will play! Let’s LUCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Recap: Sexy Star and Pentagón Jr. have beef after the results of last week’s trios tag tournament match. Havoc and Ivelisse have beef because they are terrible relationship partners for one another, but they’ll be trying to earn a result in this week’s trios tag tournament match. Outside of trios tags, what’s the deal with Hernandez, Konnan, and Puma? We’ll probably find out more about their relationships with one another tonight. Seedy backstage interstitial: Speaking of Prince Puma, he and Konnan have been called to Dario Cueto’s office because Dario wants Puma, as his Lucha Underground Champion, to be a part of the Trios Tag Championship tournament. His outward reason, which is reasonable, is to bring prestige to the Trios Tag titles. His inward reason, as I am guessing here, is to overload the young Puma with a bunch of challenges so that he’s ripe for the picking at the point where Dario can put a preferred challenger for the LU Championship in front of him. Dario tells Puma to find two partners to face the team he’s assembled. Konnan wants to know who is on that opposing team, and Dario mentions King Cuerno as the head of the team, but doesn’t give any information about who Cuerno is teaming with. Then, as Puma and Konnan leave to find a couple of tag partners, Dario casually mentions that Puma’s LU Championship will be on the line against Cuerno tonight. C’mon, Dario, we all knew the catch was coming. Konnan knew it, I knew it, even Puma looked like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop from behind that mask that he’s wearing. Dario looks very pleased with himself, though! Let’s open the action with a match in the Trios Tag Championship tournament! Son of Havoc, Ivelisse, and Angelico can barely stand one another, so let’s see how they do in a tag tournament that is built upon working well together to advance. Actually, they have a chance here because the opposing team is Drago, Aerostar, and Fenix. Drago and Aerostar aren’t on the best of terms, after all. Man, Dario is a terrible booker, and I mean “terrible” as “incites terror in his employees” and not as “Vince Russo trying to put together a three-hour Nitro.” Fenix and Angelico try to kick one another as I stop here to point out that Catrina, having gotten what she needed from Fenix, is nowhere to be seen with him. Catrina is the only person in the Temple as wily as Dario Cueto and in fact might be far cleverer and more devious than even he is. This match is sort of what it is. Vampiro makes a Bill “Superfoot” Wallace reference on commentary because Vampiro is actually delightful a lot of the time and I need to once again apologize to him for my faulty memory about his general color commentary performance. There is an insanely dopey double-stomp spot where Aerostar gets on Fenix’s shoulders to try and do a double-stomp that doesn’t really land. Put Fenix and Aerostar in the same ring, and of course they’ll do some overcomplicated spot that looks like absolute fucking shit. These fellas borderline on unwatchable for me when they’re on offense. Look, all I care about at this point is the relationships between the teams and the finish. Drago and Aerostar fight over a pinfall after that incredibly shitty assisted double-stomp spot; Fenix has to break them up. Ivelisse slaps Havoc in the face to tag in. Aerostar should be credited for doing a nice job as a base for Ivelisse’s offense. Everyone dives onto everyone else. I appreciate that everyone is working hard, even if I don’t really enjoy most of the moment-to-moment work. I do enjoy Ivelisse dropping off the apron as Havoc dives to make a tag. Ivelisse rolls out, but the other team can’t take control because Drago and Aerostar are disrespectfully slapping one another in the face. When Drago finally charges Havoc, Havoc dodges, kicks Drago in the head, and lands a Shooting Star Press for three. Ivelisse, who is making her way up the stairs toward the locker room and has her back turned to the ring, turns around with a stunned look on her face when she hears Melissa Santos announce her team as the winners. Havoc stands in the ring, drinking in the glory of victory, as members of the crowd near Ivelisse point at her and chant THAT’S WHAT YOU GET, which is fucking hilarious. These crowds are usually insufferable to me, so I have to give them credit for cracking me up. Ivelisse, of course, plays all this up, looking just like the typical person who broke up with someone and then became sick to their stomachs that the person they left got an immediate glow-up. Angelico makes me laugh too because he’s out on the floor, having been battered by Fenix, and he looks confused by Santos’s announcement having not seen what happened, before suddenly deciding to just go with it; he smirks and raises his arm in victory like he had anything to do with it. This odd trio team kills me. Dario Cueto purposely loading this tournament with a bunch of teams that are dysfunctional partly because it amuses him is brilliant in its petty evilness. That’s what I like the most about pro wrestling heelery: When heels are evil not necessarily to acquire something or even to cause wanton pain and destruction, but simply because they’re petty as fuck. Seedy backstage interstitial: Konnan interrupts Prince Puma’s pull-up routine to tell him that he’s corralled Hernandez to team with Puma. That’s when Johnny Mundo rolls up and informs Konnan that Puma went and recruited him as a tag partner. Konnan is aghast and once again warns Puma against trusting Mundo after Mundo leaves. Let’s see how this Hernandez/Puma/Mundo team rolls. It should be the favorites to win this tourney, maybe? I don’t know; there are still two-and-two-thirds teams left to reveal. Super Fly faces Sexy Star in our second match of the night, and of course, Striker notes that Dario Cueto booked this match because he’s not a fan of babyfaces being friends. See? Evil is petty! Before they can even wrestle, Dario pops out of his office and demands that these two show each other NO MERCY (DIG DIGGITY DOG). To encourage them to show each other no mercy, he makes this match an impromptu mask-versus-mask match, which is the sort of violation of lucha tradition that disgusts Striker, Vampiro, and myself. Masks are only put on the line in blood feuds, dammit! Dario is out here hotshotting random mask matches just like…wait…just like Vince Russo! Anyone who is trying to copy Vince Russo’s hotshot booking strategy just to ruin his wrestlers’ lives is the most evilest evil person to ever do evil. Vince McMahon Jr., eat your heart out! I have to say here (while Fly and Star work a couple holds) that Vampiro’s exhortations about Dario as a cultural interloper who is failing to understand or respect the Lucha culture are wonderfully done. This show is shaping up to be a perfect example of a show where I am not that into the matches themselves on their faces, but the storyline and character-driven developments threaded through each of them amplifies them and makes them more than what they would be if they were just a few matches thrown together so we could see some moves. Well, maybe it’s not the perfect example of that type of show – I’ll always consider WWF Survivor Series 1998 as the perfect example of that type of show – but it’s a great example of what that sort of show successfully looks like. I’ve mentioned Vince Russo a lot in terms of comparing his real-life booking to Dario’s kayfabe booking, but I’ll mention him here as a way to show how his shoot booking philosophy might actually translate into a consistently legitimately good wrestling show. LU is probably the most refined version of Russo’s core crude idea about what an ideal pro wrestling show should be (though LU actually does care about the wrestling and not only about the storyline, of course). This match is good in the sense that it advances the story even if the moves aren’t some super-amazing athletic sequence. This match is much more than the sum of its moves. After that initial cautious exchange, Fly suddenly and nastily boots Star right in the face, deciding to turn things up a bit so that he can save his mask and his honor. Star makes a comeback with a kick and a shitty sitout facebuster, so Fly slaps the shit out of her. I’m sure that Dario is happy to teach Star what he sees as a valuable lesson; don’t save someone from injury out of the silly idea of “friendship.” Of course, what makes Star such a good babyface is that she is stalwart in doing the right thing anyway. Fly sets Star up in the corner and slaps her, but he is languid about following up and eats a diving rana, a diving arm drag, and a top-rope crossbody to the floor. Poor Sexy Star is such a sub-mediocre worker. She barely gets off her feet to hit a Codebreaker that not even the cameraperson can really hide. Moves do still matter to some degree; if Star were even a solid worker, this match would be better because the illusion of close competition would be better maintained. Super Fly retakes control and hits a powerbomb, but he goes up for a moonsault and badly whiffs; Star quickly wraps Fly in a La Magistral and gets a quick three count to escape with her mask. After a commercial break, Super Fly must unmask! Fly makes up with Star as she apologetically consoles him. Fly gets on his knees and tells Star that she must take his mask as is tradition for the victor of a mask-versus-mask match. This is an excellent match and segment because it is teaching fans how mask-versus-mask matches work from a cultural standpoint. Star reluctantly takes Fly’s mask and they embrace…which is when Pentagón Jr. rushes the ring, shoves Star to the floor, and breaks the unmasked Super Fly’s arm anyway, just a week later than he planned to. What a fucking heel move! This was near-perfect professional wrestling even though it was full of imperfect moves. OK, so this is a one-on-one match for Prince Puma’s (w/Johnny Mundo and Hernandez) LU Championship. Puma wears a puma headdress on his way to the ring as a response to his opponent King Cuerno wearing the buck headdress. Striker and Vampiro spend time on commentary discussing whether or not Puma taking so many title matches will prevent him from being a long-term champion a la CM Punk, Bruno Sammartino, or Nick Bockwinkel. Boy, those three examples represent three distinct levels of worker, don’t they? Vampiro says that those three, while great historical champions (debatable for one of those names!) cannot compare to Puma, who is the future. I've typed this before, but I quite enjoy these little conversations between Striker and Vampiro that place LU within a wider history of pro wrestling. We find out King Cuerno’s trios partners for next week when Cuerno calls them out as backup: Brian Cage and Texano. OK, I take it back: Cuerno, Cage, and Texano are the favorites for this tournament, not only because of their kayfabe talent, but also because it’s clear that Dario Cueto is backing them. In a nice little pre-match taunt, Cuerno kneels and rubs the mat as if he were a tracker checking the ground for the trace of his prey. That’s a creative taunt! Cuerno lost a cage match to Mundo last time we saw him, but is getting this title shot, which would bother me more except that a) Dario is capricious and b) it’s not like Puma has exactly covered himself in glory as the champion. However, it does feel wrong to have these two in a title match. Maybe that’s part of the problem here; it feels like this should be Mundo vs. Cage and not Puma vs. Cuerno for the title based on the booking. Puma tries to dive onto Texano and Cage at ringside, but they catch him and launch him into the air for a Cuerno neckbreaker, which is a spot that gave me a real kick. Mundo and Hernandez try to intervene, so Texano backs them off by flicking his bullwhip. Meanwhile, Cuerno pantomimes slitting Puma’s throat like he’s Arthur Morgan killing a lassoed bighorn ram. Cuerno puts Puma back in the ring and alternates between taking out Puma’s wheels and continuing to damage his neck. Man, I wish Cuerno were the champ. Cuerno stalks Puma, kicks him, and then redirects the ref to Mundo and Hernandez while Cage and Texano beat the shit out of Puma from their position on the floor. Puma having the deck stacked so heavily against him makes his comebacks feel suitably earned, and he manages one that culminates in a kick to Cuerno’s head and a plancha to the floor. Mundo gets in the ring and then hits a wild fucking dive to Texano and Cage when the latter two come to check on Cuerno. I mean, he just crashed out. It was amazing! Hernandez and Cage face off before Cage helps Cuerno back into the ring. Notably, Hernandez doesn’t do that; he chooses to instead hype Puma to get up and re-enter the ring himself. Interesting. Puma tries a springboard move that Cuerno is supposed to counter into a press slam, but they botch it and keep moving right along with Cuerno losing control again and eating a spinning sitout powerbomb for two. Puma follows with a springboard 450, but misses; Cuerno hooks Puma from behind and scores two rolling Germans and shifts position to hit a vertical suplex for a two count of his own. Cuerno thinks he’s got Puma where he wants him and sets Puma up for a Thrill of the Hunt. This is the point at which things get all fuckety (in a good way). Cage gets on the apron on one side of the ring, and Hernandez does the same on the other side. The ref goes over to Cage and Hernandez claps Cuerno’s ears while Puma superkicks Cage off the apron on the other side. Puma returns to the wobbled Cuerno, knocks him down with a kick, and then yells at Hernandez for physically interfering. Puma follows up by hitting a 630 Senton and pinning Cuerno, but he is heated at Hernandez for interfering, and I get it considering that Puma seems to be unable to earn a big win without a bit of outside help. Puma does look like a weak champion, especially after winning his best-of-three series with Cage via a DQ where Cage destroyed him, a loss in which Cage destroyed him, and then a win in which Konnan had to intervene. Maybe that’s the long-term story bookers want to tell, though I don’t know that it’s the story I’d tell with a young new champion whom I wanted to push heavily. Anyway, it’s clear from this match that they’re going with Puma wanting to show that he’s a legit champion who can stand on his own two feet. While Puma and Hernandez have an animated discussion, Cage attacks them from behind, and all six men brawl with one another as the show ends. Man, it looks like every team in the tournament except for Ryck’s Crew and Cuerno/Cage/Texano have beef with one another in some way. Dario Cueto truly hates friendship, doesn’t he? If the in-ring were slightly better, this show would have gotten the full five, but as it was, it put on three matches that presented excellent character and story development. What a pleasure this show was to watch! 4.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Good! I am glad that someone is doing that move on television. Uh huh. And so why didn't you link to the design or share a picture or something?

Season 1, Show 21: “Uno! Dos! Tres!,” or New Titles: Triple Deluxe It’s time for a new set of feuds… Recap: …which means that we see Ryck end his feud with his former flunkies by getting revenge. We also see the one feud still going from the past few weeks, which is the Aerostar/Drago best-of-five series with Aerostar up two victories to one. I note that looking ahead at the episode list, Drago’s name shows up a couple of times in the titles, at least once in an ominous context. Seedy backstage interstitial: Big Ryck has a new crew with him as he enters Dario’s office that includes Willie Mack (yeah!) and that fucking dork Killshot (boo!). I hate to type it because I usually like to big up people from the Pacific Northwestwhen I can, but I’m going to do it anyway: Swerve Strickland is a fucking cornball. I have no idea how he got over in AEW. Wait, I do know: Prince Nana and what is a very good theme song with a catchy hook even if his rapping mostly sucks. I vividly recall a mediocre flippy Killshot/AR Fox feud that happens a season or two from now that, almost needless to say, I am not looking forward to revisiting! I could just be sensitive here, but Dario seems concerned about seeing so many black folks in the same place…or, maybe if I can be fairer to him, it’s that Ryck and his boys seem to think that Dario ordered the flunkies' cigar attack on Ryck. Dario tries to bargain his way out of this compromising position by putting Ryck, Mack, and Killshot in his new Lucha Underground Trios Tag Championship tournament. Ryck puts his hand out. Not to shake on it, though. Just to get paid. Mack and Killshot also demand payment before they perform, which they get. Killshot should have to give his money to Mack until he does something entertaining to earn it himself. Angelico is in the ring to open up tonight’s action; he faces Johnny Mundo. At this point, you can guess what I’m going to say about this match, so I’ll tell you if anything happens that surprises me in a positive way. Vampiro points out that both men are uniquely kick-heavy for professional wrestlers, which is the second thing I thought once I saw that this was the matchup. I liked that. Otherwise, this is pretty solid, especially considering the participants. I think they work it properly to indicate that Angelico is a good prospect, but two levels beneath the veteran Mundo. Vampiro suggests that maybe Mundo came into this match relaxed while Angelico prepped knowing that he was going to get his big shot, which I think is good framing for this bout. Angelico does hit his running Razor’s Edge (into the buckles, which seems less impactful than just burying the guy on the mat), but Mundo gets his boot on the ropes when Angelico covers. Angelico keeps quickly rolling away whenever he finds himself in position for an End of the World. He does it once, twice, but not a third time when Mundo blocks a top-rope rana with a powerbomb that dumps Angelico perfectly into position for an End of the World that ends the match. That match was laid out quite nicely and hit every goal it aimed for even if I wasn’t a fan of a lot of the work itself. Hype video and formal debut: Hey, it’s Black Lotus! She does a voice over to remind us what happened to her, what with her locating Matanza Cueto and then being kidnapped by the green lizard masked man and all. She says that she’s glad she got kidnapped by the green lizard masked man, who is finally given a name on television all those episodes after we first saw him at the very beginning of the debut episode of LU: El Dragon Azteca. She notes that it would have been a mistake to try and kill Matanza then and there, though of course, she does not say Matanza’s name yet, and I only know who it is because I saw this a decade ago. Black Lotus tells us that El Dragon Azteca is a descendant of one of the original Aztec tribes and that he was also there when Matanza murdered her parents (!!!). Azteca apparently is bringing Lotus under his wing and teaching her lucha libre, as that is the only art which can truly kill a monster like Matanza. Lotus basically says that she'll be off television for a while because she is busy training with Azteca so that she can finally enact revenge on Matanza. OK, the grand narrative about the underlying intrigue at the Temple of which El Dragon Azteca and Dario Cueto seem to be the two flashpoints is one of my favorite things about this season. If a viewer was paying attention and could recall Azteca helping Prince Puma fight off mooks from way earlier in the season, they’d realize that those little vignettes with Puma were flash forwards…and that Konnan wasn’t anywhere to be seen in them. So what’s the story here? I assume Konnan gets gravely injured or killed off by some people that maybe Dario sent to put him out, and Dario also sends those people to finish off Puma, but the ever watchful Azteca saves him. Or does Puma break away from Konnan, so Konnan sends those mooks at Puma? And is Azteca creating a sort of LU Avengers team to go after Dario “Thanos” Cueto and his associates? I don’t recall a huge overarching battle for (or within) the Temple happening, but it would be very cool if that’s what we get. In any case, the slow seeding of El Dragon Azteca into the show as this watchful babyface mentor has been extremely well done. Seedy backstage interstitial: Alberto El Patrón gladhands Johnny Mundo and gives Mundo praise for his victory earlier tonight; Mundo responds by mocking Alberto for only beating Texano…again…and implies that Alberto is ducking the top competition in the Temple. Then he pretends to be joking, but he obviously wasn’t, the smarmy dick. Alberto retorts by alluding to their overlapping time in WWE and muses about Mundo dropping off the wrestling map in 2011, implying that Mundo couldn’t hang in the Dub. Mundo hypes himself by declaring that he’s the face of Lucha Underground (ugh) and Alberto agrees that he is in a tone that says that he’s planning to beat the face of Lucha Underground and thus become the new face of Lucha Underground (ugh!). I love all these seedy backstage interstitials: Dario Cueto pitches Sexy Star on joining a team and participating in his new trios tag title tournament, and oh, I see, Ryck is on the other side of that bracket. Dario sees a chance to toss a wedge between any possibility that Ryck and Star might make a closer alliance. Dario notes that Star’s former partners, Pimpinela Escarlata and Mascarita Sagrada are still out injured from when his crew attacked them, so he went out and booked Star with two new partners: Super Fly and, uh-oh, Pentagón Jr. The fix is in, huh? Sexy Star clearly realizes that the fix is in and stands up from Dario’s desk, wordlessly and angrily turning to leave, but Dario is too evil just to leave it at that and has to more directly to the fact that he’s setting her up to get her arm broken: “Just think Sexy, with a partner as skilled as Pentagón Jr, this could be your big break.” Then he cuts a malicious smile at the departing Sexy Star. This guy is an absolute animal! The storyline stuff has been excellent tonight, just excellent. We come back to the ring, and I know that we probably need to have some wrestling here on this wrestling show, but I personally would be fine with more storyline setup until the main event. Anyway, Drago faces Aerostar in the fourth match of their series; Drago has to win to stay alive. Vampiro and Striker make sure to point out that these are two gallant técnicos once again before the match, almost as if one of these técnicos might end up breaking bad at some point. I like Drago, but I’m not the biggest fan of Aerostar, though he has a couple of nice aerial moves. Striker talking about Drago needing to prove himself and Vampiro admitting that though he likes Drago, the guy badly needs a big victory only adds to my sense that maybe Drago is headed toward a heel turn. Also, I have the benefit of seeing that there’s an upcoming episode titled “The Desolation of Drago,” which of course someone watching in 2014 would not have. What I’m saying is that there is a ton of foreshadowing here! This match is fine and quite brief. Drago's offense is somewhat more aggressive than normal. The commentators notice. Drago very nicely gets a seated abdominal stretch on Aerostar after back body dropping him, then simply rolls backward and pins Aerostar’s shoulders to the mat to quickly steal the fall and tie the series at two apiece. The post-match congratulatory handshake goes poorly, as Aerostar yanks Drago in and they go forehead-to-forehead with one another. Seedy backstage intersitital: Dario Cueto is such a shithead! He has Angelico, Son of Havoc, and Ivelisse in his office, where he excoriates Angelico for not being able to get a big win over Mundo, Havoc for eating tons of losses before managing to beat Angelico last week, and Ivelisse for…well, let me allow him to say it: “And you [Ivelisse], well, you got dumped by [Havoc], which is pretty embarrassing.” Ivelisse does what any mature person would do in this situation, which is declare that she actually was the dump-er and not the dump-ee. Anyway, Dario says that all three of them suck as singles wrestlers, so they’re now a trios tag team entered into his sham of a tournament that I am sure he is loading for some trios team of his preference – and I don’t mean his current crew of flunkies when I say that, but maybe Dario’s got less imagination than I think. I doubt it, though. Nobody says anything as they file out, sullenly leaving to prepare to face their opponents next week, except for Havoc: “For the record, I dumped her.” Do I even need to type that this segment was great? It’s obvious that it was, right? As the trios team of Big Ryck, Willie Mack, and Killshot come to the ring, Striker baffles Vampiro with a cartoon reference that I actually don’t get either even though I must be about the same age as Striker. Vampiro blowing Striker’s reference off is hilarious, though. Sexy Star and Super Fly come to the ring together, but Pentagón Jr. walks out after them on his own. Once again, I am reminded that the commentators don’t see any of the seedy backstage interstitials because Vampiro is confused as to why only two people are walking to the ring for a trios tag tournament before Penta walks out (to cheers and CERO MIEDO chants, of course). Before the match, Penta runs down his tag team partners (a fan in the crowd who likes everyone on the team and doesn't agree with Penta that they are “weak” partners: HEY, HEY, C’MON NOW). As disappointed as that fan was, he is probably pretty hyped that Penta thinks he’ll just win the trios titles himself. Star and Fly try to shake hands with Penta, but he blows them off. This crowd is conflicted because they like Penta, Star, Fly, and apparently also Mack, who gets a chant as he squares off with Penta. I am a fan of Willie Mack because I love chubby dudes who are sneakily athletic in my pro wrestling. He and Penta also work really well together in this opening sequence. Penta slaps the shit outta this guy. The crowd wants him to do it again, so being the friendly and accommodating guy that he is, he does it. The first one was better, though. Then Mack hits Penta with a Pounce, period, and gets two. Please tell me that some dude on a major pro wrestling show in America is doing the Pounce as at the very least a signature move if not a finisher. Penta eventually scores a nice leapover lungblower off a Mack corner charge, then tries an arm breaker that Mack escapes with a trip. Huh, who knew that Penta and Mack would have such good chemistry? Mack tags out to Killshot as Super Fly forcibly tags himself in, pissing off Mr. “I’ll Win the Titles Myself” Penta. Well, now I gotta watch Swerve fucking Strickland. Shit. Though right now, I’m watching Strickland versus Sexy Star, which is actually somehow pretty entertaining. She chops the shit out of him, so he back elbows her and then chops the shit out of her in response (that same fan from earlier, disappointed: “That’s not right!”). Hey, Star doesn’t want to be treated like a woman or a man; she wants to be treated for just who she am. Ryck tags in and presses Star onto her two partners, then directs his partners to hit dual dives over the top rope and onto the two fellas on the other team. Ryck loads up for a dive and runs the ropes right into a surprise Sexy Star crossbody. This match is so dumb, and I mean that as a compliment. Striker calls Ryck a “one-eyed T-Money Terry Crews, which reminds me that he and Vampiro compared Mack to JYD and Bobo Brazil. I haven't seen enough of Bobo to comment, but Mack doesn’t wrestle anything like JYD! I guess they do have somewhat similar body types, though. This match has been pretty fun, honestly, even though of course as I type that, Killshot hits a visually unclear move that looks like it should hurt him, but somehow it hurts Penta. This guy sucks. He gets himself hit with double-knees, but Penta’s the one who has to sell it. He’s young here, so maybe he doesn’t execute these types of stupid “creative” move ideas anymore. I hope not. Shortly after that, Penta boosts a sprinting Star into the air, where she perfectly lands in position for a top-rope rana on Killshot; Super Fly follows with a Frog Splash and pin that is broken up at two by Ryck. That spot ruled so hard. Ryck and Penta end up in the ring together, where he does what countless people in WCW should have done to Ultimo Dragon: He big boots Penta right in the face when Penta does a headstand on the top buckle. They end up outside the ring; inside the ring, Mack and Killshot isolate Fly and hit him with a running brainbuster/diving stomp combo that earns them a victory and moves them along in the LU Trios Tag Championship tournament. This show needs more trios tags in general and I’m glad that these titles will exist because they really should get one trios tag a night in on this show to feature more workers. After the match, an angered Penta prepares to snap Super Fly’s arm on account of Fly lost the match for them, but Star makes the save by booting Penta in the jaw. Penta animatedly swears revenge on the babyfaces as the show ends. This was a wonderful show full of excellent character work from Dario Cueto, no bad matches, and one very fun main event. Hopefully, LU can become more consistent at stringing these types of shows together and get a streak going. 4.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Yes, I get exactly what you're saying. It's definitely a reversal spot that falls apart if you think about it, but the crashing mass of humanity on the reversal is impressive enough for me not to, I think. On the "Irish whip scale," that spot is passable to me, but I totally get why YMMV! Even with all the drugs and head injuries, I don't doubt that he well might have seen this. It's probably more likely that it's one of many matches that just never made tape rather than that he's hallucinated it. ...then again, a bullrope match in 1980s WWF? This is what I can't stand about him. I can get past the markedly worse on-screen acting than everyone else in a prominent spot on LU, but the flips and dives and stuff are just unnecessary, and his power stuff would be more impactful if it were straightforward. Muscle dudes need to get comfortable throwing the best shoulderblock on the roster rather than trying to hang with the high flyers.

Season 1, Show 20: “The Art of War,” or Can Puma Survive a Berzerker Barrage? The previous episode is going to be impossible to follow, but let’s LUCHAAAAAA and see how well they do for the trying anyway. Recap: We have two big title matches and one remaining love triangle angle…TONIGHT! Angelico enters the ring to finish a grudge that Striker claims WILL END tonight. OK, I feel like there’s probably more burn in this angle, but then again, it probably doesn’t need Angelico as part of it. The drama is in Son of Havoc and Ivelisse’s relationship, and that doesn’t need a third party to play out [Editor's note: On second thought, it can also be resolved tonight!]. Havoc starts out by hitting a spear and immediately blowing a suicide dive, luckily saving himself from breaking his neck by aborting his launch. I’m not sure Angelico was quite ready to catch him had he dove. Havoc is in a rage, even hitting a nice-looking curb stomp in there. Angelico comes back with kicks and a jumping knee, then hits a kick after a foot sweep feint. Angelico’s capoeira-lite offense is perfect for his lanky form and long legs. He also does his running somersault plancha that clears the corner post, which is quite the visual. This is a pretty fun opener, quite honestly. Both men trade control as Ivelisse exhorts Havoc to finish off Angelico (and for the ref to COUNT FASTER, ARE YOU KIDDING ME, COUNT FASTER). Havoc gets a near fall off a standing SSP, then another one off a backbreaker. Havoc then politely asks Ivelisse to calm down a bit, so Ivelisse yanks his beard and verbally abuses him. Havoc finally knocks her arm away and shoves her. Not because he’s standing up for himself, mind you. Because he sees Angelico running at them out of the corner of his eye and needs to get her out of the way so he can counter-attack. He lands a kick, then a standing moonsault for yet another close two count. Can Havoc manage to put Angelico away? No. He misses a corner charge, eats a high knee, and gets set up for a Fall of the Angels (that running Razor’s Edge)…that he counters with a rana. The crowd is actually rooting for him as he goes up to finish things and, of course, gets caught up top. To Havoc’s credit, he’s able to drop Angelico crotch first onto the ropes and launch himself…no, wait, he gets a mic instead. A baffled Ivelisse screams WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR while Havoc tells her that he’s figured out why he’s been losing all of his matches and then dumps her in front of the whole-ass temple for holding him back (Temple: YOU GOT DUMPED; Ivelisse: *shocked facial expression that had me falling out with laughter*). Havoc then makes a rude gesture at Ivelisse. Now, hilariously, Angelico has been laying there this whole time, through this whole breakup, and hasn’t recovered one bit. Havoc drops an SSP after taking the time to BREAK UP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND and wins. That is so fucking absurd that I actually kind of like it. It’s like LU’s little midcard version of Randy Savage hitting five Savage Elbows on Ultimate Warrior and Warrior kicking out anyway. Anyway, good for Havoc getting shed of his abusive partner, but he’s still dismissive of most women (like Sexy Star in the first episode), so he’s also still a dick. Maybe it would have been better if he and Ivelisse had stayed together rather than going off to find regular healthy people’s lives to ruin in future relationships, come to think of it. Havoc waves goodbye to Ivelisse, then goes to celebrate with the dudes in the front row who are absolutely living vicariously through Havoc right now. Angelico revives and shoots his shot at Ivelisse. She looks at him like the idiot that he is, then kicks him right in the head. I mean, this whole thing was pretty fucking great! Seedy backstage interstitial: Hey, I missed these! Dario Cueto is finishing up the signing of a new addition to the Temple, one who he says “won’t be held back by [being in] some tag team.” He says that Konnan suggested him to Dario, and the “him” is finally shown: It’s Hernandez, who I can’t wait to see recklessly Border Toss smaller luchadores. Dario holds out his hand to shake; in a funny bit, Hernandez daps Dario’s outstretched hand and leaves. The look of disgust on the patrician Dario’s face at Hernandez’s street habits is priceless. Alright, let’s get through this AAA Mega Championship match that will probably be pretty good, but which I simply don’t care about. Texano, the challenger, faces Alberto El Patrón, the champion, in a Bullrope Match. This match at least is pinfall or submission only and not a “touch the corners” match. Now, here’s an interesting thing Vampiro says. He lists competitors in past classic matches of this type and mentions Greg Valentine and Roddy Piper. Striker interjects that they were chained together (via dog collars, of course) rather than having bullrope tied around their wrists, but Vampiro insists that they also had a bullrope match (“No no no, I saw it myself. I was there in Montreal, Canada in ’85"). I had to stop and see if I could find any evidence of this online. It must have been when they were both in the WWF if it happened in 1985 (and that it happened in Montreal is also a sign that it must have been a WWF match). A quick search found no video, though I’m guessing no one taped it if it happened. Maybe I’ll look back through the card listings from 1985 to see if I can spot it. I sure hope that if it does exist, the WWE Vault folks do find a copy of it in their archives. As an aside, I have to correct myself because Vampiro isn’t bad at this color commentary thing. He does a good job of filling in background on the wrestlers. Sometimes he gets a bit too Vampiro-y with his musings, but when he’s focused and not such a space cadet, he is good at his job. There’s a point in season two or three where he does some work as part of an angle that I remember very much not enjoying, but I was too harsh on him coming into this watch. The match itself is whatever. These matches always work best when the feud around it is hot and when everyone gigs themselves and when people use the cowbell or maybe a cowboy boot to amplify their punches. This match does a bit of these things, but most of it is just a boring wrestling match. Vampiro, to whom I just gave a ton of credit, nonsensically claims that Alberto using a bullrope on Texano is “cheating,” which I would think is a funny heelish claim about the babyface except that Vampiro hasn’t done enough to establish his previous dislike of Alberto. Overall, though, this match simply isn’t very good. Once you throw chairs and tables into the mix instead of just punching the shit out of each other in a rage, you’ve lost the spirit of the match type. Alberto is also clearly much better in WWE style than he is outside of it. The best thing about the match itself is the perfectly-timed 2.9 off a Texano table powerbomb, though Texano’s villainous NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO after Alberto kicks out is so WWE style that they should have brought him in to work near falls with the Undertaker at WrestleMania. Shortly after that spot, Alberto traps Texano in an armbar over the top rope, and Texano taps. That match brought the momentum of this show to a grinding halt. Seedy backstage interstitial: Puma trains with Konnan in the locker room while Puma has flashbacks of Cage beating the shit out of him and tearing his title belt. Hernandez walks in and greets his former Latin American eXchange running buddy; Hernandez says hello to Konnan, then tells Puma that he’s a fan. Puma understands the concept of dapping a dude up, which he does without saying anything (to Hernandez’s consternation, funnily enough). Brian Cage and Prince Puma meet for the Lucha Underground Championship in a Boyle Heights Street Fight. Before the match, Dario Cueto steps out of his offie holding a much more dope Lucha Underground title belt. I mean, this thing is fucking SICK, man, it’s such a great title design. I get a kick out of Dario getting a better-constructed belt after consulting with the Aztec gods. Do you think they interrogated him as to why he cheaped out on the first belt? Puma and Cage are a matchup that is fine and that will produce decent enough matches because of the power/speed dichotomy. I’m hopeful that this particular decent-enough match will end their feud. I am especially hopeful about this considering that many of the other feuds started in the first half of the season have been ended over the past two or three weeks. Other than the season-long storylines (like what’s going on with the as-yet-unrevealed Matanza Cueto and how Prince Puma ends up fighting alongside the green-masked guy who I think also abducted-slash-saved Black Lotus from Matanza), everything else seems to have come to a head so that LU can set new feuds in motion over the second half of the season. Hernandez is sitting out here in the front row, and as a seasoned pro wrestling fan, I feel like Puma beating Cage, but being immediately attacked by Hernandez as his next challenger (and sparking intrigue about how much Konnan knew about Hernandez’s intentions) is the most obvious next direction for Puma there is. Maybe I’m wrong, though; LU has surprised me with reasonable swerving away from what seems like the most logical next step. You’ll notice that I haven’t said much about this match, which is yet another WWE-style garbage match with tons of weapon shots. Cage flips Puma up into Torture Rack position only to toss him out of it and into a Codebreaker. Like fifteen wrestlers on this roster do Codebreakers, but no one does a Torture Rack. Maybe Cage could stop overelaborating all of his fucking offense and just do a Torture Rack? The match is fine, the best part of it being Vampiro hating on Konnan’s managerial skills, but also begrudgingly giving him props for his competitiveness as an active wrestler. Vampiro has been very good tonight in his role on color. I also feel like I’ve seen too many flips and dives and table breaks to care about them. I remember when they felt new and were exciting and crazy way back in 2001. By 2014, they were blasé, at least to me. Puma hitting an SSP onto Cage through a table is something that will probably happen with two other wrestlers at some point this season and honestly might have already happened earlier this season. Vampiro tries to get Striker to agree that Konnan is ugly, which makes me laugh because he tries to quickly and nonchalantly slip it in there in the midst of discussion about the match. Cage eventually knocks Konnan down, but that gives Puma time to recover and smack Cage with a chair. Puma whiffs on a 630 Senton attempt while Konnan slowly gets back to his feet. Cage reels off offense – a lariat, a Weapon X, and a bunch of punches in a mirror to what he did to Puma at the end of their previous match. This time, Konnan doesn’t throw a towel into the ring, so Cage double powerbombs Puma, dropping him onto the trash can the second time. Rather than covering, Cage challenges both Konnan and Hernandez. Hernandez and Cage square off as misdirection so that Konnan can clobber Cage from behind with his new steel cane (Vampiro: THAT DIRTY BASTARD). Puma gets back up and hits Cage with a 630 Senton for three. How did that serve Puma at all? He was once again badly beaten and needed outside help to win. He looks like a weak champion. Bad booking. Puma needed to tough through this one on his own. Cage looking like the better man each week, but not actually being able to win the gold makes him look like a choke artist, too (which means that he should probably start doing a Torture Rack just like that other famous choke artist). This match ending didn’t help anyone. Hernandez merely applauds Puma rather than attacking him…this week. Well, those two title matches were as bland and disappointing as I figured, though the finish of the Puma/Cage bout was actually less fulfilling than I thought it’d be (I was expecting a clean Puma victory). The best match on this show was Havoc/Angelico by a wide mark, and not just because of the storyline theatricality that drove it. You probably don’t want Havoc/Angelico to be your best match on any given episode of LU! 2.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

I have no idea what you envisioned in your head from this sentence, but it sounds fun, and I wish I did. I was hoping for another "uppercut from the floor to the ropes" style thing, but sadly, I don't see it in that sentence. What the hell, I'll write-yell it anyway: TOASTY!

Season 1, Show 19: “Grave Consequences,” or Fenix Down (But Not Out!) Recap: Dario has his crew focused on eliminating Big Ryck and Sexy Star; we’re getting more Aerostar versus Drago; Catrina is continuing to bring her brand of dark fuckery to the Temple. Match three of the Drago/Aerostar best-of-five series opens our show. I wonder if these mutual shows of respect between them are going to evaporate as this competition gets more heated…and I wonder if Drago, the guy from “the dark side,” is going to maybe be less of a babyface hero and more of a guy who clearly comes from the dark side. Striker mentions Magnum TA vs. Nikita Koloff as a comparison point to wonder if this series, like that one, will take too much out of these competitors and shorten their careers (though a rain-slicked road is really what took too much out of Magnum). Vampiro does a nice job of pointing out that this is different because these two have wrestled each other countless times already. I appreciate both men starting out with a few mat exchanges to switch things up, and in this case, Drago targets Aerostar’s knee with an Indian Deathlock and a knee bar. Aerostar kinda sells it when they get to standing, and I’m hopeful that maybe they’ll work something interesting around Aerostar’s knee, but they don’t, really. Mostly, they do a lot of dives and running. Aerostar hits La Bombita, which I guess is basically a springboard Coffin Drop, and it looks like it fucking hurts to hit. As does the regular Coffin Drop. Both men come close with moves like swinging uranages and lots of counters to counters, gamely sold on commentary as evidence that both men are learning one another. We even get a Hamrick bump from Aerostar. This match is fine. I’ll forget that it existed until they bring it up again when the fourth match in the series happens, but I appreciate some of the spots. Aerostar hits a rope-walk rana and a springboard splash for three to take a 2-1 series lead. Drago shakes Aerostar’s hand after the match, but it’s not as solid a handshake as it was in weeks past to my (and Vampiro’s) mind. Hype video: Konnan plays chess, beats up nameless mooks with newly made cane, and keeps trying to convince someone (Puma, maybe?) that he’s got a plan for taking care of Brian Cage. Actually, as we find out at the end, Konnan is actually beating Puma himself at this chess game in the park; that’s the chess match we were watching. Then Konnan destroys the chess clock with his cane. These Konnan “revenge is coming” promos are all kinda hokey, y’know? Big Ryck faces Dario’s Crew in a handicap elimination match, and I’m wondering why we haven’t had one single seedy backstage interstitial yet, dammit. Ryck swats the shit outta these dudes to start, so they tackle him and gang attack him. I love Vampiro noting that they went for Ryck’s ankles “just like in Wigan, England.” This is a fun little match because any one of the three Crew members would get annihilated by Ryck, but all three of them have to work together to keep Ryck down, and the enjoyment is in seeing if they can hit enough team attacks to keep Ryck down before Ryck eliminates one of them and leads to their advantage and chances collapsing like an uneven Jenga tower. At the point that Ryck blocks a double Irish whip, eats a kendo stick shot for a light snack, and then seizes the stick and breaks it over his opponents' backs, I think I know which one of those scenarios has won out! Ryck hits his standing uranage on Bael while Striker mangles scripture over on commentary *sigh*; Ryck covers Bael for three. That leaves Cortez and Cisco, but Ryck reverses a double vertical suplex on them (and it gets a minor HOLY SHIT chant, which says something about the house style or about the crowd, I can’t tell which). Yo, shut the fuck up, Matt Striker: Saying “we put smiles on faces,” even semi-mockingly, is dumb. Shut the fuck up, Matt Striker. Ryck lays out Cortez with a stick-assisted lariat and pins him, leaving only Cisco. Cisco, who was the guy to come up with the whole cigar-eye-burning plan in the first place, decides that he’s not going to give Ryck the satisfaction of beating the shit out of him and backs up the stairs, where he gives Sexy Star the satisfaction of beating the shit out of him and tossing him back into the ring so that Ryck can get the satisfaction of beating the shit out of him. Ryck punches Cisco in the eye, and Cisco blades while Ryck sets up a chair. Ryck hits like twelve more punches to the eye and then lands a standing uranage onto the open chair. GODDAM. Cisco’s head snapped off the back of the chair, and he crushed the seat. Fuck me, that shit had to hurt like a motherfucker. OK, that ends the match and, between the punches and the uranage into the chair, is the nastiest finish I might have ever seen on this show. I really liked what I think was meant to be a feud-ending destruction of Dario’s Crew. Matt Striker hypes a double-title match episode for next week: Alberto El Patrón defends the AAA Mega Championship against Texano in a bullrope match and Prince Puma defends the Lucha Underground Championship against Brian Cage in a Boyle Heights Street Fight. It’s already main event time with about twenty minutes to go. Well, this is rad. A bunch of skull-face-painted mourners walk an artistically-cool coffin to ringside while Vampiro explains Dia de los Muertes to the American crowd. The presentation here is great. I love it. As someone who also loved druids holding torches and carrying coffins to ringside in the WWF, this is right up my alley. Mil Muertes comes to the ring for what LU has termed a Grave Consequences Match; he is clutching the mystical stone that Catrina left near him in the locker room – or that he hallucinated that she did, as if you’ll recall, she dropped the stone in the ring when Mil beat Fenix a couple weeks ago, and he picked it up. I have no idea what is going on with Mil’s crazy ass, and I love it. Mil immediately hits a suicide dive on Fenix as Fenix makes his way into the ring, so yeah, he sets a certain tone for the proceedings. Hey, Catrina is here, too. I didn’t even notice her at first. There’s a spot where Fenix has Mil hanging over the ropes, and takes the time to roll the coffin out of the way and then back way up to run forward and try a dropkick; Mil rightly moves since he had about fifteen years to recover, and Fenix slams his back on the apron. Sadly, Fenix just keeps doing moves after that. Mil, meanwhile, beats the shit out of Fenix with the accompanying floral arrangements. Make him the champ and only have him defend it in these matches, fuck it. I’m in. Meanwhile, we get a couple of shots of Catrina barely being able to hold in her excitement at all this carnage. Fenix’s dumb ass hits a suicide dive right into the coffin as Mil holds it up to block his momentum. Mil follows up by ripping at Fenix’s mask. Seven-year-old me was completely into rooting for the mystical heel when the heel was the Undertaker. Much older me has not changed! Muertes killing this geek Fenix, ripping his mask, and tearing off a metal turnbuckle joint to beat Fenix with is THE FUCKING BEST. Why would I not root for this guy to murder Fenix? Dead ass, if I had a wrestling time machine, 1991 Undertaker vs. 2014 Mil Muertes would be a personal dream match that I’d make happen. Muertes tosses Fenix up the stairs, then over the railing and onto the roof of Dario Cueto’s office. Mil tells the fans to move because he’s gonna vertically suplex the whole mass of humanity to the floor. Fenix blocks it and they trade fists until Mil tosses Fenix face-first into a vent. Fenix crawls back down the stairs, and Mil follows, clears the commentary table, and powerbombs Fenix onto it. It does not break. Fenix writhes in pain while Mil stares down Catrina and then grabs the coffin. As Muertes puts the coffin in the ring and props it up in the corner, the crowd cheers, then remembers that Fenix is supposed to be the fightin’ técnico and starts up a chant for him that ends when Muertes release belly-to-belly suplexes him right into the propped up coffin. Fenix, who bladed back when Mil clubbed him with that metal joint, pulls himself into a sitting position just in time for Mil to bite at his bleeding wound. Well, I can’t complain about Fenix for at least a couple of weeks because he’s bladed and taken a shit-ton of nasty bumps to make this whole thing work, and he’s actually selling this ass whipping really nicely. I knew he could do a good job of selling pain if he really tried. Props to him. He tries to make a comeback by landing a superkick, but he’s far too hurt to get to the top rope with any speed and gets caught by a Muertes vaulting Codebreaker. Muertes hauls this guy right back up into the crowd and beats Fenix with a chair while fans file the fuck out of the way at high speed, which is an amazing visual. Fenix manages to kick Muertes once, twice, and over the railing, then wobbles to his feet, climbs the railing, and hits a desperation dive. Alas, though he shows much heart, he’s basically bled out, so Mil gets up from that attack and slams Fenix’s head into the grating that separates the fans from the floor. Fenix again hits a couple desperation superkicks and then goes up and lands a moonsault. This gives him a bit of space to locate the coffin, though Muertes gets up and trades blows with him…leading to Muertes clobbering Catrina, standing nearby, when Fenix ducks one swing. Striker points out that no one has even tried to open the coffin to stuff their opponent into it, which I was just about to say. Most of these matches rely on teases with the heel struggling to close the lid on the babyface and whatnot; this was just a bloody brawl where Muertes has been focused on putting Fenix’s lights out before he even bothers to try and win, and Fenix has been too busy trying to survive Mil’s onslaught to think about winning. Fenix’s flurry of offense comes to a sudden halt when Mil once again bites at Fenix’s bleeding eye, which is both gross and also the best. Catrina has struggled to her feet and opens the coffin lid while Muertes and Fenix struggle on the apron. Fenix breaks free lands some strikes, an double-stomps Mil into the casket. Catrina grabs the mystical stone, symbolically gives it a Lick of Death, and tosses it on top of Mil's unmoving form before slamming the lid shut. Huh, I didn’t expect that finish, but who cares? This match ruled and is the best thing Fenix has done on this show and probably in his career. The mourners come back and roll the coffin away, and notably, Catrina follows them out rather than celebrating with Fenix, which makes me think she wanted Mil to lose for some reason that will end up being helpful to her end goals, and she saw Fenix as the vessel to make that happen. I don’t fucking know. Who can tell what the dread Catrina has in mind? As much as I enjoyed Ryck and Star getting their revenge, I was going to complain about the complete lack of seedy backstage interstitials on this show, but who could complain about any show that gave eighteen-ish minutes to what was possibly the best casket match I’ve ever seen? Fuck it, between those final two matches, I'm giving this episode the full five. 5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 18: “No Escape,” or Club Murder We shall lucha once more today. Recap: Pentagón Jr.’s snappin’ arms for evil, Ivelisse is stumpin’ for title shots, and King Cuerno’s huntin’ annoying flippy babyface prey. Let’s start our show in the best possible way: with Pentagón Jr. breaking some shlub’s arm! Matt Striker sells damaging arm injuries for Penta’s past opponents, which is odd since last week, Dario offered up two of them (Famous B. and Ricky Mandel) as opponents for Alberto El Patrón even though they must have been unable to compete in kayfabe. Or maybe Dario offered them up as a stealth insult to Alberto, a silent declaration that he thinks that Alberto could only beat guys hampered by injury. Argenis represents an upgrade in opponent for Penta, who in fact gets his ass whipped early on by the bouncy Argenis, culminating in a springboard moonsault that Penta has to stand there like a doofus waiting for Argenis to launch so that he can catch it. Penta just can’t seem to catch a break – he has to kick out at a well-timed 2.9 after taking damage from a top-rope rana – before he finally dropkicks a flipping Argenis in the gut. We get a shot of A.C. Green, who looks roughly the same age that he was in 1996 when Booker T. shit-talked him on a Phoenix Nitro episode, exhorting Argenis to arise. Meanwhile, Penta hits a dope spot where he presses Argenis and then tosses him upside-down into the corner. Penta appears to have things under control, landing a dropkick after hanging Argenis in the corner, then scoring a superkick and a lariat that knocks Argenis to the floor. Penta follows with a somersault plancha shortly after. Penta continues to roll, scores a package piledriver, and then locks on an armbar for a submission before deciding to snap Argenis’s arm as yet another demonstration of pure evil to his dark master, who I’m sure thought that spot ruled as much as I did. Penta gets a mic and assures his dark master that he is unstoppable. Seedy backstage interstitial: Catrina tells Fenix that Mil Muertes will keep coming and never stop unless Fenix “bur[ies] him.” It’s a trap, stupid! I don’t care that she is the best looking wrestling lady in the history of pro wrestling itself! Don’t let your T-levels get you into trouble! Cryptic video: Konnan is a blacksmith now, I guess, and he’s tempering iron to use as a weapon, which I think is both literal (as he’s made himself an iron cane with which to beat down a few nameless mooks in this package) and figurative (being tempered in the flames of defeat as Puma was against Cage a couple of weeks ago should make him stronger, theoretically). Seedy highway interstitial: King Cuerno pulls up to the Temple in his custom truck. I sure hope that he wins his cage match with Mundo, but I doubt that he will. Next up: Angelico faces Ivelisse Velez with that doofus Son of Havoc as the special guest referee. In a nice touch, Striker and Vampiro have gotten word that there’s a special guest ref for this match, but they can’t see the seedy backstage interstitials that we can and thus don't know what we know from last week about the ref. They are suitably curious to find out who it is. Unfortunately, Striker keeps repeating that “beat you over the head" line because he’s a dolt. Son of Havoc has gotten over as a loveable loser in the Temple (especially because his actual work is perfect for what this live audience likes). This match isn’t good, but there’s an interesting angle attached to it, so I’m fine with it. Ivelisse is also over in the Temple. It might be a mistake to break her and Havoc up. Anyway, after a rana that sends Angelico to the floor (and a high-five from the very impartial ref, heh heh heh), Ivelisse takes a bump right onto her neck while whiffing on a running attack. Angelico tries to capitalize, but Havoc positions himself in front of Ivelisse so that he can’t easily follow up. They do some flash pinfall attempts that Angelico uses to purposely pull Ivelisse into *ahem* compromising positions, which distracts Havoc from counting when she’s on top. It is what it is, I guess. Ivelisse smacks Angelico and demands that he hit her back. He loads up to give her a chop, but Havoc blocks him. Angelico next tries a stalling vertical, but he gets cocky about it, and she leverages back down and into a front facelock that Angelico breaks by, uh, slowly and lasciviously caressing her lower back. So Angelico is the heel, right? He refuses to take Ivelisse seriously and also gets all grabby with her to try and piss off the special ref, yeah? Angelico finally kicks Ivelisse in the head on a strike exchange, looking regretful as he does it, then sets up for a running Razor’s Edge that Havoc pulls Ivelisse out of, saving her. Angelico argues with Havoc about his interference, then does a good shoot job of launching himself over on an Ivelisse rana, but a bad kayfabe job of it because you can see he and Ivelisse stopping for a bit and prepping his big flip into a pinning position. Again, the match fucking sucks, but I want to see where this storyline goes. I roll my eyes when Striker half-mockingly exclaims “Shades of Rey Misterio and Psicosis there” on that last spot. Ivelisse gets up and slaps Havoc for only counting to two on that rana before Angelico kicked out. Angelico tries to kick Havoc, but kicks Ivelisse when Havoc moves. OK, why is Angelico feigning upset about kicking Ivelisse? He should be trying to win. To top his babyface performance off, Angelico lasciviously bends Ivelisse in half to pin her, and Havoc quickly counts to three to get him off her. So, I come out of this having sympathy for Havoc and wanting Angelico to get his arm snapped by Penta (and thinking that Ivelisse should be nicer to her boyfriend, but that she's justifiably irritated at Angelico not taking her seriously at all). Is that what I’m supposed to be feeling after seeing this match? I’m not sure, but I really don’t see how they can push Angelico as a babyface or even a tweener based on this whole feud. He just seems like a massive dickhead. Seedy backstage interstitial: Mil Muertes adjusts his mask in a dirty mirror while having some sort of PTSD flashback or maybe just being visited by a teleporting Catrina with her dark magicks. Catrina teleports in, maybe, or maybe her image is merely psychically conjured up by the stressed out Muertes. Catrina (???) intimates that she has known him since he was a child who had just survived a massive earthquake when she was, like, maybe an adult? I am gathering that Catrina might be hundreds or even thousands of years old and has used some of her dread spells to give some semblance of immortality to Muertes. The idea of an adult Catrina preying on this helpless kid whose family all just died in a quake is supremely creepy. I love that Catrina is such a squick-y valet. If a viewer takes her as simply eye candy like one might have done with valets of the past, she’ll quickly say or do something that totally turns them off (or turns them on even more if they're total sickos, no judgment meant). Anyway, Catrina tells Muertes that Fenix is going to finish him off in a Casket Match next week, which I think is rad. I unironically love Casket Matches. Now, the real question here is about what we actually just witnessed. Was Catrina actually in the room with him or, as the glitchy editing of the interstitial might suggest, was Mil just having a psychological breakdown? I’d say it was the latter except that after Catrina disappears, Muertes turns around to find laid behind him the mystical stone that Catrina uses to control him. Suffice it to say that I loved the hell out of this interstitial. Lucha Underground is going to give about thirteen to fifteen minutes to tonight’s main event cage match, which unfortunately means that I’m going to be stuck watching Johnny Mundo wrestle a singles match for that amount of time. Vampiro smartly asks whether or not Mundo’s offense will be hampered by not being able to use the apron or outside of the ring to do flippy parkour bullshit, and fairly enough comments, “I take back what I said” the second that Mundo bounces off the cage to perform an overelaborate kick to King Cuerno's dome. I refuse to spend a ton of time calling a Johnny Mundo match, at least as long for as this guy is a babyface. I’ll tell you if any cool spots are in this match (and, of course, the ending). I’m sorry to be negative about something else entirely, but this match can be won by climbing over the cage. If LU is really so concerned about differentiating itself from WWE, then maybe they should ditch that "escape the cage" nonsense and only have pinfalls and submissions be winning conditions. Striker is being suboptimal on commentary, but at least Vampiro is kinda no-selling his comments sometimes. I love Cuerno using the cage as a weapon as much as possible, and so does the crowd, which starts chanting Cuerno’s name. Correct, crowd. Cuerno is awesome. At least pinfalls and submissions do still count in the LU cage. It’d be much worse if you could only escape to win like in WWE. As an aside, yesterday I saw a Botchamania clip in which Jesse Ventura railed while being a commentator on WWE television (!!!) about someone winning a cage match by walking out of the door, saying that they should have had to climb over the top to win. Aside from the fact that a flustered Michael Cole was trying to point out that the guy walked out of the door to show his dominance and disregard for the opponent he had just destroyed, my memory is that you could escape the cage door back in the WWF of the ‘80s just like you can in the WWE of today. Am I wrong about this? I feel like you could even escape the door in the big blue cage they used to have. Maybe I’m somehow misremembering something about an era that I grew up watching. It wouldn’t be the first time. Oh yeah, about this match that I am not really feeling even though Cuerno always maximizes the stips or setting of whatever match he’s in: Cuerno almost escapes, is held from dropping to the floor by his mask, and you know what, just imagine a ton of strike exchanges that the crowd can chant YEAH/BOO on and a bunch of WWE-style near-escapes leading up to the end. Oh, and the babyface having a chance to escape, but instead choosing to do a high spot from the top of the cage. That too. Mundo hits a Sky Twisting Moonsault from the top for three. Bummer. I am dreading the eventual Johnny Mundo title run, whether as a rudo or técnico. Everything leading up to the main event was pretty fun, though I find the character approach to Angelico/Ivelisse/Havoc a bit unclear. I didn’t like the main event, especially not the choice to put Mundo over, but that is what it is. This show was also a bit weaker for not picking up enough of its hot (to me) storylines. Let’s get back to Lotus and Matanza and get more Sexy Star and Big Ryck forming what I assume will be an uneasy short-term alliance. All that aside, Catrina and Mil Muertes continue to be my favorite characters on this show and made this episode better simply by being a part of it. 3 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 17: “A War Started in Mexico,” or Cowards Are Whipped Many Times MORE TALKING, LESS WRESTLING AND HAVE THE WRESTLING BE MOSTLY WELL-BOOKED AROUND ANGLE ADVANCEMENT! MORE TALKING, LESS…you know what, I think this is too many syllables to be a proper chant. Realizing that something is too many syllables to be a chant has made me slightly (but only slightly) more aware than most modern wrestling crowds. (Seriously, though, three matches instead of four is usually LU’s best approach unless they’re doing one or preferably two squashes/short angle-advancement matches, in which case four matches is fine. They should mix the show formatting up between three matches and lots of out-of-ring plot and four matches with half of those four being angle-heavy matches, with a bit less out-of-ring plot IMO.) Recap: Alberto El Patrón and Texano have brought their beef to the Temple. What is Catrina up to? Whatever it is, it’s probably very bad for Fenix. Dario’s Crew is being targeted by Big Ryck and Sexy Star, the latter two of whom Dario has redirected to target one another this week. Seedy backstage interstitial: Alberto El Patrón paces in an excited Dario Cueto’s office as Dario offers Alberto his first opponent in the Temple: Ricky Mandel. Alberto declines and insists that he wants Texano in the ring tonight, but Dario wants a week or two to promote it. Dario instead offers up first Famous B. and then Son of Havoc as opponents, but this hothead Alberto wants the Texano match tonight and will ruin Dario’s carefully organized desk to get it. Dario relents, then starts cleaning up the detritus on his floor, gazing at the first object he picks up, a red mold of a bull that may or may not be symbolic or plot-important, who the hell knows? LU is steeped in mystery. Mil Muertes (w/just himself) comes to the ring to a huge pop. As soon as Melissa Santos intoned FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, the crowd went bananas. Muertes honestly isn’t that great in the ring, but I love this gimmick so much. Speaking of “isn’t that great in the ring,” here’s Rey Fenix! This match will end up being more than the sum of its parts, I’m sure of it. Not only do we have the speedy babyface versus monster pairing that I like so much, but I also want to see where this interesting angle goes. Muertes stalks toward Fenix as Fenix poses on the stairs, and Fenix vaults off the railing to hit a rana. Fenix’s elaborate moveset works better in this match generally because I can trick myself into thinking that he needs to do the extra flourishes as misdirection/to get momentum so that he can pull off moves against this undead bruiser. Vampiro notes that Fenix is moving with some extra pep in his step on commentary, which I’d say, yeah, he’s looking like a guy who landed a new creepy girlfriend whom he should have way more reservations about, but he doesn't think too deeply about her issues because she’s good looking and wants to bang him. We’ve all been there, right, fellas? Fenix gets so cocky that he tries to shoot Muertes in; Muertes blocks that by offering Fenix a free lunch and feeding him soupbones, which was rad. Mil rains blows upon Fenix’s head, then snaps off a DDT. Fenix is on his Shawn Michaels with all the flip bumping tonight, though again, it works as a convincing sell for Mil’s high-impact power offense. Mil slaps his thigh to enhance a straight right fist to the jaw, and wrestling had gone entirely too far with this thigh-slapping stuff a decade ago. Here comes Catrina (w/mystical stone). Fenix makes a comeback at this point which culminates in a springboard moonsault to the floor. Fenix gets up first and starts to make his way back into the ring, but Mil yanks him off the apron by his leg and in the best spot of this match just starts slamming Fenix’s head into the apron. Alas, Fenix hits his rebound cutter when Mil gets back into the ring with him; he tries to follow up with a top-rope move, but gets caught and hit with a sloppy, ugly-looking Super Codebreaker. It doesn’t take much for Mil to pick Fenix up by the neck, glare at Catrina (who almost imperceptibly slants her head to the side while glaring back), and then score a Flatliner for three. After the match, Mil beckons Catrina onto the apron and demands that she give her new boyfriend the Lick of Death. Catrina refuses, so Mil goozles her and hoists her into the ring. The mystical stone tumbles from her grasp and lands on the mat, something the cameraperson makes sure to frame as part of the shot. Fenix recovers and grabs the stone, then loads his fist with it and swings it at Mil. That punch drops Mil; Fenix kicks him for extra emphasis and ends up laying Mil right out. Catrina crawls on top of Mil and then gives him a SUPER LICK OF DEATH starting at his navel and ending around his nose. This was both somehow erotic and a total turn-off. And I haven’t even gotten to the part where she makes out with Fenix after that. Fenix is totally into having a creepy mystical girlfriend, by the way, which is gonna be his downfall. You know, fellas. Hype video: Konnan stands in the rain with his pimp cane; the text over the video, which is intercut with shots of Konnan in the rain and Konnan getting half-murdered by Brian Cage, indicates that Konnan has a plan and that throwing the towel in to facilitate Puma’s loss last week instead of letting Puma try to make another comeback was part of that plan. Konnan wants revenge on Cage (and appears to be using Puma as his vessel to get it). Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario is irritated as Ivelisse Velez insists that she has earned a title shot after beating Angelico, which is a level of delusion appropriate for such a heelish heel. He cuts her off before she can declare herself THE BADDEST BITCH IN THE TEMPLE, and I hate to report this, dear reader, but I mentallythanked him for it. Hey, Angelico and Havoc are also here in the background. I guess Dario has called them all in for a meeting. Dario books Ivelisse in a rematch against Angelico with Havoc as guest referee. Then Dario expresses disrespect for Havoc letting Ivelisse boss him around. Angelico thinks about staying to protest Dario's decision, chooses not to, then has to be called back to close the door behind him because Dario learned to make sure people do that after last week with mega-heel Brian Cage not closing the door when he stormed out. More seedy backstage interstitial: Prince Puma attacks a bag in the Temple’s dingy gym, where Alberto El Patrón confronts him and tells him that he needs to find that level of aggression he's showing against the bag when he next faces Cage. He even suggests that Puma watch his match tonight because it’ll be instructive for him, then promises to come after Puma's LU Championship when he dispatches of Texano. The very un-talky Puma kicks the bag with anger and frustration after Alberto leaves. Big Ryck is in the ring, cigar in hand, awaiting the entrance of Sexy Star. Yo, shut the fuck up, Matt Striker: Maybe sell Star being a fighter no matter her gender without the need to point out that you’re not that interested in talking about “all the women’s lib and equality stuff” if you are tired of talking about, and I quote, “all the women’s lib and equality stuff,” Striker. I get it to some degree because I think this is around the time that Stephanie McMahon was on WWE television pretending that she wass in the process of solving all of society's sexism, but Striker just sounds dismissive of the push to center women on television as wrestlers rather than pigeonholing them as valets or "divas," not as though he’s pushing back on Stephanie McMahon being a vainglorious lunatic. I brought this line up in an earlier review because it plays poorly, so of course Striker thinks it’s a good enough line to use again. I wonder if Vampiro would have been better on color if he was paired with a decent PBP partner instead of this trash commentator whom he can’t take any cues from or improve alongside. Anyway, Sexy Star squares up to Ryck, who tells her to lay down for three so that she can avoid this ass whipping. Star responds by ineffectually chopping him. She gets a bit more purchase by kicking at his knee, but then she goes for an Irish whip. That doesn’t work; Ryck slings her into the corner and lectures her, so she boots him. That pisses Ryck off, but he’s slow to charge her, and she evades and then hits a diving crossbody for two. Ryck sends her to the floor and suggests that she stay there and take the count out loss. The fans chant her name to encourage her, and Ryck implores them to shut the fuck up so he doesn’t have to start punching back. Star, however, is encouraged by their chants. She slides into the ring, bodies up to Ryck, and slaps him. That’s where Ryck is about done with this nonsense; he hoists her up for a standing uranage, but then decides to just put her on the mat and hold her shouldres down with his considerable weight advantage for three. Two of the three Dario’s Crew members walk down as a misdirection so that Cortez can attack Ryck from behind with a kendo stick. Star tries to make the save, but she’s taken out by a team Codebreaker, which I guess I should call a Shatter Machine because the Revival called it that, and it's a better name than calling it a team Codebreaker. The Crew turns their attention back to Ryck and attempt to jab his injured eye with the kendo stick, but Ryck bursts up and clears the ring. I’m intrigued by this Ryck/Crew feud, especially if they’re going to thread Sexy Star into it. Melissa Santos’s ring announcing is mostly not good. I don’t like how she intones names. She’s got her moments – her grave announcement that Penta was dedicating the match to his master last week was amazing – but man, I am not a fan of the bulk of her work. Interview package: Alberto El Patrón gives a summary rundown of his famous lucha family and his own career, with some “the other company held me back” nonsense sprinkled in. I’m baffled why anyone would cheer this guy as a babyface; he comes off as unlikeable and is a natural heel. So, we’re getting this Alberto/Texano match that I would probably care a lot more about if I watched the other AAA shows from around this time. I will say that the novelty of watching two heavyweights go at it in an LU ring makes me more interested from a pure ringwork perspective. Texano wins a shoulderblock and spits on Alberto, then goes on the run again, gets hip-tossed, and rolls outside the ring. Actually, Texano does some good heel work to start, both with the previous spot and with drawing Alberto outside, running away, and then rolling in the ring first so he can kick Alberto as the latter rolls back inside the ring. Meanwhile, Alberto is solid in this bout, but he’s better as a heel and I think better in the WWE style. He turns it around, lands ten punches in the corner, and scores a dropkick for two. The camerawork is not helping anyone out tonight as it seems to be catching everyone slapping their thighs on kicks (and punches!). Or maybe everyone is just more obvious about it. In any case, there’s a brawl outside the ring. I don’t think it counts as an obligabrawl because Texano is strategically taking it out there to use the environment and because Alberto is working this match like a hothead who is easy to bait. Texano continues to cut off Alberto’s comebacks in what is a perfectly fine television match. Alberto finally halts Texano’s onslaught with a superplex spot that actually comes off pretty impactfully as a bump because two heavyweights are doing it in an LU ring. I suspect that heavyweight vs. heavyweight matches will get more purchase out of what we think of as bog-standard spots in other companies because of how out-of-place they look in this company. Alberto is up first, continues pressing his advantage with a neckbreaker and a backstabber, and scores two. He tunes up the band, but misses a superkick and eats a Texano spinebuster for two. What I’ve learned is that I like Texano’s work as a rudo, but Alberto as a técnico is suboptimal. Texano hangs Alberto up in one corner, then walks to the other corner and removes the turnbuckle…on purpose so that the ref will focus on reconnecting it while Texano goes back to the first buckle, where his bullwhip is, and uses it to load his fist and punch Texano. Texano and King Cuerno would be a heck of a tag team, wouldn’t they? Those two would use everything in their environment against their opponents. Alberto makes another comeback, manages to double-stomp his way out of the corner, and fire himself up. All that just to run right into a Texano sit-out powerbomb for two. Texano tries to follow up, but gets superkicked and covered for two. In trouble, Texano decides to use the bullwhip as a weapon, but Alberto blocks his punch and scores a tornado DDT, then picks up the bullwhip and unloads on Texano with it, earning a DQ loss. That’s it. That’s the show. Seedy backstage interstitial: No, wait, it isn’t! King Cuerno meets with Dario Cueto, who convinces Cuerno to face Johnny Mundo in the confines of a steel cage next week. Cuerno promises to “mount [Mundo’s] head on [Cueto’s] wall.” Cueto looks a little turned on by that declaration, not gonna lie. OK, now that’s the show. This show had a much better mix of competitive matches, storyline- or angle-focused matches, and interstitials. I’m dying to find out whatever happened to Black Lotus, though. 3.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

I'm the exact opposite. I found BotW boring as hell, but I really enjoyed TotK. I thought the exploration was much more fun and exploring things via jerry-rigged motorbike was the best.