SirSmUgly

I actually don't mind Evans as an annoying heel, and I enjoy Mil Muertes, so that doesn't sound so bad! WSX is on the list for some point in the future, but I have other plans assuming that I can get all the television together. Fingers crossed!

Season 3, Show 4: “Brothers in Broken Arms” or Earned in Blood Recap: Nobody will listen to anybody around the Temple. El Dragon Azteca Jr. won’t listen to Rey Misterio Jr., for example, and now has himself distracted with getting revenge against Rey’s wise advice. Or consider the case of Johnny Mundo, who doesn’t understand that Dario’s “No, you can’t have an LU Championship shot” is a full sentence and is now letting down the rest of the Worldwide Underground and harassing Gift of the Gods title holder Sexy Star instead of focusing on being the best trios tag member and supportive significant other that he can be. And let’s not even get started on Officer Joey Ryan not heeding the ominous warnings of Captain Vasquez and going full dirty cop in an attempt to help Dario Cueto engineer a war involving the pantheon of Aztec gods on earth…just to get some dough to pay his child support. This is the problem: You don’t listen, you don’t really hear, you tune things out, and then you find yourself getting ripped apart by a dark god like you were a character at the end of The Cabin in the Woods or something. Then again, maybe sometimes listening is bad, like how Prince Puma pretended not to listen to Vampiro, but then actually did and pursued a blood feud with Mil Muertes on Vamp's advice. On second thought, maybe just do whatever the hell you want in the Temple; it’s probably going to turn out all cattywampus anyway. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto walks up to Sexy Star in the locker room, the former giggling about how Matanza “destroyed” Willie Mack last week. Well, it was a pretty competitive match, but sure, I’ll go with Dario's version. I also didn’t think that Son of Havoc got beaten so badly that he should have had to recuperate at home, but it got us some excellent product placement. Dario looks at Star holding her Gift of the Gods belt on her lap and wonders if she’s more worried about Mack's health or about eventually getting slaughtered by Matanza. Star claims that she’ll never be afraid of anything anymore, but Dario suggests that maybe she’d be smarter just to keep defending the GotG belt and avoiding a title match and what would probably be an academic Wrath of the Gods. He then assures her that she won’t be defending her belt tonight because she’ll be wrestling as part of an eight-luchas tag, partnering with the Super Friends against the Worldwide Underground instead. It's not product placement time because we don’t get a brand name, but Dario flips his wrist up and checks his gold Faux-lex watch like he’s Ric Flair in 1985, then declares that he’s got other places to be. He leaves, and Johnny Mundo rushes in while calling out for Taya. He doesn’t even see Star standing there until he turns around, at which point he tells Star that he doesn’t think he’s yet formally introduced himself to her. Hey, yeah, unless it occurred off camera, he really hasn’t. Mundo sticks out a hand; Star thinks about taking it, does take it, and gets pulled in by Mundo. Mundo growls that he’ll be holding her GotG belt soon enough, then makes to release the grip, but Star holds on and pulls him in – a silent I got some strength too, buddy response – before releasing her own grip. Mundo leaves, while Star sticks around, gets overwhelmed by the tricky position she is in of holding the GotG belt while an Aztec god is the LU Champion, and front kicks a locker to let some of her anger and annoyance out. The house band tonight is the Chimpz. Striker: “And they’re not only our friends, they’re our prime mates.” Vampiro’s sigh of disgust at that delightfully terrible dad joke is the cherry on top. He’s sitting over there trying to get over the joyous awfulness of Striker’s quip for like five seconds before finally chuckling at the stupidity of the wordplay while Striker runs down the card. Let’s open with Siniestro de la Muerte in the ring. Catrina isn’t anywhere around, which is weird. She hasn’t been with him the last couple of weeks. Then again, she might be showing up soon because Prince Puma is his opponent. Striker tells us that Puma requested this match from Dario Cueto, which is interesting. I wish there was time for small interstitial to show them interacting directly, but oh well. Puma throws some awful strikes to start; I like the guy, but man, sometimes he does stuff that looks simply dreadful. I give him credit for mostly hiding a thigh slap on a dropkick, though. The camera angle didn’t do him any favors there. I was watching a Scott Hall match yesterday and realized suddenly that he’d do thigh slaps on his front kicks that I didn’t even register until I started looking for them. If you’re gonna slap your thigh on your kicks, look at tape of Scott Hall, I suppose. Puma rolls Siniestro while commentary talks about how Puma’s altered color scheme for his mask and tights matches his journey into darkness. Siniestro gets some offense in there, but Puma is never in much danger. The match itself isn’t very good, with a lot of weak offense and sporadic my-turn, your-turn exchanges that don't come off very well. Puma sets up Siniestro for a 630 Senton when Mil Muertes storms the ring and breaks it up. Siniestro sucks, though, and hefails to capitalize; Puma quickly lands a cradle piledriver and then, staring into Mil’s eyes at ringside, plants Siniestro with a Flatliner for three. Ooh, move stealing! That’s how you know there’s hatred a-brewin’. Puma gets up immediately after his victory and lands a suicide dive onto Mil at ringside before brawling with him a bit. Catrina eventually backs a frenzied Mil away while Puma taunts him from his place back in the ring. That match was simply here to facilitate the angle at the end, and in that regard, it was successful. Seedy backstage interstitial: Uh-oh! Dario Cueto has summoned the now-exposed Officer Cortez Castro Reyes to his office for a meeting. When Dario extends an invitation to his office, he usually greets his visitor with a veneer of fake chumminess. This time, Dario has a deadly serious look on his face as he gets up from his desk. He walks over to Reyes…and hugs the guy. Then he says, with complete coolness in his voice, “I wanted to see how my man Cortez Castro is doing.” In other words, he speaks in a tone that is the exact opposite of how Mister Cisco (R.I.P.) said a similar line to Dario when randomly entering his office to get some intel (Season Two, Show Twenty-Five). The super-nervous Cisco tipped Dario off and got murdered. Dario doesn’t have Cisco's issues with smoothly lying to people, though, so while Reyes is internally disgusted by Dario’s fake sympathy and his assurance that he’ll get down to the bottom of who killed Cisco, Reyes receives absolutely zero clues that Dario knows that Reyes is an undercover cop. Dario goes all O.J. Simpson and promises to find “the real killer” before suggesting that maybe Big Ryck killed Cisco in revenge for Cisco being the one to burn his eye with a cigar (Season One, Show Eleven). I thought Bael did the actual eye-burning, but still, this is a pretty good red herring suspect Dario threw out there. Of course, Reyes knows that Big Ryck is missing or dead (R.I.P., one of the things I recently read is that there’s a Lucha Underground comic and that Ryck was killed off by the Disciples of Death in one of the issues set between the first two seasons, though he’s not joining the Permadeath Count because it didn’t happen on screen), but he can’t let anything slip. He just starts to leave the room after Dario pointedly tells him that “life goes on.” We can hear Melissa Santos starting her ring announcement for the next match as Reyes reaches the door and prepares to exit so that he can have his match. Dario suggests that “the show must go on” and then tells him to win this next “match of his career” for Mister Cisco. Did I type uh-oh yet?! Because uh-oh! In a little visual flourish, as Reyes opens the door to leave and looks back at a steely-eyed Dario, red-and-blue strobe lights to mark his entrance flash against the frosted window of the office door. He knows you’re five-oh, bud! It’s over! Well, Officer Cortez Castro Reyes heads to the ring to wrestle what Striker calls “an added bonus match coming out of Dario’s office.” Dario is kinda smart in the sense that rather than having Matanza harm Reyes, he’ll have Pentagón Dark do it for the sake of the plausible deniability of having an enemy of his do the job. Then again, he’s kinda messy in that he made this sudden bonus match instead of just booking it like a normal match. Give yourself more plausible deniability, not less, Dario. Anyway, Penta is still mad at Vampiro, so after enduring a fiery Reyes beatdown attempt to start, he dumps Reyes face-first on the buckles before staring down Vamp on a SHHH Slap, then earning an easy victory with a package piledriver. Of course, Penta unwittingly helps Dario send a message to Captain Vasquez and the LAPD by snapping Reyes’s arm after the match; then, he gets a microphone and promises that no matter who wins the Chavo Guerrero Jr./El Dragon Azteca Jr. match and earns the right to face him, that dude is getting a few bones broken. Penta calls Chavo an “old man” and calls Azteca something that is bleeped on audio and translated in text as “skinny punk.” However, I only heard unbleeped the word flaco, which I know means skinny because as a beanpole in high school Spanish class, I had that word used to describe me by many an activity partner on adjective practice day, **sigh**. But you don’t want to hear about one of the many reasons that I started to weight train in my early twenties, whereas I do want to hear what was bleeped, dang it! Anyway, if you didn’t know, Penta is still unaware of any internal feelings of fear. Alright, time for our Atómicos Match pitting the Super Friends and Sexy Star versus the Worldwide Underground. Fenix, Aerostar, and Drago are already in the ring alongside their partner Star; the Worldwide Underground enter via the floor. I wonder if Taya Valkyrie has Jack Evans agreeing to play nice again or has soothed P.J. Black for eating a lot of offense the last time they faced the Super Friends or has maybe soothed Johnny Mundo’s absurdly large ego. Or maybe she’s thinking about going solo because these dudes are kinda holding her back. Mundo throws his sunglasses at Star; Taya points and laughs. This absurd high school bully shit enrages Star, who sticks around in the ring to open the match against Taya. There’s a legit FUERA LOCA/SEXY STAR dueling chant. I bet if Ivelisse were in the ring against Taya, any dueling chant for Taya would be overwhelmed, just saying even though I know I say it too often. This sequence is decent enough; Jack Evans and Drago tag in next and Evans does a whole gymnastics routine that Drago just watches instead of kicking him in the solar plexus. Evans then tags out to Black. OK. Drago should have tripped him on a cartwheel, though. Black is in there to get his ass kicked and stumble around while the babyfaces beat him up, but he escapes danger on a slingshot and tags in Mundo. Some more stuff happens, and Fenix tags in. This match is fine, I suppose. I don’t actually care very much about more Super Friends vs. Worldwide Underground, and I’m sorta over Sexy Star. I thought that LU got her over in the first season, and her friendship with Willie Mack was wholesome and kept her over with me for the bulk of the second season, but she’s not very good and isn’t likeable enough to be in the position that she’s in right now. Meanwhile, Jack Evans does a terrible looking running headbutt to Star’s taint, and you know what? I’m good with this match. I’ll just speed through to the finish. So, the heels land a combination of crisp offense (Mundo, Taya, Black) and joke attacks (Evans) on face-in-peril Sexy Star. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: During said attacks, Vampiro recalls Billy Kidman fracturing his eye socket with a moonsault back in a WCW match. Every time Kidman leapt from the top rope, the move taker was risking taking a Kidman knee to one of their bones. Kidman actually became a consistently good worker by the end and his tag team with Rey Misterio Jr. is the best short-term tag team of all time for my money, but he had zero body control in the air on flips and needed to cut out the flipping moves from the top rope for the health and wellness of his opponents. Star escapes further damage when Mundo accidentally smashes into Taya; she gets a hot tag, and the match quickly breaks down. Aerostar almost plants himself in the second row hitting a plancha on Black at ringside. Taya sells a leg injury outside the ring after Star kicks her to the floor in a less-than-smooth spot, but Evans and Mundo team up on Star; Mundo hits Star with a superkick, and Evans backslides her for three. This wasn’t a good match. The men of the Worldwide Underground help Taya off the floor while the men of the Super Friends help Star up in the ring after the match. Seedy shrine of the dead interstitial: Catrina and Mil Muertes prepare to finally kill Siniestro de la Muerte for being a complete failure. Catrina snaps his neck, then basically sucks his evaporating life force out of his body like she was Shang Tsung. Seriously, Catrina is Mexican female Shang Tsung. I don’t know why I haven’t made that connection until now. Catrina then blows the life force she sucked out of Siniestro toward Mil, re-adding that life force back into Mil’s, uh, general essence? Sure, we’ll go with “general essence.” Anyway, Catrina gives Siniestro one final Lick of Death, and you know which counter that it’s time for. Permadeath Count: 10 (Bael, Konnan, El Dragon Azteca Sr., The Three Nerdsketeers, Trece, Barrio Negro, Mister Cisco, Siniestro de la Muerte). Catrina has one final request for Mil; kill the wabbit! No, sorry, kill the Puma! El Dragon Azteca Jr. meets Chavo Guerrero Jr. in the ring for a match to determine who is allowed to try and avenge the broken arm that Pentagón Dark gave them last season. Of course, the reluctant Rey Misterio Jr. has been penned in as the referee for this match by the dastardly Dario Cueto. I enjoy late-career Chavo, and Azteca is a solid worker, but I don’t expect much from this match. Part of the reason why is that the focus in this match is on the story, what with Misterio as the ref and Penta probably still in the building. They have a solid opening with some nice chain wrestling before Chavo wins a two count off a shoulderblock. An annoyed Chavo barks at Rey that his count was slow while Rey just shrugs it off and shows two fingers. I get a lot of joy out of having Chavo and Rey in the same ring interacting with one another. Rey continues to be a fair referee, though! Honestly, though the desk wonders about Rey’s ability to be impartial, they suggest that Rey might shade his count toward Azteca, whereas Rey internally probably (subconsciously?) hopes that Azteca will lose, learn a lesson here, and stop wasting his time with Chavo and Penta. There’s a nice spot where Azteca attempts a slingshot crossbody to the floor and gets caught and smashed into the raised railing. This is a solid televised bout. Chavo takes it back in the ring, where he’s better off when he’s bullying Azteca and worse off when Azteca can take things to the air. Chavo cuts off an Azteca comeback with a nice lariat that earns a two count, then goes back to a chinlock that certainly looks like a choke. Vampiro asserts that I am right about that on commentary. Chavo then rolls through a charging Azteca into a Canadian Maple Leaf…Mexican Eagle Lock?...anyway, it’s not quite a smooth as when Lance Storm does it. Azteca makes the ropes easily; Chavo tries to claim that Azteca tapped (he didn’t) and then tries to provoke Rey by slapping his hand down (he doesn’t). Chavo then escalates things by punching Rey square in the jaw. Rey has too much pride to simply disqualify Chavo, which is Rey’s mistake: Rey forearms him back and sends him right into Azteca, who leaps up onto Chavo’s shoulders in electric chair position and flips into a rana for a successful pinning combination – exactly the thing that Rey didn’t want as Rey will realize when he’s done being hot at Chavo. Chavo charges Rey after the match and gets tripped and hit with a 6-1-9. You’ve been on the end of that one before, buddy, and you probably will be again. Chavo collects himself and storms away, pointing at Rey in anger. You know what would be rad? One more Chavo/Rey singles match for the culture. Seedy dojo interstitial: Black Lotus is dumb enough to be lighting candles for her dead parents and claiming that she killed the man who killed her parents (she didn’t) and that before she could claim Azteca’s mask from Jr., Penta stopped her. However, she plans to show Penta what fear is like along with her Black Lotus Triad (she probably won’t). Not much great wrestling, but lots of interesting story stuff on this show. Chavo/Azteca was a fun little bout, though, and Luis Fernandez-Gil’s acting was particularly good tonight. 3.75 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

I saw the new Nitro stream that the WWE Vault Channel put up. I clicked on it and found myself at the point in the 3/3/97 Nitro during which Roddy Piper was trying out John Tenta, Horshu, and some other mooks for Piper's Family while a dead crowd tried to endure this seemingly hours-long segment. And I still miss WCW. That's saying something.

Season 3, Show 3: “Ultimate Opportunities” or Rey Misterio vs. Rey K. Rool Recap: Dario’s Dial of Doom. Penta’s propensity for breaking arms. The Worldwide Underground jumping their opps in the parking lot and in the ring. What a nice place this Temple is. I feel safe here, you know? Seedy gym interstitial: Rey Misterio Jr. spars with El Dragon Azteca Jr. and implores Azteca not to get too caught up in revenging himself on Penta to lose focus on the big mission of uniting the Aztec tribes. Rey: “Penta has many enemies; let them destroy him.” Over the past year or so, I have been able to watch Misterio take the path from twenty-something Rey holding his nuts, Bronco Bustering people, and talking wild shouldn’t-be-aired stuff about the West Hollywood Blondes going down Hershey highway to forty-something Rey being a wise sage and thoughtful mentor. What a fantastic example of how people typically change when transitioning from early adulthood into middle adulthood. If I wrote a Lifespan Psychology book themed around pro wrestling, it’d get its own little example paragraph in a chapter. Azteca isn’t listening and spars with too much anger; Misterio easily wraps him up and pins him while continuing to try and remind Azteca to let that petty arm-breaking shit go. Who shows up but Chavo Guerrero Jr. to count the pinfall? Misterio looks warily at his long-time enemy and opponent in the last great WCW PPV match, but Azteca immediately calls Chavo a liar (well, yes, that’s true) and storms right up to him angrily (have you not heard anything that Misterio has just been telling you, young Padawan?), which of course ends with Chavo rolling through Azteca's attack and locking on a single crab just like he was Lance Storm. Rey implores Chavo to let Azteca up; Chavo does, but then seems to issue a challenge to Azteca for a proper match in the Temple. It's time to spin the wheel and make the deal; Dario’s got his Dial of Doom out again, and I note the “Dario’s Choice” option that is listed. Hmm. Let me guess. “Dario’s Choice” is somehow going to get chosen. Matanza stands in the ring waiting to kill someone else while Dario taunts the Son of Havoc-loving fans over Havoc’s loss to Matanza last week: “ Last of week, Son of Havoc was the *ahem* ‘lucky’ winner, and got his ass kicked and has had to spend the last two weeks at home being cared for by his mother. But let’s face it, Believers, none of you ever actually believed that Son of Havoc could actually be Lucha Underground Champion, did you?” Rude. I was wrong: Dario is going to slow play the murder of Officer Cortez Castro Reyes. The wheel lands on Willie Mack’s name. Dario claims that “it’s the return of the Mack,” and as someone who came of age in the ‘90s, I appreciate you, Dario. Mack sprints up to Matanza at ringside and immediately starts throwing hands with Matanza, winning a Mack Stunner right then and there. He rolls Matanza into the ring, who kicks out at about 1.5, and Mack’s next two immediate covers get the same count. Mack is wrestling this match the way most people should against Matanza in that he’s just unloading the whole arsenal in the first five minutes and trying to get a quick three count before Matanza can figure out what the fuck is happening to him. A Frankensteiner doesn’t win it for him, nor does a nasty back suplex. Mack slows the pace down and preps another Mack Stunner, which is a mistake in that he lets Matanza take some time to gather himself; Matanza cinches his arms around Mack’s waist as Mack turns and grabs the jawlock to drop down, then lands a huge release German suplex to counter it. Now that Matanza’s got purchase in the match, it probably means that Mack is fucked in kayfabe. Matanza lands trapped headbutts to the back of Mack’s head before scoring an impressive deadlift pumphandle suplex. Mack tries to fire up after taking a long choke – he slaps Matanza in the face and yells THAT’S ALL YOU GOT, BITCH?! – so Matanza kicks him in the face and laterally presses. He only gets two, though. Both men stand in front of one another and trade blows; Matanza lands a headbutt to Mack’s chin and Vampiro calls out Zinedine Zedane, which is a nice sports analogy. Mack ends up landing a plancha to Matanza standing on the floor at ringside, then scores a sweet leaping shoulderblock that flings Matanza backward. Mack goes up and tries to follow with a Frog Splash, but Matanza gets knees up, then quickly pops to his feet and hits a winded Mack with a Wrath of the Gods for three. I could get used to Matanza having energetic openers with random midcarders on these shows. Fun stuff. After the match, Striker hypes the contents of a note that Dario handed him: Dario’s planning to make another announcement about two other wrestlers in the Temple and has booked a “mega main event.” I’m interested. Seedy "Son of Havoc’s mom’s house" interstitial: Son of Havoc holds an ice pack to his neck and watches TV while sitting in the den; he sees the Famous B. commercial in which B. transforms Brenda from a toothless mess to a blonde with a huge chest. “I can’t stand those guys,” remarks Havoc to someone else sitting next to him, “How ‘bout you?” Mascarita Sagrada, who was nice enough to come by and check on Havoc’s health, nods in agreement and flicks off the screen. Ooh, and It’s Product Placement Time!: Both men have opened cans of Modelo sitting in front of them, which is a much more apropros beer sponsorship than Miller Lite. And much like Penta, Modelo is even better when it’s dark! Havoc’s mom Linda yells to “Sean/Shawn” that supper’s ready, and then HAHAHAHAHAHAHA It’s Product Placement Time!: Sean/Shawn of Havoc’s Midwestern mom’s idea of making supper is warming up a box of fucking Bagel Bites. She shows the box to the screen while a bit of harp music plays. Linda Havoc invites Sagrada to join them for this filling, healthy dinner that not only boasts IMPROVED PIZZA SAUCE! and BETTER TASTE!, but also is made with Real Cheese, includes Seven Grams of Protein, and has Zero – count ‘em, Zero! – Trans Fats Per Serving. There are eighteen bagels in one box, so that’s six apiece. Did she at least make a garden salad to go with it? Linda, do I need to come to your house and teach you how to make filling yet healthy dinners? If your son (of havoc) could become a trios champ and win the Four a Unique Opportunity tournament fueled on dinners full of Bagel Bites, imagine what he could do if he got a well-balanced meal full of unprocessed foods every once in a while! So far in this show, we’ve had stunners, cans of beer, and raised middle fingers, and it makes me wish that we could get 1998 or 2001 Stone Cold Steve Austin working in the Temple. Seedy backstage interstitial: Johnny Mundo and Taya bust into Dario Cueto’s office; Mundo demands a title shot. Dario’s like, Chill, you’re getting one, but it’s not a LU Championship shot; it's a trios tag shot with your buddies the Dragon Slayer and the Werewolf. Taya, unhelpfully: “Ack-shually, he’s a Darewolf.” He is, but I mean, do you think that you should provoke this lunatic Dario, Taya? Then again, Mundo’s dumb ass has already started the provocation with the whole “storming into Dario’s office” deal. Mundo says that the Worldwide Underground has one goal, and it isn’t the stinkin’ trios tag titles; it’s to make Johnny Mundo the LU Champion centerpiece of their douchebag Four Horsemen. Well, actually, the Four Horsemen were also douchebags, but you get my point. Mundo says that he’ll be at his very nicely furnished dojo working out instead of wrestling for trios titles before storming away. Taya, on the other hand, sticks around and immediately cuts a deal with Dario to replace Mundo in the trios tag title match for later tonight. She also tries to indicate that he’s got something in his nostriles, but boy does Dario just want her to get the fuck out of his office already. She leaves. Dario seems to wipe, um, some coke residue from his nostrils and quickly rub it on his teeth. We come back to the ring for Brian Cage versus Texano. At this point, Dario steps out of his office and addresses them. He mentions the similarities between them: big, strong, great fighters, and also first-round losers in the Four a Unique Opportunity tournament back at Ultima Lucha Dos. Neither man was able to win a Unique Opportunity in that tournament, but Dario claims that this match will be for an Ultimate Opportunity, and only the winner will get to find out what sort of booby prize they’ve won. The men start with a bit of matwork; Cage earns a backslide for two. They get up and grapple some more. Cage shoots Texano into the corner, but he flips over the ropes and hits a jawbreaker on Cage when Cage charges him as he stands on the apron. He follows with a slingshot senton, a running forearm, and an enziguri, but all that only earns him two on the lateral press. Cage gets back to his feet, wins a counter and kicks Texano off the apron, then scores a slingshot plancha to the floor. Cage yells out WHO BETTA THAN CAGE, which I think is a nice homage to one of his trainers. This match is mostly a your-turn, my-turn deal. It’s what it is. Lots of countering, worked at a good pace (especially for beefy dudes), but not much more than that. Cage tries a rollup, then transitions into a standing inverted Boston Crab, but Texano gets the ropes. Cage immediately grabs Texano and tries rolling Germans, but Texano does the Kurt Angle transition into an ankle lock that Cage breaks by grabbing the ropes. Texano lands a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, but Striker just kills the poor guy on commentary: “Look, a very slow cover, and that hard breathing right there. Is Texano maybe in not as good a shape as Cage?” That’s some “Jim Ross talking about how washed Bret Hart looks against Steve Austin at Survivor Series ‘96” shit right there. It didn’t help that there was a shot of Texano was sucking wind like he was the Ultimate Warrior two minutes into a match when Striker said this.” Vampiro tries to cover for it by noting that both are heavyweights and that they’ve been going hard, but what was the point of saying that stuff about Texano? I mean, maybe if they’re going to turn Texano again and make his gimmick a cigarette smoking lazy heel or something, I’ll come back and re-evaluate that comment, but otherwise, what the fuck, Striker? Cage gets back up and is also breathing hard because these dudes have genuinely been going nonstop. He gets two on a spinebuster into a bridge; Texano counters when Cage tries to wrap on a Texas Cloverleaf with a small package in which he locks his fingers, but only gets two. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: It’s not exactly challenging to remember Sting and Ric Flair, but I want to shout out Vampiro’s “Reminiscent, I remember when Sting did that to Ric Flair, remember that?...At the Great American Bash (1990), when Sting won the big one.” Great shout from Vampiro, with the only change in the spot being that Flair was (obviously) trying a Figure Four and not a Texas Cloverleaf and that Sting (obviously) got the full three count. Just in case you want to relive that again, here’s the timestamped link: https://youtu.be/O1xLMapqbcc?si=jNHIgPler9j8c7dh Striker’s dumb ass doesn’t remember, though. I don’t think he started watching WCW closely until the Nitro Era based on his limited range of WCW references. Anyway, the two dudes in the ring trade moves and close two counts; they do a pretty impressive job of working at pace for such beefy dudes. Contrary to Striker’s commentary, I think they’re both quite well-conditioned. I guess I sort of enjoy this match from a meta-standpoint in which I appreciate the gym work that went into being able to be this pacey even if I’m meh on the match itself because it feels too back-and-forth without any struggle. It's really a showcase for doing quick counters and big moves for the sake of them. Cage finally wins it with a discus lariat. Here's bad boss Dario Cueto to pull a reprise of his Best of Five series between Drago and Aerostar from back in the first season; he tells both men that to get an Ultimate Opportunity, they’ll ultimately have to win three matches in the series first. Cage and Texano dap it up and prepare for more TV matches against one another in the weeks ahead. Seedy backstage interstitial: Warily, Dario shakes a box that someone sent to his office. He slowly opens it and pulls out a red cap with an absolutely disgusting slogan written on the front. If someone's wearing a red cap like this in public, you know to avoid them. You guessed it; in white text, the front of the cap says 4-2-3 GET FAME. Gross. Dario rolls his eyes and tosses it aside, then opens up a manila envelope that holds pictures of, what the fuck, maimed people? Pictures of the people Matanza killed, maybe, considering that El Dragon Azteca Jr. bursts in without knocking, glimpses the pictures, and then asks, “Is that where you’re planning on taking your brother the next time you take another vacation?” Dario sighs and tosses the pictures in his wastebasket, but I have questions about them that remain unanswered. Azteca wants a match against Pentagón Dark, but Dario says that he’s the boss and the booker and he’ll be making the matches around here before floating an Azteca rematch with Black Lotus instead. Then, as if remembering something suddenly, he notes that Lotus isn’t around because “she took a vacation back to Hong Kong.” Was Lotus that poor in the ring that they only had her wrestle one match in two-plus seasons and then had to stick her with a bunch of other wrestlers when they finally brought her back in? She seemed okay in the limited time she worked Azteca at Ultima Lucha Dos. Since Lotus is out of the country right now, Dario reconsiders and books Azteca against Penta, muttering that Azteca may be fucked when that match happens. Azteca leaves and oh look, it’s Ricky Mandel here to visibly disrupt Dario’s peace. Ramo has written earlier in this thread that Mandel has “an insane arc over the course of the series.” I assume that arc also includes being Trece and then getting killed. My headcanon is that Mandel was kidnapped by Mil and Catrina during the first season and brainwashed to become Trece, and when Siniestre ripped Trece’s heart out, that returned Mandel back to the normal jobber-ass human that we see before us today. Now, if I’m trying to guess where he ends up by the end of this season, I’m going to take a shot in the dark and assume that he becomes a cult member in Paul London’s (IIRC) Alice in Wonderland-themed group of weirdos that I broadly remember being a thing by the end of this season from the first time I watched it. Anyway, Mandel would like to get booked for a ma—hey, look at those neat weird creepy pictures! Dario looks at his desk; the pictures that he threw in the trash somehow ended up right back in front of him. Well, that’s disturbing. Dario’s seen far more disturbing things, though, and simply offers Mandel the “cool” pictures to get rid of them. Mandel happily takes them with an “Awesome! Thanks, Mr. Cueto! These are sweet!” I didn’t have Ricky Mandel cracking me up on my bingo card for today, but life brings us these small happy surprises sometimes. Mandel continues to make me laugh by whispering “Not a good time” to Chavo Guerrero Jr. as Chavo enters and Mandel exits. Chavo doesn’t listen, of course. He shuts Dario’s office door behind Mandel and demands, “We need to talk.” Dario rolls his eyes, but he sits back to hear Chavo out as the interstitial ends. The Super Friends (Drago, Aerostar, and Rey Fenix) are our Lucha Underground Trios Tag Team Champions, and they defend their gold against the Worldwide Underground (Jack Evans, P.J. Black, and Taya Valkyrie). Fenix picks up a kid in the crowd and celebrates with him even though Dario Cueto expressly declared that this Temple was absolutely not for children (Season One, Show One). Striker, putting things gently: “You know, there’s a lot of kids here at the Temple, and in about fifteen, twenty years, we’re going to have a group of some very very interesting young men and women roaming the earth.” Fair! As the match starts, Evans does a whole shadowboxing routine that reminds Vampiro of something from Mortal Kombat. Black blind tags Evans, who front bumps off of it. This team is full of morons except for Taya, who is a James Vandenberg Certified Competent Manager and a tough out in the ring besides. She ends up starting out against Drago, and they hae a decent sequence leading to a standoff. It sort of helps that she’s about as tall as her opponents and thus looks more legitimately potentially dangerous as a result, but she’s also cleaner through these complex sequences than someone like Sexy Star. Aerostar and Black tag in next and have a good sequence in which Aerostar hits a corkscrew body press, but ends up getting his headscissors countered into a vertical suplex for two. Black only earns two on the counter, so he drags Aerostar to the corner and goes to the second rope for a delayed double axe that Aerostar has time to get boots up on. Aerostar tags out to Fenix; Black tags in Evans. Evans thinks better of his situation and tags in Taya. Will Fenix find it in himself to wrestle this woman like a man? The answer is yes. He even fakes a kick to the ass and then lands one to the head in a reverse of what he did to Taya back in the Six to Survive Match (Season Two, Show Twenty-One). That's a very nice callback spot because Taya immediately covers her ass and shrieks, clearly not expecting Fenix to actually kick her in the head this time around. Taya tags Black back in, who fares poorly against Fenix as well. Evans finally tags in and deigns to actually wrestle Drago. Half the crowd supportively chanting DRA-GON SLAY-ER is a real bummer. If even Evans can’t be enough of a heel to turn half the crowd off, who can possibly manage it? Marty Martinez, I guess. He’s our only hope. Drago’s kind of an FIP for a bit, but the Worldwide Underground is falling apart, spitefully blind tagging one another, and having arguments that Taya keeps having to calm down as “the mom of the Worldwide Underground,” as Striker puts it. While I’m skeptical of the online gender war claims about broadly all women doing undue amounts of emotional labor in their relationships, here is a perfect example of that bullshit in practice. Get it together, Black and Evans. You're embarrassing our whole gender. Evans doesn’t get it together. He sits with arms crossed at ringside and pouts. Literally. That is not a short-handed metaphor for his mood or actions. Black, meanwhile, eats an ass whipping inside the ring. Striker notes that Evans does “his best Chief Jay Strongbow [impression] out on the floor [from] when the Strongbows lost to the [Wild] Samoans. If he’s referring to the 1983 bout, it’s a little different in that Jay got knocked to the floor instead of sitting out there pouting on purpose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f70Af1ZYXgs. This is also a reminder that I need to start a 1975 – 1985 WWF thread where I review random matches in the upcoming months. I have a weird wrestling knowledge gap from that era of WWF wrestling. I’ll work on both that and a random World of Sport review thread while I wait to get the TV in place for my next complete show project. But that’s beside the point right now! Drago accidentally baseball slides Fenix while trying to hit Taya; she moves and then hits a top rope crossbody onto both men at ringside. Meanwhile, Black survives an Aerostar attack and tries a springboard attack, but in a genuinely cool counter, Aerostar pops up and gets on the top rope, then ranas Black as Black hits the springboard. Aerostar follows with a springboard Codebreaker for three. Wow, Aerostar really showed me something there. Awesome stuff from him during the finish. Note that Taya is the only competend member of this whole fucking crew. She should consider maybe doing better than Johnny Mundo and these other two goofs. Evans stands at ringside, arms still folded, face still in a protracted pout, as Johnny Mundo reveals that he didn’t even get out of the parking lot! He runs in and helps Black and Taya attack the celebrating Super Friends! Mundo, who knocked Fenix out and took his place in the Black and Evans trios team in the first place, especially targets Fenix in this attack. The heels celebrate until Sexy Star hits the ring to rally the troops and help clear them out. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto actually invited someone to his office instead of having them barge in on him while he snorts cocaine or tries to rid himself of magically-enhanced photos of a grisly nature or murders a dude with a red mold of a bull or whatever else he does in his spare time within that office of his. His guest is Rey Misterio Jr.; Dario tattles on El Dragon Azteca Jr. ignoring Misterio’s well-given advice and coming to him for a match against Pentagón Dark. Misterio is frustrated and asks for the match to be unbooked. Dario has already done so; instead, Dario has booked Azteca against Chavo Guerrero Jr., with the winner earning a “You Broke My Arm, You Stupid Prick” Match against Penta. Misterio takes this all in while Dario notes that Misterio probably doesn’t want Azteca wrestling either of these proposed matches. Misterio readily agrees with Dario's assessment and asks him to use his pencil to erase that match from his booking notebook, but Dario instead assures Misterio that he’ll try to help the hotheaded Azteca Jr. out by making sure that his mentor Rey can watch over him up close…since Rey’ll be the special guest referee in the Azteca/Chavo match. Dario tosses his pencil aside and instead writes Rey’s name in as guest ref in extremely permanent ink. Man, what a dick! It was another enjoyable episode of Lucha Underground! 4.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

You're not alone. https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-it-was-really-like-to-be-on-nickelodeons-legends-of-the-hidden-temple/ I got like thirty minutes through the Vampiro doc and then had to leave; I need to get back to this, though. This is a timely reminder post, so thank you! Yes. Catrina explicitly said that she'd been waiting a hundred and ninety-seven years for immortality. From Season Two, Show Sixteen: Since the young girl was given the amulet by her dying father a thousand years before the show's events rather than only a couple hundred, I am assuming that Catrina's a bit too young to be the girl. Now, I could be wrong. There is room for, say, Vasquez to have somehow found her half of the amulet while investigating Dario, or the "a hundred and ninety-seven years" remark might be Catrina remembering when she lost a half-amulet and was no longer functionally immortal, but I find that unlikely for the following reasons: 1. In the past, the young girl is determined to stop the huge War of the Aztec Gods. In the present, Vasquez is determined to stop the huge War of the Aztec Gods. On the other hand, Catrina is determined to a) become immortal by using Fenix or the rejoining the amulet pieces or whatever and b) powering up Mil Muertes through constant deaths and resurrections. My semi-out-there guess about Mil is that he's also meant to be a vessel for an Aztec god and that Catrina is preparing him for such a situation, but there haven't been any actual on-screen clues to point to that. It's just a hunch. 2. In general, Vasquez and Delgado are both presented as understanding way more about the Temple and its function than everyone else. Reyes doesn't seem to get it, and he's spent two seasons working under Dario Cueto. It's likely to me that Vasquez's knowledge about the Temple's true function, her being unnerved by Delgado visiting and telling her to drop her investigation, and her possession of the half-amulet point to her having a whole lot more knowledge than the typical cop in her position (even a captain) would have. I thought about how it would work if Catrina were the little girl. It would depend on more interstitials that show what that girl ended up doing after she received the amulet. At some point, she'd have to learn more and decide that actually, she wanted to spark the War of the Aztec Gods and would use her amulet to stick around until she found the perfect vessel, at which point she would prepare to imbue that vessel with the power of a god and then have him destroy all other vessels, thus controlling the most powerful being walking the earth. So I could be wrong. We'll see. I am almost certainly not anticipating at least a couple of twists and turns that make me re-evaluate what I think I know, which is the beauty of this show's running narrative arcs.

I don't see how. So a girl is a Punk super fan and Punk is grooming her by acknowledging her? If he was jumping into her tween DMs, maybe that term would be more appropriate. Did he do something like that? Or is he just a dude acknowledging a young super fan who eventually ended up getting into the business? Maybe I don't have a key piece of info here or something.

Season 3, Show 2: “The Amulet” or Where in Time Are Vasquez and Catrina? Recap: Dario Cueto got Councilman Delgado to get his Dark Lord to spring him from prison, but the Dark Lord pretty much is like Dr. Claw in that you can only really see his spiked gauntlet and he's so mad about Dario getting locked up that if it happens again, he threatens to get you next time, Gadget Dario. He doesn’t seem to have an evil cat, though. Anyway, to avoid retribution from the Dark Lord should Dario have to again shut the Temple down on account of being incarcerated, Dario needs to ferret out the rest of the moles in his Temple. Oh, and Famous B. released Mascarita Sagrada from his representation and wished him the best in his future endeavors with a superkick, then went out and signed Dr. Wagner Jr., who I just found out last night (I know, I know) is brother of the dearly departed Silver King. I think that Silver King ruled, so I will transfer my hopes and expectations for his wrestling matches onto Wagner. Finally, I am not looking forward to another Marty Martinez/Killshot match, but on the upside, at least this feud will be over soon! Seedy back-in-time interstitial: Captain Vasquez and her moron cop underlings Joey Ryan and Cortez Castro Reyes hear, on the night of Mister Cisco’s death, the audio in which Dario Cueto can be heard murdering Cisco with that red bull figure that really gets around when it comes to helping the Cueto kids deliver blunt force trauma to people’s melons. Reyes is thrilled that they have evidence of Dario committing murder and wants to bring him in tonight, but Vasquez says that the killing of “just some random street thug” is not enough of a trigger to bring a guy like Dario in. Reyes, who had actually bonded with Cisco, becomes irate and yells at Vasquez that she got him killed. Good thing Ryan is here to calm shit down. No, I was wrong about that last sentence; he instead enflames the situation by giggling at the idea that Castro is sad about his friend. Ryan then slapfights Castro after Castro shoves him. Then, Castro storms out of the room after declaring that his name was MISTER Tibbs – no wait, I’ve already probably written that dumb Striker-like random pop culture reference in reference to Cisco. The important takeaway is it’s almost kind of heartwarming that he insists on the honorific “mister” for the now-dead Cisco. We go to Striker and Vampiro in the Temple, who go to Melissa Santos, who goes to Famous B. (unwillingly going for that last one) when B. takes the microphone from her and declares her “not famous enough” to introduce Dr. Wagner Jr. (w/Brenda in a slutty nurse costume, of course). It’s too bad LU didn’t bring Silver King in too. Anyway, I dig Mascarita Sagrada, who is Wagner’s opponent. Wagner elaborately pantomimes that he’s going to punt this short little dude somewhere into the fifteenth row, which gets a chuckle out of me. The match itself, though, is brief. Wagner wins a quick squash with a Dr. Driver in about thirty seconds. Poor Sagrada. I deeply want him to be a trios champ before this show ends. Seedy back-in-time (but way farther back than the previous interstitial) interstitial: The Aztec warrior whom we saw talking to Aerostar about protecting the earth from the Aztec gods in human form (Season Two, Show Three) leads the little girl who expressed hopelessness that the Aztec tribes would ever join together to do any such protecting right up to her father’s deathbed. Her father tells her that she must lead the fight against the gods. She’s like seven or eight, dude! Whatever, this is Lucha Underground. I wish that they’d had the dialogue for these interstitials from the far past done in Nahuatl instead of Spanish, which is a minor quibble. Anyway, the young girl’s dying father gives her a golden amulet called Piedra Immortal – the Immortal Stone – and says that only the ladies can wield the power of this stone. The little girl asks how to use it, and her dying dad says that as soon as she hits womanhood, she will become immortal for as long as she holds it. Um, does this somehow explain Catrina? Did Catrina get her hands on this amulet somehow? The reluctant girl’s father impresses upon her that she must stick around for at least the next thousand years to stop the giant Aztec tribal-slash-Aztec-gods clusterfuck of a war, then dies. Seedy back-in-time (but not nearly as far back as the previous interstitial) interstitial: I get an answer to my question about whether or not Catrina somehow got a hold of the amulet immediately. She did not [Editor's note: Well...]. I know this because back on the night of Ultima Lucha Dos, Captain Vasquez had one cracked half of the amulet in her possession. She looks at it closely, probably wondering if she can find the other half hidden in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey so that she can rejoin the halves and ward off an extra temple guard. No, wait, wrong awesome show with amulets and cool indigenous American vibes. What Vasquez actually does is stashes it when Officer Reyes proudly walks in, having used the audio against Vasquez’s wishes to get the cops to come down on Dario Cueto at the end of Ultima Lucha Dos, and claims that WE GOT ‘IM, ‘IM being Dario. Vasquez sneers and says the only one who’s gettin’ got is Officer Reyes. Vasquez’s actor does some terrible overacting, like distractingly so, as she chews out Reyes for being so laser-focused on putting Dario away that he’s ignoring a giant Aztec tribal-slash-Aztec gods clusterfuck of a war that’s about to pop off and then suspends him for trying to put a cold-blooded murderer in prison since said cold-blooded murderer is a link to all this spooky shit that she doesn’t really seem to have filled Reyes in on with any level of convincing evidence. Then again, Reyes has probably seen weird stuff like Catrina blit-blurting in and out of rooms, as Vasquez suggests, so maybe he should be more credulous about Vasquez’s claims. A page ago, Ramo suggested that the showrunners might not have planned the whole LU story out. I think that’s a completely reasonable position and would definitely guess that they didn’t have all the tiny details in place, but stuff like the previous two interstitials suggests to me that they had the broader “modern-day Aztec war” stuff planned to an endpoint. There is just too much story, carefully doled out across the seasons, that slowly layers in the deeper, larger fantasy narrative arc, for me not to think that they didn’t have a broad ending involving the central characters planned out from the jump. I stopped for a sec to search and see if any of the writers or producers had anything to say about this and stumbled into a post and an audio interview (the latter of which I haven’t listened to) in which it appears that executive producer Chris DeJoseph and writer Chris Roach did have a long-term story plotted about the major arc and some of the minor arcs that fed into it. I also spoiled myself on two things that I immediately read without registering that I shouldn’t be reading them. This is what happens when your brain starts reading as soon as it sees words without considering whether or not the thing is worth reading or is something that you actually want to know. However, what I did read sounded kind of amazing, so I’m interested to follow the paths to those events. This has been a packed ten minutes in terms of narrative, and narrative is where LU really excels. What happened to the little Aztec girl? How did she lose the medal? Where is the other half? Is Vasquez the little girl?! No, can’t be. Besides, she’s missing half the amulet, though maybe half the amulet “merely” keeps you alive for thousands of years rather than making you immortal like the full amulet does. Nah, can’t be. Can’t be [Editor's note: Well...]. Back to the ring, Argenis makes a rare Lucha Underground appearance. I’m not sure he’s been on this show since maybe the previous Aztec Warfare match. I love that the crowd doesn’t know who’s coming out to face him, but when Santos says “…accompanied to the ring by Catrina…” a small contingent in the crowd visibly pops with a sort of OH SHIT sound. Mil Muertes stalks out here and continues our ongoing big bully squash night by kicking the shit out of Argenis. Mil scores a nice powerbomb in the midst of the squash and endures an Asai moonsault, kicking out at one, then scoring a spear and a Flatliner for an easy three count. OK, after the match, Prince Puma jumps Mil while Catrina is giving Argenis a Lick of Death, but what I popped for is Vampiro’s fake ass surprised exclamation of PUMA?!?! like he didn’t go backstage and influence Puma to do this very thing last week. The nerve of this snake-ass motherfucker Vampiro. Amazing! Vamp is fantastic on color, keeping up the pretense of being shocked by exclaiming WHA-WHA-WHAT?! like some sort of cartoon character and then being unable to help revealing his true feelings when he mutters a pleased-sounding, “that was violent; that was vicious” after Puma lands a forceful baseball slide. Catrina yanks Mil out of the way of further damage and backs him off while he and Puma glare at one another. I suppose that it’s worth noting that tonight, Puma’s wearing his black-with-some-orange mask and not his typical orange-with-some-black mask, symbolizing that whole “much darker place” that Puma is going to. Seedy back-in-time (but not quite as far back as the previous interstitial) interstitial: Last week, we failed to see Dario Cueto re-entering his office after being released from custody and looking around, wondering where all the hidden mics are, probably. He caresses the red mold of a bull that has served both he and his brother well when committing violence in the past. As he finally relaxes and begins to take his seat, this moron Officer Joey Ryan pops in and outs himself as a cop and a mole. Ryan says that he’s flipping from the LAPD to Dario’s team if Dario will have him because he wants to be “on the right side of this war.” Then, he outs Officer Cortez Castro Reyes as a show of future loyalty and holds out his hand to shake on their new pact. Whoops, no, he’s pulling a Big Ryck (R.I.P.?!) and holding out his hand for money because he’s at least one woman’s past awful decision and now owes her child support. Am I now typing about actual Joey Ryan or just this fictionalized Joey Ryan? Who can even tell anymore? A disgusted Dario pays this idiot and then sits there, probably now wondering how best to add a certain former flunky to a certain Permadeath Count along with his other two former flunkies who are now on it. Seedy current time interstitial: Officer Reyes meets with Captain Vasquez for the first time since she unceremoniously suspended him about six or so months ago. He penitently says that he will support Vasquez in her greater mission, and Vasquez sends him right back into the Temple to be slaughtered by at least one and maybe both of the Cueto Brothers. I’m going to take a shot in the dark and guess that Dario rigs his Dial of Doom to select Reyes and then has Matanza murder him in front of the whole Temple under the guise of having a simple lil’ title bout. After Reyes leaves the room, Vasquez once again takes out her half of the amulet and looks closely at it. Can't be. Can it? [Editor's note: Well...] This show’s storylines have been so good that I don’t even give a fuck about having to watch Marty “the Moth” Martinez and Killshot have a trash brawl over some dogtags. Killshot jumps a grease-painted Moth on the stairs. Matt Striker Reads the Papers: “You don’t need Hans Blix to find these WMDs, and I’m tellin’ ya, they were in Syria the whole time.” Speaking of WMDs in Iraq, let me tell you a little story about the Reagan Administration that you might be interested in, Striker. But to stay on point, this guy Striker goes completely nutty with the current events references and goofily shouts BOUTROS-BOUTROS GHALI GOLLY! after Killshot slaps his thigh with a bit of extra pop on a superkick. There’s a model artillery gun out here for Killshot to pick up and hit Marty with. Is this the WWE? This is so dumb that I’m not even going to be mad about it. Striker has gone completely hammy on PBP, but it’s appropriate for a match as dumb as this one. These fellas do all the spots that you’d expect from the typical LU arena brawl. Fuck talking about this same-y ass trash brawl nonsense for a second; let’s go back to Matt Striker Reads the Papers: Mentions Dubya and Rummy; also screams SHOCK AND AWE after Killshot spikes Marty in the head with a chair. I’m disappointed that he hasn’t yet talked about the unknown unknowns that wrestlers have to deal with in a match like this. Marty grabs poor Melissa Santos and uses her as a meat shield to stop Killshot’s attack while Striker tastelessly screams about civilian hostages. Marty shoves her into Killshot and climbs into the stands; Killshot chases him, but Marty puts a Von Erich-style Claw on his balls. Killshot responds by slapping his thigh even harder than the last time on a knee strike. Some dude in the crowd stands over the fallen Marty and crotch chops him, which fits perfectly with the tenor of this bout. Striker: NO REFUGEE CRISIS HERE; EVERYONE WAITS FOR THIS CIVIL WAR TO END. My GOD, this is the trashiest thing I’ve seen and heard in pro wrestling in a minute or two! I love it! This series of spots actually worked to get the crowd way behind Killshot, too, as they vociferously chant his name after he hits a 450 seated senton from the railing to a bleeding Marty standing on the floor. Striker: “We’re a long way from Fallujah, but it’s certainly HOT here in Boyle Heights!” Keep going, Striker! I believe in you! You can’t be out of Iraq or Afghanistan War references yet! Feel free to also include more stuff you often hear in war movies! Yell SEMPER FI again a couple of times! You can tell how intense Killshot is because every kick he does is accompanied by an even louder thigh slap. Striker after Marty tosses Killshot headfirst into a ladder: “Just like Hitler’s army trying to come through the back door in Russia, they ran into a cold winter, and Marty ‘the Moth’ Martinez is right back on top!” Actually, the Nazis tried to come through the front door, just like Napoleon’s dumb ass did. If they’d circled around and tried to invade via Vladivostok or something, that’d be coming in through the back door from their locational perspective. But you know, we got a coveted Hitler reference from Striker, and I was waiting for one because I can now declare Striker’s commentary complete for this bout. Striker is finally running out of steam with the war references – he had to resort to talking about the wrestlers and the crowd ignoring John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s suggestion that we give peace a chance – so we can go ahead and wrap this match up, fellas. Killshot hits Marty with a DVD onto a ladder, which is a nasty bump that dents the ladder; Killshot follows with a top rope double stomp that only earns a two count. I thought that was it, but instead, we get Marty turning things around with a mule kick to Killshot’s junk and a powerbomb from the ring and through a table at ringside. Vampiro looks pained by that bump, probably because he took it (without the table as cushion) and legit broke his neck to end his WCW run. Killshot kicks out of that, of course, because we’re in Lucha Underground and none of these death moves kill even the regular humans, much less the mystical magical wrestlers. Killshot comes back and only gets two on a cradle piledriver, so he goes back to setting up a whole Lowe’s aisle-ful of hardware. This all ends with Marty using Mankind’s Mandible Claw to try and pacify Killshot for long enough that Mariposa can run out and try to help yank Killshot off a ladder and through a table. Killshot fights her off, and in a truly scary bump, her head almost snaps the bottom rope as she plummets through the table. Yeesh. Killshot then lands the Claw on Marty’s nuts, rips his tags from around Marty’s neck, and then double-stomps Marty off the ladder and through another table for three. I’m currently re-reading Susan Sontag’s landmark essay that defines “camp,” and some of her definitions don’t seem to immediately apply to professional wrestling, or maybe not as straightforwardly as they do to other forms of camp. However, I think that one of her big points that she makes at the beginning of the essay is akin to Justice Potter Stewart’s quote about obscenity: That like obscenity, camp can be a slippery thing to define, but that “I know it when I see it.” I know exactly what I just saw; this match was pure camp. It has to be the most American pro wrestling thing that LU has ever done. It wouldn’t have worked without Striker’s tastelessness on commentary actually fitting nicely with the nonsense that was happening on screen, though. I have to give him credit for basically applying the essence of topical 1993 WWF RAW commentator Vince McMahon to a much lesser version of a Hulk Hogan/Sgt. Slaughter Boot Camp Match. He saved this match by essentially shining a light on how tastelessly ridiculous it all was. Seedy backstage interstitial: Catrina calms Mil Muertes down as he destroys the locker room. Mil wants to beat up Puma, but Catrina tells him to be patient, and then in a complete HOLY SHIT moment, Catrina says that patience is indeed a virtue worth cultivating before pulling out the other half of the amulet and gazing upon it. Of course; Vasquez is the little girl and Catrina somehow got half of the amulet away from her about a couple hundred years ago. Makes perfect sense. Uh, I mean, for this show it does. If Vince Russo saw this episode, I wonder if his love of story-driven wrestling shows and completely trashy television would overcome his internalized racism toward Mexican people. If this episode of LU wouldn’t help him overcome the latter, nothing would. 5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 3, Show 1: “Wheel of Misfortune” or Welcome Back to the Meat Circus Seedy prison cell interstitial: Of course Dario Cueto is doing pull-ups in his cell while wearing a white beater. I mean, could it be any other way. A cop comes to release him and remarks that he must have friends in high places. Dario: “Oh, you have no idea.” In my favorite random guest pop-in this show has done, the fucking Honky Tonk Man is playing the cop who goes through Dario’s possessions as he returns them. Absurd. Is this the Memphis, TN PD or the LAPD? Officer Honky (heh heh heh) hands over a money clip, a cell phone, a gold watch, and, of course, a giant key. As soon as Dario steps through the prison gates, a car pulls up to retrieve him. He enters and hears from Councilman Delgado that the charges are dropped. He also hears from Delgado’s Dark Lord that the next time he has to pull strings for Dario, he’s going to be putting Dario in the dirt. Dario gulps like he’s Vincent Kennedy finding out that the Undertaker kidnapped his dopey daughter. Matt Striker is glad to be back and is especially pleased to see that Vampiro looks much healthier than he did last season. He seems genuinely happy about it, too. Aw. Vampiro wants to make something extremely clear: “I’m nobody’s master, I’m nobody’s mentor, I want one job, that’s this job right by your side, my brother, that’s it.” Are they really going to just blow off the Vampiro/Penta storyline with that comment? They can’t possibly, can they? They wouldn’t dare, would they? Dario Cueto is hyped to be back in the Temple. Huh, there seems to be daylight coming through the windows. This is the brightest that I’ve ever seen this accursed Temple. Anyway, Dario’s brother Matanza stands silently in the corner of the ring, holding the Lucha Underground Championship. Dario hypes a big match tonight between Rey Misterio Jr. and…not Matanza, you chumps. Hahaha, you fell for it, you idiotic chumps! No, Misterio will face Pentagón Dark, who tried to break Dario’s arm at Ultima Lucha Dos, but whom Dario refuses to fire because he found it funny when Penta made Vampiro bleed like “a pig” at Ultima Lucha Dos. And Ultima Lucha Uno, for that matter. Dario stares right at Vampiro and oinks like the most annoying shithead pig on earth. If Wilbur had an evil cousin, he would sound like Dario did there. Fern would have let that evil cousin be slaughtered. That's how annoying Dario's oinking is. Vampiro just has to sit there and take it. Next, Dario addresses the case of the LU Championship. He asserts that Matanza has cleared out practically all his competition in the Temple, and that’s fuckin’ boring, man, so to alleviate said boredom, Dario spent some time in his cell toning his shoulders and thinking up ridiculous new stipulations like he was, well, a Spanish Vincent Kennedy. His big idea, however, is more akin to something that Dusty Rhodes would book: Dario’s Dial of Doom, which is basically a Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal gimmick with wrestler’s names on it rather than gimmick match types. Dario: “So, how’s it work? I spin the wheel, and here’s the deal: The name it lands on gets a title match with my brother.” I love that the writers were like Yeah, we really should directly shout out WCW’s Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal gimmick in the dialogue. Yes, they really should have, and I’m glad that they did. Notably, the wheel only includes the names of wrestlers who have not already lost to Matanza. Since Misterio was pinned by Matanza in Aztec Warfare II, his name has been left off (Season Two, Show Nine). I kinda hope that this wheel isn’t gimmicked, but it almost certainly is since it lands on Son of Havoc’s name. I guess that Havoc gets the title shot that he lost on the first night of Ultima Lucha Dos (Season Two, Show Twenty-Four), which means that in hindsight, he should have taken the 250K. Hell, it probably doesn't matter; he was probably going to lose to Dr. Wagner Jr. anyway. Havoc tries to dive and run and alternately to run and dive, but Matanza manages to knock him out of the air multiple times. Matanza does take too long to try a corner charge and posts his own shoulder; meanwhile, Striker compares Matanza to long-reigning champions such as Bruno Sammartino and Joe Louis, which is excellent commentary work because I feel that pro wrestlers should be compared to not only other pro wrestling stars, but also to stars in legitimate sports, and you know what, I guess I feel that Jim Ross had the right idea with all the legitimate athletics comparisons that he loved to share on PBP. That is kind of a hot take, I know. Though Havoc does his very best, Matanza never feels like he’s in danger. Havoc hits a double stomp and barely gets two in between getting his ass whipped by Matanza. Havoc really only gets any purchase in the match when Matanza charges at him and he can use his maneuverability to escape damage. After one charge, Havoc hooks Matanza for a tornado DDT and holds on when Matanza kills it, turning it into a choke that he uses to maneuver Matanza over the top rop eand to the floor. Havoc breaks, quickly hits an Asai moonsault, and then rolls Matanza back in the ring, where he lands a diving double stomp/standing moonsault combo. That only gets two, but when Matanza powers out of the cover, Havoc smoothly transitions into a cross-arm breaker as he lands, which is a cool little spot. Matanza is able to lift Havoc through sheer strength, but Havoc releases and catches Matanza in fireman’s carry position. Matanza wriggles out of that and shoves Havoc, who hits the ropes and lands a rebound cutter for about 2.5. This has been an energetic opener and Havoc has been quite a good underdog underneath babyface. Havoc goes up, but Matanza gets to his feet and catches him with a fist. They fight over control up top, but Havoc is able to knock Matanza to the mat and follow with an SSP…for 2.8, so unlike Cage in his title match with Matanza last season (Season Two, Show Nineteen), Havoc actually did fire off his best possible shot. Havoc tries a springboard move that he rolls through when Matanza dodges, but when he charges at Matanza again, Dario’s baby bro pops Havoc up, catches him, and scores a Wrath of the Gods for three and another successful title defense. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario is sitting at his desk, scribbling on a pad, when the Worldwide Underground busts into his office uninvited. Mundo demands a LU Championship shot now because he’s sick of “d-bag loser(s)” like Son of Havoc getting them. All of Mundo’s buddies helpfully laugh at his unfunny jibes, just like supportive bullies do to support their bully friends. Dario’s like, Shit dude, your name is on the wheel, fuck, didn’t you see that awesome wheel I made? It was so awesome. Just wait until your name comes up, but then Mundo is like, I don’t wanna wait for the wheel to turn over, I just want you to fucking pick me, and then Dario is like, The last time you were in a title match, you lost it, you bum, I saw what happened to you and your trios team at Ultima Lucha Dos, and then Johnny is like, It’s not fair, Angelico cheated us, but don’t worry about him anymore, we handled him after he cheated us. Then the Worldwide Underground laughs about what they did to Angelico. I mean, those are all paraphrases, but that’s the gist. Seedy flashback interstitial within a seedy backstage interstitial: But maybe you’re wondering exactly how the Worldwide Underground handled Angelico after their losing effort to retain their trios tag titles at Ultima Lucha Dos. If you are, have I got the flashback for you! If you’ll recall, Angelico battered Mundo with both of his crutches, which led straight to Fenix taking advantage and hitting Mundo with a Fire Driver for the win and the trios titles (Season Two, Show Twenty-Six). As Angelico leaves through the exit, which is marked with the word EXIT so that we know exactly in the building where the attack happens, he gets jumped by P.J. Black, Jack Evans, and Taya. They bloody him for Mundo, who gets out of his car and directs them to bring Angelico to him. Angelico tries to fight back, but is subdued by the numbers game; Mundo takes credit for bashing up Angelico’s leg and injuring him in kayfabe because why let a motorcycle get all the heat even if it’s the shoot perpetrator? Mundo, who has really turned up the annoying middle school bully energy this season, welcomes Angelico to SLAMTOWN and calls him a STRINGBEAN and then destroys Angelico’s recently-healed leg by slamming it into his car door a few times. Seedy backstage interstitial: That flashback was shown exactly as Mundo told the story to Dario, who finds it hilarious, like a total laff riot. These absolute bastards all share a hearty guffaw over it. Dario is like Hahaha, that is funny as hell, dude, I love your stories, they’re so engaging, but you can still fuck right off with all that title shot begging. Dario then pulls his best Birdman face, or maybe that face that Frank "the Warthog" Reynolds pulls when he's about to fire the dude who couldn't locate a paper jam in the printer, and glares right at Mundo, who resorts to begging for a Gift of the Gods title shot at Sexy Star instead. Dario is annoyed at shit about this desperation, especially from a bunch of losers who lost at Ultima Lucha Dos…except, hey, wait just a second, Dario realizes, he can have some fun and create some discord between these annoying-ass chumps because Taya actually managed to beat Ivelisse at Ultima Lucha Dos (with a little assist from Catrina, but never-you-mind about that). Dario says that coffee is for closers…er, I mean that Gift of the Gods title shots are for winners at Ultima Lucha…and then books Taya versus Sexy Star in a GotG title match. This doesn’t please anyone but Taya; she and the men of the Worldwide Underground file out and of course don’t close the door until Dario yells at Jack Evans to do so. Speaking of Ivelisse, she is in the ring to complain about Catrina directly causing her to go zero-and-two at Ultima Lucha so far. Oh yeah, Catrina hit Ivie in the head with her mystical stone and directly led to the Disciples of Death pinning Ivie for the trios tag titles at Ultima Lucha Uno (Season One, Show Thirty-Eight). Ivie wants to address this longstanding simmering hatred that she and Catrina share for one another and also maybe finally get a win at Ultima Lucha someday, so she challenges Catrina to a match at Ultima Lucha Tres. Catrina blit-blorts into the arena and responds with a simple “Bring it on, bitch.” OK, Ivelisse is going to spend a whole season trying to dodge Catrina’s mystical attacks and attempting to survive what will almost certainly be an onslaught of Catrina’s consistent spirit world bullshit. And this season is forty episodes long, too! Good luck, Ivie! Taya Valkyrie next takes her shot at the Gift of the Gods belt held by Sexy Star. Striker contextualizes this match by reminding us that Fenix defended his Gift of the Gods belt against King Cuerno after winning it at Ultima Lucha and promptly lost it (Season Two, Show One) to add a bit of suspense to the proceedings. We start the bout with a Greco-Roman knuckle lock, which is a great choice. Taya is taller and makes Star work out of it, but Star pushes back up to standing and then It’s Product Placement Time!: Was the From Dusk ‘til Dawn TV show any good? A couple of the actors in the show are in the crowd, and Striker goes off about the show and Robert Rodriguez. This is more like promotional placement, but we’ll leave it like that. Anyway, Star wins an arm drag and then both women have a standoff. Vampiro educates Striker on his British workers, explaining that Johnny Smith is not Johnny Saint and discussing how these ladies currently remind him of Dynamite/Sayama because Vampiro’s point of reference for wrestling is eclectic and vast, which I think is an underratedly cool thing about having him on color. Obviously, Vampiro chased Japanese wrestling tapes when he was younger, but did Stampede Wrestling get aired as far east as Ontario? Would he have also seen Smith wrestle in Stampede on television along with seeing him on All Japan tapes? Canadians who are old enough to have lived through it, get in here and tell me more about what regional Canadian promotions you got on your televisions in the 1970s and 1980s. While Vampiro serves up some pro wrestling knowledge for Striker, Star slaps the shit out of Taya for disrespecting her. Taya slaps back, and Vampiro is distracted because this exchange makes him remember his mom slapping the shit out of him for coming home past curfew, which maybe is less fun than remembering some random British wrestler to those of you who are disturbed by light corporal punishment, but which I admit made me knowingly chuckle along with him. Vamp next has to explain what Taya’s nickname in Spanish means for a curious Striker. I already know what it means because I heard Taya herself translate it as both “crazy white girl” and “crazy blonde.” Vampiro uses that second definition, and Striker makes me laugh when he says, “Oh yeah, I know one of those. **quietly** My mom.” All these wrestler dudes just have mommy issues, huh? We have a pair of regular Buff Bagwells sitting at this desk, don’t we? Seriously, I stopped chuckling, then thought of Striker’s response again and started right back up. This match is perfectly decent, but the commentary has put things over the top for me. Taya lazily covers after scoring running double knees, but she’s way too cocky and loses control; Star hits a running seated senton on Taya out on the floor, rolls her back in the ring, and covers for two. Star hits the ropes and tries a crossbody, but Taya catches her, smirks, and lands a fallaway slam. The rest of the Worldwide Underground walks out here to run a distraction, but when Mundo tries to hold Star in place for another Taya running knee strike, Star moves. Taya knees Mundo, and Star quickly small packages the disoriented Taya for three. I’m not even going to tell Striker to shut the fuck up after he says, “Johnny gets a face fulla Taya, and while that might [normally] be a good thing, tonight it is not.” You know why I’m not running that STFU Striker segment here? Because what happened was that Vampiro inadvertently dug up Striker’s mommy issues, and now Striker is on tilt and saying wild shit about the ladies at the desk again. I want a recurring segment in which Vampiro and Striker go to group counseling together. The show that has that theoretical segment on it gets an automatic ten out of five LU-CHA chants. After the match, the frustrated Worldwide Underground beats up Star until all three of the Super Friends rush the ring and make the save. I was wondering where Star’s buddy Willie Mack was, to be quite honest. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto talks to someone on the phone about his (generally chill, according to him) prison experience. He is interrupted by Marty “the Moth” Martinez, who of course enters the office and then knocks. What an asshole. The Moth had his rich parents send a present to Dario in the clink. Dario says that he appreciates it, but says that he’s innocent (he’s not) and that he doesn’t want anyone in the Temple talking about what he calls his “unfortunate vacation” (too bad, you know that shit is getting brought up again). The Moth is fine with Dario's request and pivots to what he really wants to discuss. He then acts like Hernandez holding a beer can in that he puts something that shouldn’t be touching the fine mahogany of Dario’s desktop right onto the fine mahogany of Dario’s desktop – his scuzzy-ass boots. Is this man some type of animal? I mean, some type of animal besides a moth? Marty is ready to conquer the Temple, but Dario isn’t impressed with him. Dario wants to know if Marty is ready for war before nodding to Killshot’s dogtags that Marty still wears around his neck. Marty declares himself done with Killshot, but as Dario notes, “Killshot’s not done with [Marty].” Dario then informs Marty that Killshot has been by to talk to him earlier, and he has agreed to give Killshot a chance to regain those dogtags from Marty once and for all in a – hahahahahaha – Weapons of Mass Destruction Match. Does that mean that the weapons won’t actually be there, but Dario will claim that they are and that we should keep looking? Maybe Dario did have the weapons, but he used them on the Kurds instead of placing them at ringside. OK, I’ll stop. I’m sorry. But look, Lucha Underground’s writers put it on a tee! What do you want me to do, not swing at it? The Moth seems pretty stoked about the possibility of extreme violence in that match, and I know Dario is…though Dario’s excitement is dulled by the fact that this lunatic Marty has a genuine laughing fit in front of him. To quote Hank Hill, that boy ain’t right. Can Rey Misterio Jr. lead Pentagón Dark to something good? If anyone can, it’s Misterio. Vampiro should probably take a powder because he gets mad when Striker recounts the events of Penta’s night at Ultima Lucha Dos. Vamp expresses his anger to his PBP partner, but what do you want Striker to do, man? The guy has a job to do. Rey outruns Penta to start, who gets mad and chatters at the ref. Rey tries to keep things up with an Irish whip, but Penta blocks it and tosses Rey around. He hits a double-stomp and what I think is supposed to be a legdrop or knee combo after the stomp, but he loses his footing. That move only gets two. Penta lands his signature Shhhh! Slap, then manages a pair of Sling Blades for two. He maintains control by landing a superkick, then takes quite a bit of time to capitalize. They end up climbing the ropes together for some reason that doesn’t land with me because it’s clear that they’re just up there so that Misterio can hit a super rana for two. Maybe it’s just that Penta is so without in-ring substance that no one can have a straight up one-on-one match with him much better than decent. It took Vampiro, blood, thumbtacks, and actual fire to pull off the only match that Penta's had in LU worth rewatching. This match is okay, but it definitely feels like a collection of spots. Almost every Penta match feels like a collection of spots. Some of the spots are sort of ugly, and some of the spots are very good, like Rey’s Tornado DDT on the floor. Vampiro remembers making the same error as Penta and paying for it in the same exact way on the floor. Anyway, Rey hits a dead drop splash back in the ring for only two, and then Penta hits a package piledriver for only two, and then Penta tries something out of a half-nelson, but gets shoved into 619 position and has to dive out of the way and then land another superkick. Penta next tries a Codebreaker, but that only earns 2.7. Penta glares right at Vampiro, and Vamp mutters “Shit” as Penta walks over to yap at him. That is enough for Vampiro to get up and leave the desk, which I totally support as Vamp’s mental health is fragile and he needs to protect it. Meanwhile, Rey takes advantage of Penta being distracted by Vampiro's presence and lands a 619 and a diving Canadian Destroyer for three in a match that happened, that existed, that was as fleeting in the memory as the early fog is before the start of a warm, sunny morning. Rey celebrates, but Penta leaps up, backjumps him, and prepares to break Rey’s arm until El Dragon Azteca Jr. makes a late save. Azteca, if you’ll recall, had his arm snapped by Penta at Ultima Lucha Dos, and are we ever going to get any resolution to Azteca Jr. and Black Lotus’s issue with who really killed Azteca Sr.? I was genuinely into that storyline. Seedy backstage interstitial: Prince Puma, who spent the early part of season two brooding over his Ultima Lucha Uno loss to Mil Muertes, is currently spending the early part of season three brooding over his Ultima Lucha Dos loss to Rey Misterio Jr. Then, oh come on, Vampiro walks up and commiserates with Puma, for two reasons IMO. First, he doesn’t like Konnan and would love to mentor Puma way more effectively than Konnan ever did, and second, he needs someone good to strike back against the darkness that he fostered in Penta. This is a totally selfish move, Vampiro. Dammit. Puma is smart enough to refuse mentorship from Vampiro, who sits down and offers up a bunch of advice that Puma didn’t ask for. He says that when Mil beat Puma, he not only literally took Konnan away from Puma, but also sent Puma down an errant path. Vamp suggests that to get back on track, Puma needs to beat Mil and exorcise that particular metaphorical demon. Puma, wisely mistrustful unlike your typical dumb, Black Lotus-style babyface, snorts and says that he’s surprised that Vampiro didn’t try to sell him on taking out Penta for him. Vampiro: “Hey brother, this ain’t about me. This is all about you.” **Ron Burgundy voice** I don’t believe you. Vamp leaves Puma contemplating what he’s said to end the show. Though the opener had a surprising energy to it, generally, the interstitials and character work and commentary all outstripped the wrestling. In other words, it was a typical episode of Lucha Underground. 3.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season Two Recap Trending Up Brian Cage – He flies less and uses power more, and just that little adjustment has elevated him from pure spot monkey to guy who comes off like an elite athlete that can fly through the air, but doesn’t really have to unless he’s showing off or wrestling another monster and needs some extra oomph (as with his match against Matanza Cueto). I genuinely enjoy his work at this point and am excited to watch him every time he walks to the ring. Taya Valkyrie – She’s a good bumper and fun shit-talker and enhanced Johnny Mundo’s presentation so much that I’d call her invaluable to him. Johnny Mundo – Turning heel and being paired with a cheating, cocky valet (and getting away from Alberto del Sucko) did wonders for him this season. Jack Evans – Much like the Moth, Evans manages to be completely unlikeable even to a crowd full of smarks who cheer for heels when they do things that are cool, brutal, or funny. Rey Misterio Jr. – Disappointing Ultima Lucha Dos match aside, he’s still the G.O.A.T. Idling Pentagón Jr./ Pentagón Dark– He’s still not much in the ring, but what a presentation and promo guy he is. El Dragon Azteca Jr. – He has promise, but I feel that outside of his short run with Misterio and Puma in the Team of Destiny, he hasn’t gotten enough opportunity to bust out as a worker or a character. He was hurt by the limited number of season two episodes and the slow-playing of his feud with Black Lotus. Matanza Cueto – I’m surprised to place him here, but he just isn’t good enough at coming off as physically destructive in the ring. The first match against Penta did not come off as the utter destruction that it needed to, and he didn’t really have a notably awesome singles match until he wrestled Mil in Grave(r) Consequences. His only good non-gimmick match was with Cage. If he’s such a monster, he should feel dangerous while stalking Fenix or attacking Penta. He was good, but not nearly as good as I expected him to be. Kobra Moon – She’s not particularly good yet, but I like her a ton and appreciate her commitment to her gimmick. I think I’m probably just lenient because she ended up being awesome later on down the road. Killshot – He’s (still) not particularly good either, but I’m just placing him here because during season two, he was roughly about as crappy as he was in season one; however, I recall absolutely hating his feud with AR Fox which happens next season, so by the end of season three, I expect to have him trending down from where he was the first two seasons. I think I’m probably just harsh because he ended up continuing to be complete basura later on down the road. Trending Down Joey Ryan – Imagine being a comedy character and yet being so dreadfully unfunny. If you’re Joey Ryan, you don’t have to imagine it. You lived it. P.J. Black – Half the time, I forget that he’s the third part of the Worldwide Underground trio. I’d say that he’s the reverse of Penta in that he’s only an in-ring guy with no discernible personality or interesting presentation, but he’s not all that good in-ring and probably is best off being hidden in a trios tag team with two far more interesting workers. Sexy Star – And here we go with this final push toward the main event that she simply hasn’t earned at all through her work. Texano – I’ve settled upon “meh” for this guy. Did he ever end up in WWE (before their AAA acquisition)? He seems like exactly the guy who WWE would like: Speaks English, competent worker, ultimately another nondescript midcard talent to add to their legion of nondescript midcard talents. Daga – …and speaking of nondescript! Five Matches You Should Watch (season, show, original air date Aztec Warfare II (Season Two, Show 9, 23 March 2016) Brian Cage vs. Johnny Mundo, Cage Match (Season Two, Show 14, 27 April 2016) Mil Muertes vs. Matanza Cueto, Grave(r) Consequences Match (Season Two, Show 16 11 May 2016) Brian Cage vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. (Season Two, Show 18, 25 May 2016) Matanza Cueto vs. Brian Cage (Season Two, Show 19, 1 June 2016) Five Seedy Backstage Interstitials or Interviews/Video Packages You Should Watch (season, show, original air date Vampiro and Ian Hodgkinson start their season-long feud with one another while Vamp/Ian are being evaluated for release from a mental health hospital; Vamp’s bro Matt Striker is the one to pick him up from his outpatient interview, which pushes the development of their friendship into narrative overdrive (Season Two, Show 1, 27 January 2016) Drago and Aerostar have a pretty cool nunchaku battle against Jack Evans and P.J. Black (Season Two, Show 7, 9 March 2016) Does Catrina genuinely love Fenix, or does she just want to sap his rebirthing power? This passionate kiss between them reveals absolutely nothing to answer that question, but it was shocking! (Season Two, Show 8, 16 March 2016) Officers Reyes and Ryan get caught ransacking Dario Cueto’s office by Cisco, set in motion Cisco’s eventual murder at the hands of Dario (Season Two, Show 18, 25 May 2016) Dario Cueto murders Cisco (Season Two, Show 25, 13 July 2016) Feuds Worth Re-living From Season Two Ivelisse Velez vs. Taya Valkyrie Johnny Mundo vs. Brian Cage Dario Cueto and Councilman Delgado vs. the entire LAPD

Season 2, Show 26: “Ultima Lucha Dos, Part III” or Alone in the Dark: Act Three I wasn’t huge on the card going into Ultima Lucha Dos, but I’m surprised at how little I’ve connected with it over the first two nights. I do foresee a much better third night, and even if the in-ring stuff still doesn’t grab me, I think the plot development that has been set up over the first two nights is full of suspense. I’m sure that the narrative hooks LU lays down for the third season will be quite grabby [Editor's note: Meh on the hooks, which were fewer in number than I'd hoped]! Recap: Ian Hodgkinson absolutely did not do what his doctor told him to at the beginning of this show; he associated with the people and places that triggered his Vampiro persona and he stopped taking his meds. The specific place that triggered Vampiro included, among many other things we see in this extended recap, multiple murders; Mil Muertes ruling the Temple and then dying and being resurrected (again); and a conspiracy of Aztec gods, one of whom inhabits Dario Cueto’s brother Matanza, coming to earth to wreck up the place while a hodge-podge group of people including Aerostar, El Dragon Azteca Jr., and Rey Misterio Jr. try to figure out exactly how to stop that from happening. So, yeah. I don’t think poor Ian had a chance. Seedy middle-of-nowhere cave interstitial: Pentagón Jr. bows to his Dark Master Vampiro as Vampiro embarks upon his final preparations for tonight’s match. Vampiro says that Penta claims to have cero miedo, but he sure showed lots of miedo the last time he wrestled Matanza Cueto and got destroyed. Penta, Vampiro claims, must destroy the Penta who has fear by walking into a cave with flickering lights and beating the shit out of weaker representations of himself while people at home who are at risk of seizures quickly turn away from the screen. Vampiro monologues about Vampiro finding the complete darkness inside of him as Penta fights; he suddenly pops behind Penta while wearing one of Penta’s masks and declares that Penta is “still scared.” Penta beats up Vampiro and rips the mask off; Vampiro declares him ready, then tells him to “burn bright like this candle.” He actually holds out a candle to Penta and tells him to extinguish it “so that Pentagón Dark can take [old Penta’s] place.” Penta puts out the flame; the cave is filled with inky blackness. Is Matanza Cueto the one who is absolutely turbofucked for once, dear reader? He just might be! Vampiro has made it back from the cave to sit next to Matt Striker and commentate on what, if Penta pulls it off, might be one of the finest victories to which a manager has ever led his charge. I mean, if Penta pins or submits an Aztec god tonight, that’s practically like pinning or submitting the Hulkster in 1985. The opener for the Lucha Underground Trios Tag Team Championships pits the champions of the Worldwide Underground (Johnny Mundo, Jack Evans, and P.J. Black) against the challengers of the Super Friends (Rey Fenix, Drago, and Aerostar) – goddammit, right as I typed this, Striker literally spake the sentence “Lucha Underground’s version of the Super Friends,” and I lamented my own pathetic lack of creativity. The heels hop in and immediately start cheating by disregarding the whole tag rule while Striker adds some flavor by letting us in that the Lucha Underground refs are sick of the Worldwide Underground making them look incompetent with all the cheating that they’re getting away with. Well, looking incompetent never bothered WCW’s refereeing crew, so when you look at it that way, is it really all that a big deal, LU referees? I didn’t give you the full effect of how the heels open this match. I remarked that they immediately started cheating. I failed to mention that they also do annoying moves like, for example, Evans aggressively poking Aerostar in the taint and maybe the asshole, based on how Aerostar sells it. Man, you spend a thousand years up in the stars, awaiting your chance to come back down and help keep the mercurial Aztec gods from ravaging the earth, and what do you get but this dork Evans unwantedly poking around at your nether regions. Can you imagine? What an indignity! Alas, what makes Aerostar such an important figure is his resilience, as he and the rest of the babyfaces recover and prepare a triple dive onto the heels at ringside…when they are stopped by referee Rick Knox, and what the fuck? When has a referee ever stopped a dive because there wasn’t a tag? Fuck right off. If you’re going to get over that the refs are stupid bastards who have never seen a cheating heel that he couldn’t surreptitiously ignore while admonishing the heels, maybe have the ref do something that refs have done in the past, however intermittently. When, ever, has a referee stopped anyone from diving? This doesn’t make me frustrated at the heels nor the referee; it makes me frustrated at the people who laid this match out and couldn’t come up with a more believeable babyface spot in which the referee might actually intervene. Striker thinks that the “two referee” solution of one on the floor and one in the ring should be once again debated; Vampiro says that’s how it’s done in Mexico City. Larry Z. would be wary of two refs in the ring, but maybe we could convince him, a noted skeptic of the plan, that one on the floor would be okay. Oh yeah, back to this match with the stupid cancelled dive spot with the ref that ripped me out of it: Fenix gets 2.9 off a nice Frog Splash to Mundo; Mundo turns it around and gets two with a rollup while holding the ropes. Mundo then eats a dead drop splash and a springboard 450 from Fenix; they cover, but Evans yanks the ref from the ring before his hand can contact the mat for the third time. The incensed crowd yells about how much Jack Evans sucks. The babyfaces chop holy hell out of Mundo, who yells NO OTRA, but who gets OTRA as the crowd chants for it. The ref is still down, by the way, so the heels grab their trios titles to regain control. They rid the ring of the babyfaces except for Fenix, play air guitar on their belts like Hollywood Hogan in 1997, and then hit triple belt shots on Fenix. That guy Fenix loves swaying back and forth on his feet like a Mortal Kombat character waiting patiently for me to finish dialing up all the buttons for the Animality that I wrote on the back of my hand so that I could go to the bowling alley and finally do one on their Mortal Kombat III cabinet. Wait, what were we talking about now? Oh, yes: The heels toss Knox back into the ring sp he can count, but Mundo’s cover only gets two. An angry Worldwide Underground admonish the ref for his count; Black then boots him in the head. The heels walk back over to Fenix and stomp him in the dick, then hit a back body drop out of a crucifix. They hold up their titles and celebrate over Fenix’s prone body for a bit, then drag Fenix to the corner. This is when Angelico hobbles out on crutches and whacks Mundo in the head with a crutch. Aerostar and Drago suddenly recover and help Fenix out; Drago overshoots a dive on Evans who legitimately tries to catch him in vain. Meanwhile, Angelico wears his crutches out on Mundo’s back; Mundo is sitting on the top rope, complete food for Fenix to grab him and score a Fire Driver for an academic three count from the once-again-revived Rick Knox. This match was watchable enough, I suppose, even with the dumb ref-focused spots. Interesting trivia: Striker notes that Fenix is the first person in the Temple to win all the belts (Lucha Underground Championship, LU Trios Tag Team Championships, Gift of the Gods belt). Next up, El Dragon Azteca Jr. meets Black Lotus in Lotus’s in-ring debut even though she’s been around since the first season (her debut was in Season One, Show Eight, in fact). Azteca takes a running leap at Lotus at the bell, and Azteca then takes a wild bump as Lotus ducks. Lotus’s style is a little bit of jeet kune do, a little bit of lucha libre. She scores a headscissors and a diving arm drag. Striker, who hasn’t been privy to any of the interstitial stuff, is curious about why these two seem to be going at one another with such intensity; nice touch. Azteca lands a kick, then tries a dive to the floor that Lotus once again ducks; Azteca rolls through the landing and is really going all out here with the dives and bumps. Lotus wins an enziguri, but when she tries an Irish whip into the railing, Azteca reverses it and Lotus smashes the shit out of herself against the railing. It looked and sounded nasty. Azteca clears some fans out of their seats, but in what is an almost heelish move for the fans in this crowd, he teases a whip of Lotus into the stairs and simply deposits her back in the ring. Lotus ducks yet another Azteca dive, this time an Azteca springboard, and lands a low dropkick before laterally pressing Azteca for two. She throws a few kicks and a couple of rights, but when she goes to the ropes, she catches a nasty Azteca elbow off the rebound. I didn’t expect much from this match, so I think it’s got a bit of benefit of stepping over the relatively low bar that I set for it, but it’s also a pretty fun match even if I’d had higher expectations for it. Azteca puts Lotus in fireman’s carry position and dumps her in the corner, then goes up for another dive…that this time is interrupted by Pentagón Dark. Vampiro cackles with glee as Penta knocks Azteca off the top rope and then snaps Lotus’s arm. Azteca tries to climb the ropes again to dive onto Penta, but Penta catches him, looks for the signal from his Dark Master, and gets it; he then snaps Azteca’s arm as well. I feel sort of ripped off. First of all, I enjoyed what we got of the match and wanted to see how it progressed sans interference. Second of all, I wanted something that would lead to resolution of the Lotus killing Azteca Sr. storyline. Instead, I got Penta wiping both of these wrestlers out. That is not what I wanted at all. Man, Ultima Lucha Dos is the most disappointing wrestling event that I’ve watched in quite a while. After Vampiro introduces Penta’s new persona, Penta grabs the mic, declares that he now has absolutely zero fear, and then reminds us all that Pentagón Jr. beat his Dark Master at Ultima Lucha last year. This gave Pentagón Jr. an unearned confidence that got his ass whipped by Matanza, so Dark Master Vampiro led him to a much darker place (hey, that’s also the official name of the first episode of this season!). Penta declares that Ian Hodgkinson is dead and that Vampiro destroyed him, then says that he has taken a cue from his Dark Master and killed Pentagón Jr. so that he could become Pentagón Dark. He promises to destroy Matanza tonight while Vampiro looks on like a proud papa. Penta cuts the hell out of this promo, I have to say. The crowd has endless amounts of love for both Penta and Vampiro. Well, here comes the Lucha Underground Championship Match right now! Melissa Santos tells us that Dario Cueto has demanded a winner in this bout; she introduces Penta as he stands in the ring, then introduces defending champion Matanza Cueto (w/certified killer Dario Cueto). Huh. Dario looks pretty calm for a dude who is skirting murder charges and honestly, who might have to flee the Temple again at this rate. Penta starts the match by hitting a plancha as Matanza stands at ringside. Striker tries to deal with a mercurial Vampiro on commentary and even sighs loudly at one point when Vampiro won’t answer him until he specifically calls Penta “Pentagón Dark” (Vampiro: “Thank you. I don’t ask you for much.”). Meanwhile, Penta chokes Matanza with cables and tosses him around at ringside. A huge chop from Penta seems to wake Matanza up, but Matanza’s wild haymaker hits the post instead of Penta’s melon, and Penta continues his assault with table bashings and chair shots. Penta plays a little air guee-tar with the chair. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: He’s not really a dude from WCW, primarily, but Striker takes the chance to shout out La Parka at the chair strumming spot, and Parka's a WCW dude to me. Penta brutalizes Matanza, the latter of whom finally got pressed to the limit against cage and is now taking an absolute beating from Penta outside the ring; Penta just now whipped Matanza into a bunch of chairs at ringside. This match hasn’t even gotten back into the ring. Did I catch DVDVR’s biggest LU fan tromataker in the crowd in one shot, maybe? Finally, Penta rolls Matanzza into the ring as a desperate Dario screams, “Matanza, remember mama! Wake up! Wake up!” Penta sets up for a huge move, runs at Matanza slumped in the corner…and hits a monkey flip that I feel somewhat deflates a crowd that was expecting something more dynamic. Oh, Penta. Matanza simply hasn’t gotten out of the starting blocks; Penta gets two on a lungblower, then brings a chair back into the ring and wedges it in the corner ropes. Matanza manages to avoid being propelled into it and then tosses Penta face-first into the chair. Penta hurls Matanza backward and then hits a quick standing moonsault/SSP combo for two more. He tries a bridging German, but Penta’s shoulder is up at 0.5. Penta gets right back to his feet and stares down Matanza, who seems irate about Penta not giving a fuck about any of this Matanza offense he just ate. Matanza absorbs a kick and scores a Finlay-style flipping slam that only gets two. Striker calls it an Irish Car Bomb, which I can tell you is a phrase that Tony S. or Mike Tenay absolutely never uttered on TNT. Penta gets some room by rolling to the floor. Matanza hits the ropes and takes off for a suicide dive, but Penta smacks him in the head with a chair as he starts to dive, then hits the wobbly Matanza with a diving Canadian destroyer from the top rope. Vampiro gets up from the desk with a barbed wire bat and creeps toward the ring, then hands it to Penta as Dario screams for Matanza to arise. Dario leaps into the ring and grabs Penta, who drops the bat and prepares to break Dario’s arm. Matanza grabs the bat, swats Penta in the spine, and quickly hits a Wrath of the Gods to get out of dodge with the gold. This crowd seems mightily displeased! Vampiro enters the ring to help Penta up, but Penta shoves Vampiro away, probably because Vamp introduced the instrument which cost Penta victory. Penta storms away from Vamp, who did push his luck too far with the bat, in Penta’s defense. In an amazing shot of the commentary desk, Striker hypes Puma/Misterio while Vampiro despondently takes a bunch of his prescribed anti-psychotics, deciding to lay low as Ian Hodgkinson for the rest of the summer after Vampiro's embarrassing intervention in the previous match. Taya Valkyrie and Ivelisse Velez have their grudge match next. Ivie rushes Taya, traps her in the corner, and throws strikes at her; when the ref breaks them, Taya tries a boot, but Ivie catches it and lands a dragon screw. Taya works over Ivie while a sullen Vampiro tries to do his job by giving Taya props for being another good athletic prospect out of British Columbia. Taya manages to catch an Ivelisse kick, tripping Ivie and causing her to land face first on the apron. There’s a brawl outside the ring, but it’s not an obligabrawl because I buy that these two hate one another. Taya controls it and tries to suplex Ivie into some empty ringside seats; Ivie blocks it, so Taya changes tack and DDTs Ivelisse head first into the chair. Taya follows up by landing an intricate series of power moves culminating in a Tiger Driver for—no, wait, I got that wrong. What actually happens is that Taya struts and talks shit, allowing Ivelisse to recover enough to yank her forcefully into a chair and then land a series of kicks on a seated Taya. There’s an Irish whip spot that ends with Taya shooting Ivie in, and Ivie leaping onto the railing and then into the stands. Some fan helps her balance herself on the railing as she almost slips, and she didn’t ask for help from anybody, dammit, but she takes it anyway and hits a diving crossbody onto Taya on the floor. The women figuratively tango over to the broadcast desk, where Taya smashes Ivie’s head into the table a few times, and then they go back over to those wooden bleachers that people have been smashing into this whole show. Taya smashes Ivelisse into them, then drags her partway up the stairs by her hair. Once again, Taya takes a lot of time to talk shit and not enough time to hit Ivie with moves, so Ivie is able to grab her by the hair and throw them both off balance; they tumble down the stairs, splatter on the mats at ringside, and climb back into the ring. Taya charges Ivie, who easily dodges her kicks and returns a number of her own, then lands a release German that bends Taya in half. Ivie hits a struggle sunset flip powerbomb, and gets one, two…and in the first genuine surprise (to me, at least) of this whole Ultima Lucha, the lights go out with a crackle, and when they come back on, Catrina kneels in the referee’s place. She hits Ivelisse with a cradle neckbreaker, the lights go out, and the ref is back in place when they come back on; Catrina is standing at the top of the stands holding her mystical stone. That is nice editing because there is zero chance that Catrina changed positions in the time that the lights were out unless a) it was seamlessly done in post-production or b) she actually teleported. Taya picks Ivelisse’s bones with a Northern Lights/double-stomp combo and manages an undeserved victory in what genuinely is my favorite match of Ultima Lucha Dos so far. The lights go out as Taya celebrates in the ring, and when they come back on, Catrina has physically displaced her and stands in her place, holding a mic. She declares that “death comes for everyone…even you, bitch,” and then she gives Ivelisse the ol’ Lick of Death. I didn’t think anything would come of Ivelisse and Catrina having that little shit-talking aside on the final show before Ultima Lucha Dos anytime soon and think that it was very neat that they did something with that on-again, off-again feud here. Hype video: In voiceover, the (kayfabe) dearly departed Konnan talks about how awesome Prince Puma is as we see footage of Puma doing awesome feats of professional wrestling against LU wrestlers in the Temple’s ring and also random mooks in a garage somewhere in a working class Los Angeles neighborhood. There is also some video of Puma and Rey Misterio Jr. talking at and tangling with one another over the past couple of weeks of quick build to this bout. We’ll probably get about twenty to twenty-five minutes of action in this main event match between Prince Puma and Rey Misterio Jr., which I suspected that since it was the main event and not the LU Championship Match meant that Matanza would be retaining even as I thought that this whole Penta Dark transformation meant that Penta would have to go over. I should have gone with my gut and just predicted that Penta would lose based on how the title match was being positioned behind Puma/Misterio instead of letting my head get in the way of writing that prediction out. Over on commentary, Vampiro talks about empathizing with Puma’s attempt to make a name for himself by beating Misterio because he did the same with the Great Muta early on in his career. I think he lost because Striker asks him how the match turned out, and he talks around the actual result, but he does note that he and Muta grew mutual respect for one another through the experience and even became WCW World Tag Team Champions later on down the road. I mean, that 1999/2000 WCW World Tag Team Champions list has some strange fucking teams in it. Goldberg and the Hitman? David Flair and Crowbar? Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas?! Alex Wright and Elix Skipper?!?! I’m sure there were at least a handful of avid WCW fans who watched this show on its original air date and struggled to remember when the hell Muta and Vamp were ever tag champs together when Vamp mentioned it. Vampiro also notes that Puma has flipped his color scheme on his mask and tights. Whereas he usually wears orange with black spots, tonight, he’s in black with orange spots. Why yes, Puma is a little bit darker tonight, Vamp, and just as Vampiro notes this, Puma refuses to shake hands with Misterio before the bout. No, wait, he finally acquiesces and shakes hands. They circle one another and basically avoid any real blows while countering into and out of moves. Puma is certainly a good athlete; he backflips out of a headscissors and lands on his feet; he even sticks the landing. Striker talks about how Rey Misterio Jr. introduced the raw Puma to his old Filthy Animals running buddy Konnan to flavor the backstory here. The lower episode count this season meant that they couldn’t really build a big match like this properly over weeks of television. Ideally, this season would have had thirteen more episodes or the Team of Destiny would have lost the trios tag titles to the Worldwide Underground tonight, lost their rematch because Puma lost his cool at the beginning of the first season, and then started a long build to Puma/Misterio for Ultima Lucha Tres. Obviously, both of those things were not possibilities for practical reasons, but I do think this matchup is sort of hurt by barely having any time to more deeply develop the wrestlers’ motivations and relationships with one another. Puma scores the first big move by killing a headscissors and popping Rey with a Codebreaker. He stalks Rey and lands a running European uppercut, then forearms Rey in the face as Rey tries to kill an Irish whip. Puma completes the whip, then places Rey in a backbreaker on the rebound and transitions into a rollup for two. I do like some of the subtle character work that Puma is doing; he’s shaking his head and using his hands to indicate that he’s trying to calm down and stay within himself, keep executing his game plan, and not get thrown off by the crowd chanting 6-1-9 or Rey kicking out of the moves that he’s strategically attempting as possible match-winners. Puma shows off his incredible core strength just like his eternal enemy Johnny Mundo did a few eps back and tumbles over the top rope with Rey in electric chair position into a standing position with Rey still on his back. Rey turns that seated position into a headscissors that slams Puma into the apron, and then Rey takes off and lands a sliding splash to Puma outside the ring. Rey tosses Puma into the ring and follows with a seated splash from the top rope, followed by a springboard crossbody for a close two count. This is a pretty good match so far. Both men have had nice “look what I can do” exchanges and also some counter-counter-counter sequences, like this one that ends with Rey flipping himself into position and ripping off a spike DDT for two count. Striker mentions future pretend-hardened criminal Dominic remarking earlier that Papa Misterio was in some kind of mood today before this match; meanwhile, Puma blocks a rana and flips Rey up so that he can hit his Northern Lights/vertical suplex combo, though he actually replaces the vertical suplex with a brainbuster this time around. The cover only gets two, and the crowd annoyingly chants THIS IS LUCHA. Yes. Yes it is. Looking for the deathblow, Puma drags Rey to the corner, then goes up to drop a huge move, but Rey pops up, catches him and sits him down on the top rope. They jostle one another up there; Puma tries a super Razor’s Edge from the top, but Rey wriggles away. There’s a protracted struggle as Puma looks for a super power move off the top and Rey tries to maneuver himself for a rana; Misterio wins out and lands an avalanche poisoned rana that ends up coming off as weak because Puma doesn’t really bump hard for it and actually lands on his feet before flopping backward. For a second, I thought Puma was going to sell it as a block and an amazing athletic feat to land on his feet out of a super move like an avalanche poisoned rana, but no; he sells it just as if he splattered onto the mat and kicks out at two. Both men offer one another soupbones and slaps as they go at it in the center of the ring. Vampiro: “I like the little bit of aggressive darkness that I’m seeing in Prince Puma, by the way; I just wanna point that out. I see a change. I feel a change.” I do like the idea that good guy Puma has been altered by the entirely fucked up nature of Dario’s Temple. Puma wins the exchange and lands a Blue Thunder Bomb for two. Has anyone ever not kicked out of a Blue Thunder Bomb on American television? Maybe in the near-decade since this particular show aired. Misterio elbows his way out of a fireman’s carry, then dropkicks a charging Puma in place for a 619 that Puma ducks away from. Puma lands a step-up kick that drapes Rey over the middle rope and shows the ultimate disrespect by stealing Rey’s own move and landing a 619. Puma follows with a springboard 450, but only gets about 2.85. Rey is dead weight as Puma picks him up. Puma hates to do it to him – he shakes his head before he does – but he lands a modified G2S and lazily covers…for 2.8. Puma is passive about dropkicking Rey into the corner as Rey stands, selling that he hates to put down his idol, and I’m sorry, I hate you, Matt Striker because Yo, shut the fuck up, Matt Striker: “An ‘I’m sorry, I love you’ moment right there!” I despise that Michaels/Flair match, and TBH, I sort of hate Shawn Michaels for his nefarious influence on modern pro wrestling at this point. Striker repeats that phrase as Puma whiffs on a 630 Senton Bomb after taking all that time to do this WWE-style bullshit sentimentality that Puma hadn’t even hinted at feeling before this bout. He hasn’t been conflicted in any of the brief run-up to this match; he’s been determined, maybe a little forceful, and even somewhat cocky, but he hasn’t been conflicted. At least Shawn Michaels was selling a heavy sense of being conflicted in the run-up to that WrestleMania match against Flair. Fuck this match. Anyway, Rey gets two on a rana and tries another 619, but Puma catches his legs, which is when this match goes from “like a train derailed” to “like a train derailed and landed in a swamp full of hungry alligators who eat half the passengers” after Rey lands a spike headscissors after a complex series of counters and Puma doesn’t sell the blow very much at all because he instead crawls halfway across the ring to put himself in perfect 619 position after the impact. How did we get here with this match? What in the world has happened? Fuck off, Lucha Underground, just get to the finish so I can get some ending plot. Rey lands a 619 and a West Coast Pop for three. I sort of hated that match by the end. Whatever, just feed me more story. I don’t need to see Puma and Rey shake hands or hug or get plaudits from the crowd or any of that shit. Striker and Vampiro talk us off the broadcast, and I’m expecting Penta to come back out here and attack. Sure enough, as we get an extended shot of the desk, Penta waffles Vamp with the barbed wire bat, superkicks Striker, and grates the skin off of Vamp’s forehead with the bat. The crowd is audibly sad about this break-up in between hooting and hollering at Penta destroying Vamp and gargling his blood, which I get a small kick out of. They love both of these guys. Vampiro taking a beating from Penta at Ultima Lucha should happen every year. Penta gets a mic and casts out Vampiro as his Dark Master; he proclaims himself the new Dark Master. This man cuts another awesome promo in which he says that Vampiro’s blood and shame both feed him before guzzling some more of Vamp’s plasma. We end the season on a bloodied Vampiro laid out in the center of the ring… Seedy police van interstitial: ….or actually, no, we don’t, as the LAPD has Dario Cueto in their custody. Dario doesn’t seem too pressed about it, though, considering the huge smile on his face as they drive away from the Temple. Ultima Lucha Dos, both night three and as a whole, basically sucked pretty badly, a disappointing end to a second season that was so good for the bulk of its episodes. Unlike with night one, in which Mack and Cage were able to push a show with three unfortunate matches up to a full two lucha chants in my scoring system, Ivelisse and Taya couldn’t quite drag night three’s four unfortunate matches up to a full two lucha chants. 1.75 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

They have some good workers who have a pretty high hit rate in overbooked gimmick matches, to be fair to them. I feel that part of the issue is that they have one big PLE-style show a season, but multiple feuds that crest well before then that call for gimmick matches to blow them off, so there's a consistent flood of them all season, and thus they don't feel as special. The movie props can work in very limited use, but when you use them like LU did on night one, it's going to be so noticeable that it just kills suspension of disbelief.

Season 2, Show 25: “Ultima Lucha Dos, Part II” or Alone in the Dark: Act Two I sure hope that I enjoy the segundo hour of Ultima Lucha Dos more than I did the primera one. And yes, I know my grammar is all wonked in that previous sentence. Recap: The Gift of the Gods belt is on the line tonight, as is King Cuerno’s possible continued existence if he can’t survive his Death Match against Mil Muertes. Melissa Santos, Matt Striker, and Vampiro welcome us to the second of three Ultima Lucha Dos nights. Striker reminds us that Fenix was able to win the Gift of the Gods Match at Ultima Lucha Uno and then cash in successfully (after a few shenanigans, to be sure); will tonight’s winner be able to do so? In contrast, Chavo Guerrero Jr. biffed it after winning a Gift of the Gods Match earlier this year. In the order of Santos’s introductions, our participants in Lucha Underground’s third Gift of the Gods Match are Daga, Siniestro de la Muerte, Mariposa Martinez, Marty “the Moth” Martinez, Sexy Star, Killshot, and the (debuting in-ring) Night Claw. Night Claw inserts his medallion after making his way down the stairs; everyoen in the ring has already done so. This is an elimination match, which is nice. Killshot goes right after Marty, who still has the guy’s dogtags. Kobra Moon has made herself a spectator so that she can watch her current love-slash-wanton violence interest Daga up close. Night Claw and Siniestre embark upon an ugly roll-up reversal spot while Mariposa fires up her feud with Sexy Star again and boot chokes Star at ringside. Speaking of Star, Striker points out that she is the only luchador or luchadora in the Temple to have gained entrance to each of the three GotG Matches. This match isn’t very good, and besides that, a cameraperson goes all Kevin Dunn by shaking the shit out of the camera while Daga hits Siniestre with a cutter. Shortly after, Night Claw eliminates [Elimination #1] Siniestre de la Muerte with a standing C-4. Daga attacks Claw next, landing a nice plancha and clearing the ring. Star gets back in the ring and ends up leaping onto everyone else at ringside, followed by Killshot doing the same amd then also Marty. This is boring as shit. We’re only eight minutes into this show, and I’m already looking for the exit. Everyone chills out at ringside while Daga tries to earn a submission on the Moth with a couple of moves, but Night Claw eventually jumps back in and breaks that up, then has a sequence with Daga while everyone else, uh, chills out at ringside. Claw eliminates Daga [Elimination #2] with a top-rope rana and a 450, much to Kobra’s lamentations. Claw then goes up the stairs and walks onto the top of Dario’s office so that he can moonsault onto everyone after they attempt to surreptitiously group up together underneath him. Not that this move, which gets a HOLY SHIT, matters much at all in the long run; Killshot and Marty hop right back up so they can do some more spots in the ring. Mariposa tries to intervene, so Killshot DVDs her on the apron and then hits Marty with a rolling cutter. Killshot stands alone, so Claw gets in the ring and wrestles him...as everyone else chills out at ringside. I feel as though all I do here is repeat myself, but I do want to say at the risk of doing so once more that Lucha Underground is so much better when it balances out its cards. If you’re watching this event straight through, you got garbage brawl, garbage brawl, garbage brawl, multiman spotfest, and you’re (probably) getting another garbage brawl with Cuerno/Mil. I sure wish the trios tag title match or Taya/Ivelisse had been at the top of this show to break up the monotony of all these specialty matches. Otherwise, Killshot gets a bit of a push by eliminating newcomer Night Claw [Elimination #3] with a package piledriver, considering that Night Claw was debuting tonight and earned the first two eliminations of the match. Killshot and Star decide to team up against Mariposa and Marty; they dominate. Star even gives Mariposa a Stinkface, which I’m sure Marty was disappointed not to also receive from her. Star dives onto Marty at ringside while Mariposa and Killshot do a complex spot that ends with Mariposa landing a Canadian Destroyer. Marty disposes of Star at ringside, comes back in the ring, and lands a curb stomp on Killshot, followed by Mariposa hooking Killshot and landing a Butterfly Effect. The two creepy siblings laterally cover Killshot to eliminate him [Elimination #4]. Now Sexy Star must find a way to once again overcome the Martinez siblings. These sibs held Star in captivity for like four straight months at one point, but they can’t put her away here as she does slow, ugly-looking counters to escape double teams. PLEASE JUST LET THIS END. So, right here is where I paused and went back a couple of pages to look at how I formatted something, and I saw zendragon’s posts with Thunder Rosa on Women of Wrestling, and I watched one of the posted matches. The best part of it, though, was that I looked at the sidebar for suggested videos and saw Thunder Rosa on Hey (EW!) which I had always read in my head as HEY, EWWWWW and not HEY-E-W, but that’s beside the point. The point is that I’d never seen this show before, but it’s pretty funny! R.J. City is aping fellow Canadian interviewer Nardwuar’s whole gimmick and mashing it up with Zach Galifianakis’s interviewer character on Between Two Ferns. I watched the Thunder Rosa and Taya Valkyrie episodes and found them to be delightful. They were a welcome reprieve from this neverending GotG match, I’ll tell you that much. So yeah, I’m late to the party on Hey (EW!), but I think that I’m going to pick through the ones with wrestler guests that I like. Anyway, Marty fires a fist at Star as Mariposa holds her, but Star ducks and Marty knocks his sis clean out. Star deposits Marty to the floor and pins Mariposa [Elimination #5] to get rid of her; the crowd fires up a KILL THE MOTH chant as these two finally close a feud loop that started back at the end of the first season of this show. Marty tries to leverage his size, but Star epitomizes the message on the front of a John Cena t-shirt and never gives up, eventually forcing the Moth to submit to a cross-arm breaker [Elimination #6] and winning the Gift of the Gods belt. The match wasn’t any good, and while Star needed to eventually win because she’s been set up to become champion someday from the first episode, since Star’s still not consistently any good, the prospects for the LU Championship in the upcoming season seem dim! Seedy LAPD police van interstitial: Officers Cortez Castro Reyes and Joey Ryan prepare to send a mic’d up Mister Cisco into the Temple to capture incriminating audio from Dario Cueto. Striker and Vampiro run down the final five matches that will close out Ultima Lucha Dos on night three, which is when all the narrative-heavy stuff will happen and maybe save this whole Ultima Lucha because it has sucked so far. King Cuerno meets Mil Muertes (w/Catrina) in a Death Match. Striker reminds us of the only other match of this type to happen without naming who was in it, and I sure don’t remember who was in it. A quick scan doesn’t turn up another straight Death Match (despite all the adjacent matches to this type that have happened), though Striker said somene almost died (in kayfabe, presumably) the last time this match type happened. I’m sure I’m missing something. Cuerno pulls the Arrow from Hell out of his quiver early on as he dives onto Muertes and knocks the guy back into a cleared set of seats about forty-five seconds in. Cuerno tries again, but Mil gets up and punches him as he dives, then hits him with a TKO outside the ring and tosses him around a bit. Mil gets a bunch of audience members to vacate their seats so that he can toss Cuerno into them. Mil ragdolls Cuerno around the stands. Desperate, Cuerno fights back and takes as many risks as possible. He hits a crossbody out of the stands and to Mil on the floor, but Muertes is the first one up from that impact, so Cuerno is basically fucked, probably. We get more crowd brawling, this time up the stairs to the bandstand and onto the bandstand itself, where Mil uses a stool that doesn’t instantly collapse when breathed upon to beat down Cuerno. They hit each other with mics and mic stands. The band sticks around and dodges weapon shots; Cuerno eventually hangs from the stage, and Mil stomps his fingers and sends him dropping to the floor. It's another trash brawl, y’all! It’s the best one since Cage/Mack opened the first night; even so, I am over this show. The match sequencing has been so bad, but I suppose LU might have gotten away with it when each night of Ultima Lucha Dos was originally broadcast across three weeks. Watching it all back to back as one unified show (or watching it over only two days instead of three weeks as I am going to do) exposes how poor the layout of the show is. Cuerno shoves Catrina out of the way to get a weapon, but Mil gets right back at him for that (and for holding him in a coffin in his den). Trash can shot, trash can shot, etc., etc. Mil tosses Cuerno back in the ring and punches him, then slings him around, but when he goes up, Cuerno catches him up there with a kick and lands a top-rope Frankensteiner, then lariats Muertes to the floor. Vampiro says that he’s never seen a match so violent, and bless him for trying, but he was in one of the nastiest and most violent matches a year ago. I can’t even accept that Ian is speaking and has forgotten what he went through as Vampiro last year. It just comes off as nonsensical hype. Both guys walk up the stairs and bash each other’s heads through sugar glass window panels before Cuerno takes my favorite bump of the night, rolling all the way back down the stairs to ringside. Muertes picks up a table and sets it up, but Cuerno hops on him and tries to choke him out. He keeps Mil down for a second and crawls slowly back intot he ring, but when he finally makes it to his feet, he turns around and Mil is standing in front of him. I’ll certainly give Cuerno credit for being a strong seller in spots during this bout. More trashy, more smashy. Mil takes a backdrop onto a ladder, and Cuerno sets up another table and then grabs Catrina, threatening to commit violence against her person. This sparks Mil into action; he tackles Cuerno through the table Cuerno set up, and then he powerbombs Cuerno through three other tables set up around ringside, one at a time. Cuerno doesn’t sell it for all that long because he has to get to his feet and take a shot from a rubber crowbar. This match is way longer than it needs to be, but mercifully, it ends with Muertes landing a Tombstone on Cuerno shortly after. Catrina gives Cuerno the lick for what must be like the fourth time this show. Cuerno does a stretcher job. Rubber weapons and stretcher jobs: Ultima Lucha continues to be WCW as hell. Striker reminds us of Pentagón Jr.’s victory over Vampiro at Ultima Lucha Uno as we watch footage of that match which far outdid all weapons-based matches on Dos. And “far outdid” is understated. It was truly great. Anyway, Vampiro sits there uncomfortably while Striker talks about that match and Penta’s match against Matanza on night three of Dos. Striker asks Vampiro about distancing himself from that event and then inquires how he feels about Penta’s chances on night three. Vampiro responds by silently pouring the rest of his mental health medication into a trash can while these enabling, blood-thirsty lunatics in the crowd cheer him on. Striker, concerned: “Dude, are you sure you wanna do that?” Maybe you shouldn’t have asked your close friend whom you picked up from the mental health hospital that question about Penta after recounting his previous year’s antics at Ultima Lucha, you dolt. I am kayfabe ready to push Striker into a pit fulla spikes. Vampiro fully displaces Ian Hodgkinson before leaving the desk to prepare his student for one more battle against Matanza. Seedy backstage interstitial: Mister Cisco is the worst fucking mole ever. He walks into Dario Cueto’s office unannounced as Dario peeks through the blinds to ask, in a high-pitched and nervous voice, if Dario needs anything and that he’s just checking in. THE. WORST. Dario is like Fuck outta here, man. Cisco gulps and says that he and Dario used to be boys (Dario, shocked and disgusted at the association: "Boys?!!") and that he wants in on whatever Dario is up to. This dude Cisco is sweating like an LAPD officer a pig, and to paraphrase Dario's response, he’s pretty much like, Cisco, you dumbass, this is completely out of character behavior from you and I can tell that you’re probably wearing a wire, so lift your shirt up, stupid. Cisco lifts his shirt up. He’s wearing a wire. Dario tells the cops listening that if they want him, they'd better come and get him before disconnecting the wire. Dario caresses that red ceramic bull that Matanza apparently used to bludgeon their mother to death and asks Cisco: “So, what do they want me for? Murder?” Cisco responds that he doesn’t think so, and Dario picks up the bull and declares, “They do now” before bashing in Cisco’s brains with it. Permadeath Count: 9 (Bael, Konnan, El Dragon Azteca Sr., The Three Nerdsketeers, Trece, Barrio Negro, Mister Cisco). Breathing heavily and with his hands covered in Cisco’s blood, Dario sits down, picks up his phone, and dials someone. When they pick up, he simply states, “It’s time.” I would like to know what exactly it is time for, dammit! Other than the (unfortunately minimal) plot stuff, this was another bad show with mediocre wrestling. I do think night three will save the event, but unlike last season, which finished strong from an in-ring standpoint, this season’s in-ring work on the finale shows is headed in reverse, quality-wise. 2 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 2, Show 24: “Ultima Lucha Dos, Part I” or Alone in the Dark: Act One It’s the grandaddy toddler-aged lil’ nephew of ‘em all, Ultima! Lucha! Dos! Recap: It is very brief and focused solely on the Four a Unique Opportunity Tournament that was hastily booked last week, which will take place tonight. The Temple is decorated especially for Ultima Lucha Dos, and I wouldn’t mind collecting one or two of these framed posters. After Melissa Santos, Matt Striker, and Vampiro all welcome us to the show, we get right to it with our one-night Four a Unique Opportunity Tournament! I was hoping that Willie Mack would meet Brian Cage in the finals of this tournament, but alas, they are in a semi-final match tonight. They had a hell of an opener last year, and as I type as much, Dario Cueto steps out of the office, mentions how awesomely violent they were last year against one another, and then decides that he’d like to recapture the magic by making this match Falls Count Anywhere as well. I think this is maybe a mistake because these two brought some serious hate to last year’s proceedings that enhanced the match and is what made it so good. They don't really have that sort of rivalry this year. Don’t get me wrong! Mack and Cage have excellent chemistry together, and these two wide hosses leaping at one another in betweeen tossing each other around is great. They immediately start throwing bombs back and forth in the ring with exploder suplexes and such, and then the match goes outside, where Cage hip tosses Mack into the wooden bleachers, where he lands with a loud SPLAT. Cage grabs a trash can, but Mack bats him in the head with the lid, then empties the trash can and hits Cage with a running powerslam onto the can itself. He covers, but only gets two. They fight into the hallway and then into Dario’s office. Black Lotus’s face shows a look of concern; Dario’s visage is practically orgasmic, on the other hand. He seems to like it quite a bit when Cage smashes a framed poster over Mack’s head and Mack blades off the impact of the sugar glass. Basically, this is a lesser – but still very fun – reprise of last year’s opener between them. Cage chucks a bloodied Mack around ringside; Dario heads back into his office as they move away from it, Black Lotus closing the door behind them. Meanwhile, Mack eats a powerbomb onto a cavalcade of opened chairs, but he kicks out at two, so Cage goes all Raven and grabs a STOP sign. He places it on the floor and looks for a piledriver, but Mack escapes and drops Cage with a Samoan Drop onto the floor, then reels off a standing moonsault for two. Mack then one-ups Cage w/r/t weapon-based tactics in WCW; he finds an acoustic guitar, strums it, and then hits EL KABONG on that absolute slapnuts Cage. Of course, this only gets two. Mack wanders off to look for more weapons, and are we sure that WCW didn’t get uncancelled because now Mack shows back up with a bunch of **Oklahoma voice** PIÑATAS! PIÑATAS! PIÑATAS! Oh God, I’m having flashbacks. I’ve broken out into a cold sweat. Mack opens up one piñata: It has a wrench inside. Where the fuck did they buy that piñata? Cage opens up another piñata: It has small candies inside. Well, I know where they bought that piñata; they got that sucker at a nearby Ralph’s. Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock, and wrench beats small candies. Oh, and Mack beats Cage over the head with the wrench. Mack grabs a couple of generic, non-Miller Lite beers, cracks them together, chugs them, and has his Mack Stunner countered because he took to look to fire it off. Cage bonks Mack with the STOP sign, then tosses him into the railing. This is a dumb match, but again, Cage and Mack are elevating it just by being themselves. Cage calls for a little table breaking, but Mack bonks Cage in the temple with a toolbox, then grabs a chain from the box and whips Cage with it before locating a couple more beers and successfully hitting a Mack Stunner. Even Striker’s awful Stone Cold Steve Austin imitation over on commentary can’t ruin it. Instead of going for the cover, Mack lays the prone Cage on a table, then runs up into the stands and cimbs the railing, then leaps off and hits a splash onto Cage, driving them both through the table. Mack bounces away, and when he crawls back to cover, he only gets about 2.8. Cage scrabbles around, grabs a cinderblock, and sets up for another curbstomp through the cinderblock on Mack since it won him their match lats year, but he slips on the beer and Mack wriggles away and schoolboys Cage for a flash three count. I will say this much: LU loves its callbacks because not only did they do the cinderblock spot callback as a finish, but if you’ll recall, Mack beat Cage multiple times leading up to Ultima Lucha Uno with flash pinfalls. It’s appropriate that he hasn’t been able to knock Cage off since then until managing to score another flash pinfall on him for the victory. This match was complete high-spot garbage elevated by two workers who are a ton of fun and who, at this point, I’ll pretty much watch do anything in the ring because they’re locks to entertain me. From a kayfabe standpoint, if I were Son of Havoc or Texano, I’d be trying to win really quickly in the next match because Cage and Mack beat the shit out of one another. Manage that and don’t pull a Bam Bam Bigelow in the KotR ’93 finals, and either Havoc or Texano will be in with the win! That other semi-final matchup between Son of Havoc and Texano is next, in fact. Havoc gets some nice support of the crowd, but I don't want to see Havoc or Texano go over Mack (or Cage if he had won, for that matter). Dario’s nutty ass had his techs put up a bunch of bar paraphernalia around the ring because he likes violence, and he steps out of his office once more and justifies all the bar plundah by saying that bikers and cowboys love the shit out of bar fights, so this match is now a Boyle Heights Bar Fight. The prospects of one of these fellas catching a quick fall **Scott Steiner voice** DRASTIC WENT DOWN. We get a less-good trash brawl version of the previous match with more flips in it because that last part is sorta Havoc’s thing. Since we already had a spot with people busting through the door of Dario’s office, we this time go over to the storage closet behind the commentary desk, where Havoc tosses Texano through the door and then walks out wearing a fireman’s helmet and grasping a fire extinguisher. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Striker’s “Firebreaker Chip has made his debut in Lucha Underground” comment is a deep cut. If Havoc is Firebreaker Chip, he’d better hope Texano doesn’t go all Diamond Dallas Page on him and stick him in a front facelock, or this match’ll be over quickly. Boy, I did not expect to mention various people and incidents from WCW so often in this review. Texano grabs a bottle and hits Havoc in his helmeted head with it; of course, that has no effect, so he kicks Havoc in the hamstring instead. Texano sets up three barstools in the ring, then grabs two regular-ass folding chairs and a metal keg. While Texano redecorates the ring, Striker and Vampiro opine upon the bloodthirsty nature of the animals in this crowd. Finally, he swings a bullrope-wrapped fist at Havoc that lands, but Havoc blocks a second fist and ends up dropkicking Texano right into the keg that is wedged into the corner after a series of corner whip reversals. Remember those barstools from earlier? In one shot, they are sitting there waiting for whatever spot will occur. In the shot right after that, they are all broken up. What happened to them? And speaking of WCW, is this a shot from a Lucha Underground episode or an episode of 2000/2001 Thunder? That was reminiscent of the post-production work of Fuckin’ Craig Leathers right there. I’m guessing these fake barstools collapsed as soon as Havoc touched them, but he goes ahead and ranas Texano off the top and onto the remnants. LU has overused the movie props tonight. They can get away with it in blits and blurts, but the first two matches have had too much of that stuff both because it’s obvious (hello, fake cinderblock) and because it was inevitable that one of these collapsible weapons would break. I don’t want them to hit each other with real shit, either. But maybe we could have matches other than trash matches that rely on too many props on this show? Anyway, Havoc backdrops Texano through the bar outside the ring, then stomps him into a bunch of sugar glass bottles for the pinfall victory. This wasn’t anywhere near what I’d call “good” or even "decent," but it was just barely watchable enough, I suppose. It was certainly hurt by being a worse garbage match than the one that came directly before it, however. Matt Striker and Vampiro run down the rest of the card for Ultima Lucha Dos’s next two nights, and I wonder what makes Pentagón Jr. turn into Pentagón Dark, which I vaguely remember happening from the first time I watched this stuff almost a decade ago. Is he going to lose his match against Matanza, maybe? I don’t think the match’ll be much to write home about, but I’m very interested in seeing the finish and the aftermath. I note two more things here in this rundown. First, Puma/Misterio is promoted even over Penta/Matanza, which is interesting. Second, Striker compares that latter match to these matchups: Steamboat/Savage, Malenko/Guerrero, and Sasuke/Liger. OK, I have two quibbles. First, Malenko/Guerrero? C’mon, man. I get that the best Guerrero feud partner comparison is Misterio and he’s also in the Puma match so you can’t name him, but no. Malenko had better WCW feuds with Syxx and Jericho, and neither of those should be mentioned in this comparison either. I get it, you love WCW Striker, and I do too, but no. Second, he pronounces Sasuke’s name with the “u” sound elongated. Cut that “ooh” sound out, Striker, you sound like a goddam Canadian, bless our unfairly treated neighbors to the north. Look, these are minor points, but you know that I wasn’t going to be able not to write about them, dear reader. Either Willie Mack or Son of Havoc will earn a UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY if they are able to win the final match of this one-night Four a Unique Opportunity Tournament. Disrespectful-ass Dario steps out of his office once more and says that he had money on Cage/Texano as the finals match, then says that they were both pretty impressive to prove him wrong, but that they need to really impress him by winning this Falls Count Anywhere final. Havoc and Mack shake hands before proceeding to have a surprisingly short nothing of a match. Mack/Cage should have been the final, like I wrote earlier. Mack opens up with a Pounce (period) and then a corkscrew body press for two. Striker completely forgets the concept of a Falls Count Anywhere match, demonstrating as much by asking Vampiro if either of the men in the ring should angle for a countout or DQ victory. This is what happens when you overload your brain with various pop cultural elements that you mean to eventually reference on PBP; for each new pop culture fact that Striker crams into the ol’ cerebellum, he loses a piece of basic pro wrestling knowledge. He’s sort of like the Kelly Bundy of PBP people in that way. Mack takes the same bleacher bump he took two matches ago, and would you believe that the crowd doesn’t pop as much for it because they just saw it thirty minutes ago? The final match should have been the only Falls Count Anywhere bout, with the other two matches being bog standard matches. Combine that with Mack/Cage in the final, and Dario popping out to say that the final match needs to be something more than a regular match because it’s for a UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY, and as fate would have it, Cage and Mack had a great opener in a Falls count Anywhere Match last season, and yada yada yada. I do like a spot in what turns out to be a very sudden and very brief finishing run where Mack gets knees up on a Havoc SSP and then quickly cradles Havoc after Havoc drives his own head into Mack’s knees. That only gets two, but it was a neat spot. I feel that it would be better as an actual pinfall than as a mere near fall, but that’s my only critique of the spot. A minute later, Havoc barely lands another SSP that looks more like a flipping headbutt…and wins. Jesus criminy, LU. Bad match, semi-questionable booking that might be fully-questionable depending on the post-match angle where Dario reveals the UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY. Black Lotus carries two briefcases; Dario goes full-on Monty Hall here (Striker calls it a “Monty Hall moment” about twenty seconds after I wrote that, and I feel chagrined for apparently being so fucking unimaginative) and has Lotus open the first briefcase, which has 250K in presumably unmarked bills. Dario has Lotus open the second briefcase and reveals that it has a LU Championship contract in it, to be redeemed at Ultima Lucha Tres. Havoc obviously takes the contract, which causes Dario to roll his eyes because who wants a stupid belt when you could have money, right fellas? The annoyed Dario then forces Havoc to immediately put up his contract agaist a surprise opponent, who will get the money that Havoc turned down if they win. Huh, here’s the freshly heel-turned Famous B. at the top of the stairs, and he has a new client who has earned this opportunity. B. says that his new client is already famous and presents Dr. Wagner Jr. (w/Brenda), who is famous enough that I have definitely heard of him even though I don’t watch lucha, so B.’s claim checks out! Fine, sure, jobbing Mack to Wagner would have annoyed me, but I don’t know, I wanted them to elevate Mack or do something more interesting than have Dario fuck over lovable sometimes-loser Havoc. This whole tournament was something of a shaggy dog story, though I suppose it isn’t a textbook one since Wagner gets over by semi-squashing a hurt Havoc. Vampiro has a nice mention on color that when he got back to Mexico from WCW, Wagner was the guy to put him right back out of wrestling with an injury. Anyway, Wagner dodges a desperation SSP and hits a Dr. Driver for three. B. and Brenda scream about being rich before B. checks for Havoc’s heartbeat with a stethoscope. Mack/Cage was enjoyable, but this was overall an aggressively mediocre hour of television that introduced Dr. Wagner Jr. in a scenario that I felt wasted my time as a viewer. Maybe if I were more invested in Havoc's journey, I’d feel something about him getting close to glory and being screwed. As it is, I didn’t love most of the booking or most of the wrestling. 2 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

I think Hernandez got the whole Beat Down Clan pulled from TNA because he went back while he was still under contract to LU, if IP recall correctly. Anyway, I have little sympathy for the showrunners because this sort of planning, while ideal for a typical television show, is not going to work with pro wrestlers for that reason - no downside in the contracts. You have to know this going in. I need to read more about LU contracts being somewhat onerous in general, actually. EDIT: Speaking of DeJoseph, did he or any of the other showrunners ever explain how things were supposed to end had LU not gotten soft canceled?

Season 2, Show 23: “The Phoenix, the Dragon, and the Spaceman” or Cheep Cheep Victories Let’s get through the rest of the second season in the next couple of days! Recap: Though Pentagón Jr. won a spot in the main event against Matanza Cueto by successfully navigating the Six to Survive Match from two weeks ago, King Cuerno is now embroiled in a feud with Mil Muertes as part of the fallout from that match. Johnny Mundo and Fenix came close to victory in Six to Survive, but ended up losing; what are their next moves? And how fun will Prince Puma versus Rey Misterio Jr. be at Ultima Lucha Dos? Here are new matches on tap for Ultima Lucha, according to Matt Striker and Vampiro: The Super Friends (Drago, Fenix, and Aerostar) have earned a title shot against the Barthian Bastards (Mundo, Black, and Evans, formally named the Worldwide Underground later in this show). Mundo and Fenix will wrestle one-on-one for the first time tonight. Meanwhile, in preparation for his big match against Rey Misterio Jr., Prince Puma will wrestle El Dragon Azteca Jr. Fine, but I wanted the Team of Destiny to be a thing for longer. King Cuerno and Mil Muertes (w/Catrina) are seemingly going to blow off their feud in the opener, maybe? Nah, this is going to end in a way that sparks a rematch with a stipulation at Ultima Lucha Dos. LU loves doing this sort of thing. Now watch me be wrong this time around as Muertes finishes off Cuerno cleanly or something. Muertes impolitely removes the cameraperson’s recording tool from in front of his face, then charges Cuerno, who runs away to create some space, but eventually gets speared and has to cover up to avoid damage from a series of soupbones. Mil stomps Cuerno in the junk, then counters a brief Cuerno attempt at a comeback by flipping him with a lariat. Cuerno is fighting for his life in there, and he’s not doing a very good job of it; Mil shakes off a kick to the shoulder to hit a huge chokeslam on Cuerno. Cuerno lands a high knee and a weak kick, then manages to lariat Mil to the floor. Mil lands on his feet, so Cuerno hits a basebally slide and then loads up an Arrow from Hell that cracks both Mil and the referee, who is out on the floor to do his ten count. What the heck? Why was he standing there for no discernible reason in kayfabe? That was a WCW-style ref bump that stands out because the ref never positions themselves in that way except that a bump was necessary to the story of this match. Surely, someone could come up with a more logical spot with which to bump the ref. Cuerno grabs a chair while Mil recovers and then hits Mil square on the top of the head with an unprotected chair shot. Mil is like, Eh, that didn’t even hurt, whatever, son, and when Cuerno starts another swing, Mil punches him square in the jaw with a straight right and grabs the chair, then whacks Cuerno in the back with it. Cuerno’s back is wrapped, by the way, and Striker points it out. Then, in a surprising finish, Mil wedges the chair in the corner and tries to shoot Cuerno into it; Cuerno stops himself, then moves out of the way as Mil charges in with a spear. Mil bonks his head off the chair, and Cuerno rolls him up and holds onto the ropes for dear life to get the leverage for a three count from the revived referee. Well, I suppose this is the sort of finish that calls for a rematch. Cuerno escapes as Catrina attempts to hold back and refocus an enraged Muertes. That match was certainly trying to achieve a reintroduction of Mil as an even stronger killer while giving Cuerno a needed victory, but I don’t understand why they would resurrect Mil again and then have him job here. Just have him beat Cuerno at Ultima Lucha Dos straight up. Cuerno isn’t exactly helped by this win, even considering his gimmick as a hunter who will do what he has to in order to achieve victory. Maybe if he hadn’t been taking so many losses this season, it would have come off more like Cuerno once again being a successful hunter and less like a fluke pinfall. And now Mil looks a bit weak because he’s supposedly come back even stronger than before, but he lost to a roll-up after hitting his head on a chair that we just saw him no-sell when it was swung at him a minute earlier. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto has invited Ivelisse Velez and Taya Valkyrie to his office; we get a Hitchcockian male gaze shot of Taya’s legs to start. Taya waves off a drink offer, but Ivelisse accepts. Dario pours while talking up both women, though when he gives Ivelisse her props, Taya interjects that Ivelisse depended on Son of Havoc and Angelico to gain success and that since Angelico’s injury, Ivelisse has been less than impressive. Dario heads off a budding argument by booking the women against one another in a match at Ultima Lucha to see who really is the baddest bitch in the temple. Taya walks out immediately, but Ivelisse takes time to finish her drink before she gets up...and bumps into eternal rival Catrina as the latter walks in. Catrina wishes Ivelisse good luck, but of course, calls her “little girl” as she does it so that you know and I know and especially Ivelisse knows that Catrina doesn’t mean it. Ivelisse just tells Catrina that she hasn’t forgotten their beef and will be swinging back around to address it when she has some spare time before she finally exits. Catrina makes a request of Dario Cueto: An Ultima Lucha Dos rematch between Mil Muertes and King Cuerno. Dario busts out laughing at her: “You’re funny! Let me see if I’ve got this straight; you attempt to take over my Temple, Mil Muertes attacks my poor, innocent baby brother, you destroy my office, and now you want to come in and demand something?!” I mean, except for the “poor, innocent baby brother” comment, Dario was spitting facts right there. Dario doesn’t give a fuck about what Catrina wants, to be clear, but Catrina gets in Dario’s face and re-states her request with one addition: She wants it to be a Deathmatch. Dario gets all horny for the idea and basically says that even though he legit hates Catrina, he legit loves violence. I guess that love will overcome hatred! He makes the match; Catrina makes the lights flicker and disappears. Dario, sighing: “Women.” Who is Dario trying to be with that comment, Matt Striker? Next up: Prince Puma wrestles former co-trios champion El Dragon Azteca Jr. (w/Rey Misterio Jr.). Ths match has a ton of running and flipping and countering and countering the counters. The opening exchange definitely feels like a floor routine and not like a natural struggle. Its neat from a “good athletic performance” standpoint, but it doesn’t do much for me from a “this feels like a competitive match” standpoint. Puma shakes hands with Azteca, but he aggressively holds the shake and pulls Azteca in, which leads to chops and a disrespectful slap from Azteca. I will give these guys credit for a spot that got me to suck in my breath; Azteca attempts a suicide dive, and he had such momentum that I was sure that he was going to overshoot Puma and smash the crown of his head into the cement stairs, but Puma snagged him out of midair and posted him. That was a planned spot, but it was the first thing all match that actually felt natural and out of control. Puma stares down Rey intermittently while punishing Azteca, but he doesn’t get a ton of time to stare because this is a very back-and-forth match. I like Puma, but he’s got too many flourishes to his moves. Even with something like a whip reversal, he really elaborates his body on the reversal. There’s too much performativeness in his work, or at least too much performativeness that comes off as pure performance. When he stops doing that stuff so much, he’s instantly more watchable. This match is not for me, though both guys are definitely good workers and I am sure that most people reading this would enjoy the proceedings. Azteca comes close with his pop-up tornado DDT, called a DDTJ, but he gets only 2.8. However, he gets trapped up top and caught, then hit with a Blue Thunder Bomb into a Northern Lights into a deadlift vertical suplex. All that only gets 2.85. Puma drags Azteca into position for a 630 Senton Bomb, but Azteca pops up and grabs Puma’s leg and then manages a running uppercut that catches Puma in the gut and knocks him into a seated position up top. Azteca goes up and lands a Victory Roll Bomb for another 2.85. Azteca goes up to finish Puma, but when he dives, Puma moves. Azteca manages to roll through, but Puma catches him when he charges and overhead belly-to-bellies Azteca into the corner, then lands a leaping stomp and hits a cradle piledriver for another close two count. Misterio is visibly proud of Azteca for kicking out of that one. Puma simply walks over to a neutral corner, loads up, and dropkicks Azteca with a bit of mustard on it, knocking Azteca back into the corner. Puma lines up Azteca and successfully lands a 630 Senton Bomb for three as Rey shakes his head in disappointment. That was a good match if you are an avid fan of certain aspects of AEW house style, probably, and a watchable enough but flawed match if you are me. As Misterio checks on Azteca, Puma walks up and tells Misterio that he put Azteca down tonight and will be doing the same to Misterio at Ultima Lucha Dos. Yeah, yeah, I want to see Misterio put this dude in his place (but actually, I think Puma should win because he’s more likely to stick around for the long haul and could use a big name win). Puma pats Rey on the back kinda hard as he makes that previous statement. Rey gets up and faces off with him, then yanks him back as he tries to walk away. It’s gettin’ tetchy in here! Dario Cueto has assembled four workers in the ring – Son of Havoc, Brian Cage, Willie Mack, and Texano – where he makes an address. He hypes Ultima Lucha and compares it to Christmas morning, then mentions that he has invited these four wrestlers to get a version of a Christmas gift from him tonight. These four wrestlers are entered into what he calls the Four a Unique Opportunity Tournament. He grins to himself, holds up four fingers like he’s Tully Blanchard in 1986, and sounds like Vincent Kennedy in the Attitude Era Super Bowl ad when he asks the crowd, GET IT?! What a goofball! Dario loves repeating the phrase “unique opportunity,” but he won’t say what that opportunity actually is. If you’ll recall, back in season one, he gave Drago a “unique opportunity” for beating Aerostar that ended up being a poisoned chalice – Drago got a title shot, but if he lost it, he was banished from the Temple. I’m sure that this demented Spanish djinn has some nonsenically evil plan ready for these four. Dario suggests that maybe they get a head start on beating the shit out of each other now, and everyone brawls until Cage is the only guy left to rule the ring. Cage should be in Penta’s spot at Ultima Lucha Dos. Here is another example, as with Sexy Star, is where the rigidity inherent in this sort of season-long (or multi-season arc-focused) storytelling can hamper things. At least Penta is over enough that the crowd is as happy with him wrestling Matanza as they'd be with Cage, unlike Ivelisse being clearly more over than Sexy Star and more deserving of her place in the GotG bout. But Cage came within a whisker of beating Matanza and never fired off his big guns in that match; it seems natural to me that, as he’s one of the most over guys in the Temple along with Penta and he has a built in “never hit you with my best moves” excuse, he also has a great claim for that rematch (and it would be a better match with him in it). Matt Striker and Vampiro run down the card at Ultima Lucha Dos. I’ve said it before, but as I see them use footage of Cuerno in his den at home, I don’t think they should use interstitial footage that is ostensibly stuff the LU camerapeople aren't privy to for video packages. Striker’s dramatic SOMEONE IS ABOUT TO DIE to promote Cuerno/Muertes recalls for me a 2001 WCW show in which Tony S. exclaimed of a main event brawl as the show closed THEY WON’T STOP UNTIL SOMEBODY IS DEAD. Striker gets the benefit of the doubt for his calls since someone in that match could theoretically be killed off, though. I appreciate that the GotG Match is promoted with a “mystery opponent,” though, since Striker doesn’t know who it is yet, but we’re privy to that doofus Night Claw being handed a medallion a show ago. Alright, let’s watch the main event together! Rey Fenix wrestles Johnny Mundo (w/Taya Valkyrie) in a match that should be better than the previous one since Mundo will mix some dirty pool heel shit into the bout. Striker calls this a “clash of styles,” and it really isn’t so much, but thankfully it’s not a babyface versus babyface match, or it’d look a lot like the previous match. Striker has named the heel champs the Worldwide Underground, and I feel like I should use their actual name if that’s what they’re getting billed as. I feel like LU should name these trios teams even if they’re fairly short-lived so that I don’t have to, even if Mundo is the epitome of a Barthian concept of the pro wrestling bastard. Fenix comes out firing before Mundo takes over and uses fists and chokes to keep his opponent trapped. Mundo is an unpleasant person, flicking off the crowd and slapping disrespectfully at Fenix’s head. Fenix returns that last slap tenfold and yells a cuss at Mundo before barging into him at full speed. Mundo turns it around with a standing C-4, then locks on a chinlock that Fenix quickly escapes. This is another matchup that leaves me cold, but I enjoy Mundo playing bully ball with Fenix in a few spots. He hits a spinebuster (!!), for example, which was a way better move than the C-4. Taya is extremely competent from her spot outside the ring, choking Fenix and holding his head in place so that Mundo can boot it. Vampiro points out her effectiveness on commentary, and I’d say that on what I dub the Vandenberg Index, Taya’s consistently scoring at least an eight or nine out of ten for heel managerial cheating effectiveness [Editor's note: She eventually earned a full ten-out-of-ten for her heel manager cheating work tonight!]. Fenix eventually dives onto both heels at ringside. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Striker once again mentions Super Calo as an analog to explain Mundo’s bandana somehow staying on his head even through all the action. On cue, Mundo shortly after loses that bandana back in the ring; Fenix lands kicks and chops and more kicks. He even manages to score a running sunset flip powerbomb, but that only gets two. As Mundo is laid out, Fenix goes up, but Taya holds his boot so that he can’t launch. Mundo gets up and kicks Fenix in the head, who might as well stop and hold up a sign to the hard camera with the words PRO WRESTLING IS FAKE, YOU MORONS written on it because he “bumps” by flipping backward off the second rope, landing on his feet, and then swaying woozily in place like he’s a dizzied Doink the Clown waiting for the Undertaker to complete a fatality on him in WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game. I want to like you, Fenix, and then you do shit like that. This match went straight downhill when Mundo stopped doing power moves and everyone decided to do flips and shitty strikes and more flips and more shitty strikes. Let me just tell you how this stupid match ends. Taya slides Mundo’s trios tag belt onto the mat and then leaps onto the apron and distracts ref Marty Elias after Fenix hits Mundo with a Super C-4. Elias misses Mundo recovering and grabbing the title belt, then walloping Fenix with it behind Elias’s back for three. Jack Evans and P.J. Black join Mundo in the ring to celebrate. All four heels stomp out Fenix. Drago and Aerostar attempt a save, but are outnumbered. Ivelisse runs out to attack Taya, and Yo, shut the fuck up, Matt Striker: Striker shouts out the most overrated, and one of the worst, PBP dudes of all time in Joey Styles before yelling CATFIGHT. The babyfaces now have even numbers and eventually turn things around, running the ring by the end of the show. The run up to Ultima Lucha Dos has somehow felt both rushed and also not eventful enough to get me all that hyped for the card. I’m sure it’ll be good, but I was more interested in the build to the first Ultima Lucha. This show, outside of the seedy backstage interstitial, was particularly bland for the go-home show to the season finale. 2.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 2, Show 22: “Fame and Fortune” or Medals of Honor: Rising Star Recap: It’s time for the medallions to be redistributed again after Brian Cage cashed in his GotG belt in a title loss to Matanza Cueto. Meanwhile, Mascarita Sagrada is on a losing streak and El Dragon Azteca Jr. is on a collision course [™ Michael Cole] with Black Lotus. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto has heard exciting things about a new luchador that he’s signed, a man who appears to be dark reprise of Prince Puma. Dario even monologues that this new luchador hails from Puma's same Aztec tribe located in Southern Illinois. Oops, no, I mean located in Mexico. Anyway, this guy is in a mask that reminds me of the visage of the panther which haunts the glade in Southwest Lemoyne – sorry, I’ve been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2 lately – and is named Night Claw. That name is the sort of name I’d give a wrestler that I made up when I was about eight. Anyway, Dario hands him an Aztec medallion for free; unlike the other six medallions, which the wrestlers in the Temple will have to compete for, Night Claw gets one for free. Holy shit, Night Claw speaks, and he sounds like if Ole Anderson was speaking fluent Spanish while doing voiceover work for the Black Scorpion. This presentation is a total misfire, in my opinion; I’m getting real Disciples of Death vibes from this goober. Dario fills us in that the Jaguar Tribe that Puma and Night Claw come from were the first of the seven tribes to be destroyed by the Aztec gods as a way to caution Night Claw against overconfidence. Night Claw still appears to be overconfident. I’m surprised that they’re going to redistribute the medallions so quickly; this will be the second time within this short season. Then again, Dario does love chaos, doesn’t he? Matt Striker and Vampiro fill us in on tonight’s show: Dario let them know that one medallion has been given away to some new addition to the Temple, but the other six medallions will be competed for on tonight’s show. Further, Prince Puma will address the fans on his Ultima Lucha Dos plans. I presume that Night Claw will be crashing that address? [Editor’s note: Thankfully not!] Famous B. interrupts Melissa Santos to introduce Mascarita Sagrada (w/Brenda) before Sagrada’s medallion match against Daga. Daga is slightly distracted by Kobra Moon watching him intently from the top of Dario Cueto’s office. I hope Dario really reinforced that roof when he replaced it. Daga flings Sagrada around, then lands a lazy dropkick, but he’s going at half-speed here. Striker tries to say that Daga is trying his hardest, but Vampiro notes that Daga is lazy and disrespectful on the cover. On cue, Sagrada catches Daga sleeping and manages a pop-up rana for two, but Daga kicks out and lands a side Russian leg sweep; he keeps Sagrada in his clutches and transitions from there into a crossface that earns him a tap out victory after the dirtbag Daga finally stops shielding Sagrada’s frantic tapping from the referee’s view. Kobra Moon is pleased. B. and Brenda console Sagrada…until B. suddenly superkicks him. Brenda, sobbing and in the highest-pitched voice ever: “Why did you do that?!” B. beats Sagrada with his shoe, tosses it away, and then demands a crying that Brenda retrieve it for him, in one of the better heel moments that I’ve seen this season; he then gets on the mic and informs Sagrada that he will be rescinding his role as legal representation of Sagrada’s business interests, but does not share any plans to give Sagrada back the thirty percent commission that he has so far earned from said representation. He’s a dick, is what I’m saying. I’m a sucker for angles in which heel managers fire or backbench their clients, so I’m interested to see where this goes. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto is trying to get out in front of this El Dragon Azteca Jr. problem by lying his ass off to Azteca Jr. himself. Oh, he mixes a truth in there – “You think my brother killed someone very close to you, but he didn’t” – as an appetizer for the whopper of a lie that he lays down as the main course – “My brother is a monster, but he’s not a killer.” You better go on outta here with that nonsense, Dario. Azteca does not believe Dario, to his credit; Dario, however, leverages the truth that Matanza didn’t kill Azteca Sr. by noting that Black Lotus did it. She did, in fact, do it. Dario points out that Lotus is awfully protective of Matanza because she believes that Azteca Sr. killed her parents. If she believed that Matanza did it, she obviously wouldn’t be protecting him. I mean, this part is all true. It does out the important detail that Dario was the one to make up the story that Azteca Sr. killed Lotus's parents, but then again, Lotus deserves an ass kicking from Azteca for being a dumbshit babyface who got herself captured within Dario’s nonsensical web of lies. The camera focuses on Azteca’s eyes, which indicate that he’s taking in a lot of new information here that he needs time to process. Dario encourages Azteca to revenge himself upon Lotus “just like El Dragon Azteca (Sr.) would have wanted.” Well, no, I believe Rey Misterio Jr. when Misterio asserts that Azteca Sr. knew that he was sacrificing himself and would not be interested in revenge for his death so much as he would be interested in Azteca Jr. uniting the Aztec tribes to stop the Aztec gods from ravaging the wearth. Azteca Jr., on the other hand, is interested in revenge himself and really doesn’t care about what anyone else wants, whether he’s ready to admit that to himself or not. Dario merely asks Azteca Jr. to wait until Ultima Lucha Dos to get revenge on Azteca Sr.’s killer because, y’know, ratings. I guess that Dario saw Famous B. doing cruel heel shit and felt threatened that he wouldn’t be the cruelest heel on this episode, so he one-upped B. in this interstitial. What a vile (and entertaining) character! Since they’ll be a team going forward until at least one of them is killed off, Officer Joey Ryan, Officer Cortez Castro Reyes, and wire-wearing felon Mister Cisco need a team name for the sake of easier reference, so here it is: Pork Mole will be wrestling a trios tag against, um, Killshot, Siniestro de la Muerte, and Marty “the Moth” Martinez, with the winning team earning Aztec medallions for themselves. Dario has gone full scumbag booker tonight. Killshot runs out here to try and throttle the Moth, who grabs a mic and says that even though they’re beefing, they have to be “brothers-in-arms” in a “three-man army,” so as a peace offering, he gives Killshot back the dogtags that he stole. Killshot warily accepts them. Striker compares the Moth to Patrick Bateman combined with some other characters while Marty does a backflip. In fairness, when I saw how nice Marty’s house was (outside of all the dead butterflies, at least), I thought to myself, “Jesus, Martinez, that house looks super. I didn’t realize that you had so much taste.” Anyway, Marty thrusts Ryan’s spittle-covered Blow Pop into his own mouth because yuck, and from there, we get a watchable trios match between these teams. At one point, Siniestro trips Reyes in a style that Striker declares is of Canadian provenance. Vampiro disagrees. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Striker: “Didn’t Lance Storm use a Canadian trip?” Vampiro, scoffing: “He’s not Canadian; he’s from Alberta.” I guess people from Ontario talk about Alberta the same way people from British Columbia do in my experience; that comment got me laughing even though it showed indirect disrespect to the Hitman. Reyes hates his partner so much that he tags in Cisco instead of Ryan on a hot tag even though Ryan demands the tag for himself. Cisco is a house engulfed as the crowd gets behind him and chants for him; he hits a diving rana from the top and then a neckbreaker on Marty, but only gets two. Joey Ryan rushes in and does his iron penis deal that sucks and I can honestly say that I always thought sucked well before Speaking Out revealed that Ryan was a pervert who was probably just using pro wrestling as a cover to get people to touch his dick. Killshot does a contrived dive spot where he carefully steps off Reyes on the apron before moonsaulting onto everyone else at ringside. Back in the ring, Killshot and Marty work nicely together to combo Cisco into a close two count, but Cisco recovers with a standing poisoned rana. Cisco and Cortez then combo Siniestro and prepare to finish off the guy with a Shatter Machine…until Joey Ryan hops in front of them and superkicks Siniestro. Ryan shoves Cisco to the floor and then argues with Reyes; Cisco isn’t able to get back to his feet before Marty sneaks in and curb stomps him; Killshot follows with a top-rope double-stomp and covers for three. Speaking of Marty sneaking in, he edges over to the post where Killshot placed the dog tags, steals them once more, catches sight of the cameraperson shooting him as he does it, and creepily signals a shushing motion into the camera before sidling away. Killshot finally realizes what happened, but Marty shoves the ref into him and takes off before Killshot can catch him. This was probably the lowest quality trios match LU has put on in a minute because of all the mediocre talent in the ring, but the nature of trios tags hiding weaknesses and the storyline feud stuff between Pork Mole and also between Killshot and Marty all helped carry this match. Alright, it is now time for the final match for the final two Aztec medallions available. Here’s another reminder that Dario booked this match: Sexy Star tags with Mariposa Martinez to face Ivelisse Velez and Taya Valkyrie in this match. Does Dario get some sort of mental health boost from sticking feud partners together or what? I know that Star wins the LU Championship and also maybe the GotG belt at some point relatively soon. Does she win it and then lose it to Johnny Mundo next season? I feel like that might happen, but I probably memory-holed a champion from next season. Striker claims that men are more ego-driven, but that women are more mature and more easily tamp down their egos to work together…in a match that includes Ivelisse, Taya, and Mariposa. Striker, your benevolent sexism has led you to an incorrect conclusion, and Vampiro and I shall both have a chuckle at your silly comment. Taya and Star have a pretty good opening sequence with a nice Star bow-and-arrow and some good arm drags. Taya backs away when she gets back to standing and is forcibly blind tagged by Ivelisse, who gets in there with Mariposa. They also have a solid sequence; Mariposa escapes a headlock by tossing Ivelisse backward into the buckles; Taya points and laughs at her partner from her spot on the apron. I do like that this match is relying on submissions; the ladies are very bendy. Mariposa grabs Ivelisse in a sort of standing Texas Cloverleaf-y sort of deal that I don’t know the formal name for, and it looks great because Ivelisse is bent in half. I have long believed that women should do a lot more submission moves because most of them have the flexibility to sell them like they’re death. Anyway, Ivelisse kicks away, sending Mariposa into the buckles, and then gets a quick rollup for two. Taya makes a blind tag, and you know what, I didn’t realize how tall she is because she’s usually been wrestling dudes or standing next to Johnny Mundo. She’s as tall as Mariposa, maybe slightly taller. I am sort in interested in this matchup, but Star blind tags Mariposa. BOO. I think I’ve come around on Taya; I didn’t really rate her (or hate her) on the first watch, but I really enjoy her heel work on this watchthrough. Anyway, after a brief exchange in the ring, Star runs the apron and hits Taya with a seated senton; Mariposa walks over, tosses Taya out of the way, and then clears out a section of the audience and tosses Taya into the wooden seats. Star gets in Mariposa’s face, but Mariposa shoves her to the floor, clears out another section, and then hits a running cross body to a seated Taya. Star walks over and starts arguing with Mariposa again, and poor forgotten Ivelisse reasserts herself by hitting a diving crossbody onto both her opponents at ringside. This has been a fun tag match that has certainly outstripped my expectations. Back in the ring, Taya stomps at Sexy Star, begins a mock SEXY STAR chant, and of course gets the crowd to start chanting for real. She lands a running back elbow into one corner and a pair of running knees into the other corner, but her lateral press only earns two. Taya clubs away at Star, but goes back to the corner charge once too often; Star boots a charging Taya, then lands a lariat, a kick to the solar plexus, and a DDT, then manages a victory roll on a woozy Taya for two. Taya ain’t too proud to tag; she scuttles over to her corner and tags an annoyed Ivelisse by the knee. Mariposa wants back in, but Star ignores her and instead choses to have a strikefest with Ivelisse that she loses; still, Star manages a drop toehold and La Magistral for two; Ivelisse scores a small package for two, and they both trade a series of flash pinfall attempts for close two counts. Ivelisse stops that exchange with a kick to the side of Star’s head, then kicks a charging Mariposa before turning right around into a wayward Taya spear as Star steps out of the way. Star deposits Taya to the floor with a dropkick; Mariposa packages Ivelisse up and drops her on her head, then tosses Star on top of Ivelisse for a three count and the final two medals. Man, that was a fun bout. The winning team warily eyes one another, but they accept their medals while managing not to engage in fisticuffs. Here is a list of who is into the Gift of the Gods Match at Ultima Lucha Dos (assuming that no one loses their medallion or has it stolen by Chavo or something): Night Claw, Daga, Killshot, Marty “the Moth” Martinez, Siniestro de la Muerte, Mariposa Martinez, and Sexy Star. This is not the best lineup for a GotG Match, to say the least. I feel quite certain that Star is going to win this one. Prince Puma enters the ring for interview time to end our show. Striker calls Puma the anchor of LU and compares him to John Cena, Ric Flair, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Nick Bockwinkel to put him over. Puma, who has never spoken in front of the audience, I don’t think, definitely still sounds like a dude from the Midwest as he says that Konnan trained him to be the best, and by “the best,” Konnan explicitly meant “the next Rey Misterio Jr.” Puma would like to test that comparison by competing against Misterio at Ultima Lucha Dos, which sounds like it’ll be a fun match. Misterio comes to the ring to respond; he says that he’s a vet who has paid his dues, dammit, and while Puma is still a “Prince,” Misterio is “el Rey.” Rey does, however, see Puma as quite the measuring stick to see if he’s still got it (YOU DEFINITELY DO, CHAMP) and accepts Puma’s challenge. Both men shake hands, and yeah, I am into it. That’s the end of the show! This was an entertaining show, though it didn’t feel like a show that is two weeks away from Ultima Lucha Dos at all. Still, Dario Cueto did great heel work in the interstitials, and I’m interested in seeing where the storyline with Famous B.’s sports agency goes. I do think that Sexy Star winning the GotG or LU belts feels forced at this point because honestly, if they are dead set on having a woman win them, Ivelisse is the one that the crowd really wants, IMO. It just feels like the showrunners decided that they were going to build to a Star title win from day one, and they’re not going to deviate from that path even though they probably should. It really isn’t helpful that though Star held up her end of the tag match tonight, she was the fourth best worker in that thing and the second most over babyface of the two babyfaces in the ring. But that’s all a digression from rating this show, which was good! 3.75 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

I paraphrased it as Aztec gods in the form of a human, but the prophecy actually was this, word-for-word: "The tribes must be united. It's the only way to stop what's coming...The Gods in the form of man." I will be updating that post to clarify because the extra article that I added changes the whole meaning of the sentence. It seems as though Matanza only has the power of a single Aztec god, not all of them, so maybe there is another, stronger vessel that the gods might collectively prefer to inhabit OR the gods will each inhabit their own bodies, seven in total. I love the idea that the medallions which represent the tribes being united within the Gift of the Gods belt is enough, but Misterio imploring Azteca Jr. to stay true to his goal of uniting the Aztec tribes probably means this isn't true.

Season 2, Show 21: “Six to Survive” or Penta has researched Doctrine: Initiative Recap: We now have two cops and a criminal mole inside the Temple, true to Councilman Delgado’s (and Chavo Guerrero Jr.’s) suspicions. Not only that, but Pentagón Jr. and Mil Muertes are up and walking around being all dangerous once more. Penta might just be about to earn a rematch against Matanza Cueto in tonight’s Six to Survive Match, in fact! Commentary hypes the Six to Survive Match, then sends things to Melissa Santos…so that she can introduce the competitors in that match? It’s the opener?! Huh. OK. Here are your competitors in the order that Santos introduces them: King Cuerno vs. Ivelisse Velez vs. Taya Valkyrie (from Victoria, BC, and therefore a fellow Cascadian and a consistent rooting interest of mine) vs. Pentagón Jr. vs. Rey Fenix vs. Johnny Mundo. As a reminder, this is an elimination match as we work from six down to one. The ring quickly clears so that Taya and Ivelisse can go nose to nose, but Mundo hops behind Ivelisse and hits her with a Moonlight Drive for two. Taya follows with a swinging uranage, and Mundo demands that he get to pin Ivelisse after that because he’s a dick and Taya could probably do better. She gladly backs off, but the delay allows Ivelisse to kick out at two again. Fenix re-enters the ring, feints a slap at Taya, and then kicks her right in the ass when she ducks away. He and Penta then team up on a diving legdrop to the balls/regular legdrop to the throat deal that only earns a two count. You know what you’re getting early. Three people standing at ringside and watching the proceedings while two or maybe three people do spots in the ring. Cuerno manage a poisoned rana on Fenix in there, which is a cool spot, but this match is nothing early…until Mil Muertes storms out here and jumps Cuerno, then throws fists at him. Catrina watches at ringside as Mil destroys Cuerno and leaves him prone for a Mundo End of the World that gets three and eliminates the erstwhile elite hunter who I consider to be erstwhile because he hasn’t been very good at hunting this season, if you look at his record. After a break, we come back to Fenix not wanting to hit a girl, so Ivelisse kicks him until he stops being sexist and strikes her back. Fenix refuses, so Ivelisse rolls her and manages a cross body block on Penta as well. Ivelisse is on a roll, which is when Taya gets back in the ring and suckers her in; Ivelisse charges; Mundo pops up behind Taya and kicks Ivelisse. They double up on her for a bit, but she manages rana Mundo to the floor and go at it one-on-one with Taya. An Ivelisse standing side kick earns a two count, but Taya manages to sneak in a boot and lands a front slam. Taya risks it all by going up top, but Ivelisse moves out of the way of her moonsault. However, Ivelisse can’t capitalize; as Taya gets to her feet, Ivelisse charges the larger woman and gets wrapped and shoved backward into the corner buckles. Taya holds on, hits a Northern Lights, and then releases, rolls to her feet, and follows with a double stomp that earns her a three count on the cover and knocks our number of contenders down to four. There’s another break. When we come back, Penta is kicking Taya right in the pum pum on a Shattered Dreams (AKA Dustbuster). She clutches her pained groin while Fenix tosses a charging Mundo face first into the post at ringside. Basically, we’ve got a Lucha Bros. vs. Mundo and Taya tornado tag going on right now. Penta chops Taya while Vampiro’s commentary briefly makes me consider bringing the Bitch Count into these reviews. He’s just getting hyped up as Penta gets closer to victory, Vampiro’s persona emerging more and more and subduing ol’ Ian Hodgkinson, but he’s also giving me Nam-like flashbacks to hearing Shane Douglas on the mic in 2000. Striker even notes that Vampiro “has locked eyes with Penta” as Penta kicks Taya repeatedly right near the commentary desk. Mundo sees this and angrily calls Penta into the ring to fight him instead. Mundo wins that exchange, but then Fenix jumps Mundo and kicks him to the mat, and then of course Taya leaps back into the fray with a leaping top-rope rana. She even wins another Northern Lights into a double-stomp combo, this time on Fenix, but she doesn’t have the leverage; he kicks out at two. Taya pairs off with Penta; Mundo, meanwhile, kicks Fenix and covers. Taya comes over to help leverage Mundo’s cover, but Fenix kicks out anyway. Yeah, this is now effectively a tornado tag, and it’s not a surprise that this has been the best part of the match by far. Alas, it ends when Fenix double-stomps Mundo as Mundo is hung over the ropes; meanwhile, Penta drills Taya with a package piledriver and earns a three count, eliminating her. After yet another break, we come back to Mundo checking on a down-and-out Taya while Penta and Fenix recover in the ring. Well, now this is a triple threat, so this segment will be worse than the previous segment. We went from multi-person scramble (meh) to tornado tag (that was fun!) to triple threat (meh, probably) and eventually down to a singles match (will probably be Fenix vs. Penta, which will be watchable enough). This match having such defined phases is novel, though. Anyway, Penta lays around after an initial exchange so that Mundo and Fenix can have a decent enough sequence. Mundo controls until they start running the ropes, at which point Fenix kicks Mundo and both men spill outside. Penta reinserts himself into the proceedings with a huge plancha onto his opponents. Penta and Fenix get up and slap the shit out of one another. Striker, in an interesting aside: “To the casual viewer, these fighters choose open-hand strikes because they don’t want to break their hands throwing punches.” Vampiro: “Well, from a guy who teaches krav maga, I can tell you right now, a palm strike will do more damage any time; a fist, you might even break your hand if you hit ‘em wrong.” That is the first time I’ve heard a justification for palm strikes or Euro uppercuts over straight punches because the wrestlers are trying to avoid hand injuries by using traditional punches. Since it’s absurd that here in LU, the referees would ever be directed to disqualify wrestlers for using closed fists as is the normal way to explain why wrestlers might not use a punch, this alternate explanation for why wrestlers aren’t using closed fists is pretty good, actually. That is a great way to explain in kayfabe why the wrestlers in this company resort to chops and slaps way more than straight fisticuffs. I’d never heard this explanation before, but I immediately loved it once I did. Back to the wrestling going on in and around the ring: Mundo uses the slap-exchange between his enemies as a distraction and hits a corkscrew dive onto them; he then sets up a chair, seats a slumped Penta in it, and hits a running knee on him before putting Fenixx back in the ring and landing a corkscrew headbutt that ends up hitting Fenix in the groin, so even though his aim was off, it still came off okay. Mundo controls both guys, earning 2.9 on a cover after hitting Penta with a hanging DDT and then landing a series of knees and kicks to both men. That spot of control doesn’t last forever; Penta and Fenix sit Mundo in the corner and land a kick/double-stomp combo on him before landing an ugly sunset flip bomb sort of deal on top of Mundo and then both laterally pressing him for three to eliminate him. Striker can’t even discern what the fuck is supposed to be happening there, and I don’t blame him at all. What an ugly finish that was. Sometimes, just go for the simpler and visually cleaner double-team move, maybe. Some of these wrestlers chase complexity at the cost of telling a clear story through their moves. And now we are down to two! Striker points out these fellas came into the company together (Season One, Show Three). As you’ll recall, Fenix beat Penta in multiple matches to start their parallel stints in the Temple, so Penta finally managing to beat Fenix tonight will mean something for the long-term viewer. It will illustrate that Penta has come back stronger and better and is able to improve and overcome opponents who have previously dominated him. LU does a fine job of this sort of long-term booking, and this is one rare show where there’s a lot of successful booking in which guys eat a loss and then get it right back against the same opponent or one dude eats a bunch of losses, but ends up having those losses work as motivation for them until they come back around and finally get the win. Fenix and Mil Muertes, for example, basically traded wins back and forth for the better part of two seasons, and it didn’t get boring or hurt either of them at all. WWE could never. Penta and Fenix trade nice-looking submission holds, including a Lasso From El Paso, a sweet front backbreaker, and a less-sweet Dragon Sleeper. There’s not a ton of struggle in the exchange; they’re actually using submissions as high spots. Would I have preferred grueling mat struggles with convincing counters into their moves? Yes, but if they’re going to do spots for the sake of spots, I can at least have fun with it if they’re power spots or submission holds. Diving high spots bore me. Weapon spots put me right to sleep. Power and submission spots still have aesthetic value to me even outside of an interesting narrative or clear struggle, though. They stop all that “trading holds” shit and start running and diving on one another; Penta hits a nice poisoned rana to counter Fenix’s counter to his corner charge. Both men sell exhaustion after that spot. They get up and do some more spots and exchanges, like a Fenix top-rope rana or a Sling Blade/side kick exchange or a Canadian Destroyer to the floor. It’s not particularly good, but I don’t hate my life as I watch it. I am tired of this match, though, and feel like it was booked far longer than it needed to be. We should have at least gotten two matches out of this show. Let’s get to the finish already instead of you two crazy kids trading slaps and kicks. OK, here it is; Penta hits a diving Canadian Destroyer and then hangs on and drops Fenix with a follow-up package piledriver for three. Finally. Geez. The crowd pops huge for Penta’s win; we get a shot of Vampiro standing up from his seat and having a bit of a moment. Striker asks him what he thinks about the result, as a play-by-play person might normally ask their color commentator. Vampiro, rudely: “My thoughts are this, man, why don’t you stop asking me questions and just let me enjoy the moment? I’m thinkin'.” Ian are you okay/Would you tell us/That you’re okay? Dario Cueto leads Matanza out to the top of the stairs, and a winded Penta gets a house mic and promises to break every bone in Matanza’s body at Ultima Lucha Dos, and also every bone in Dario’s body too just for kicks. Then he hits the ol’ catchphrase. No, he doesn’t even do that much; he lets the crowd do it for him. I’m bummed that this was a show-long match. We didn’t get any progress on the police investigation or the councilman and his Dark Lord or any of that shit even though it was shown in the recap. The match as it was, while fine, was overlong. This was a watchable episode, but they should have shoehorned a second match or at least an interstitial or two into the show. 2.75 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 2, Show 20: “The Contenders” or Super Smash Luchador@s Melee Recap: I recently wondered in one of these reviews if Drago and Aerostar had forgotten about their budding feud with Jack Evans and P.J. Black, and now here we are in the recap, looking back at it. Now that Evans and Black are running with Johnny Mundo as part of the Barthian Bastards, Drago and Aerostar are outnumbered, but come to think of it, there’s one guy who I bet is dying (and then rebirthing again, as is his way) to help the babyfaces out [Editor’s note: Nope, I was wrong! The babyfaces didn’t need any help tonight]. Meanwhile, the undercover LAPD cops who infiltrated the Temple seem to be edging closer to blowing their cover, and Pentagón Jr. is up and walking again, looking for vengeance on Matanza Cueto. Things are about to pop off in the Temple. That is the point of this recap, and I, for one, cannot wait. Seedy backstage interstitial: Black Lotus walks right into Dario Cueto’s office and tells El Jefe that El Dragon Azteca Jr. knows where Matanza Cueto is being held and in fact tried to kill him in revenge for the death of his mentor Azteca Sr., but she stopped Azteca Jr. from doing so. Dario, who was peeking out of the blinds of his office like he’d just walked into his house located in a bad neighborhood and wanted to make sure no one was bumming around his property looking to steal something after he locked the door behind him, is utterly shocked at this news. Lotus, who is still one of the dumber babyfaces on this show, notes that she pondered as to why she was protecting Matanza and then threatens Dario with retaliation from the whole Black Lotus clan if she finds out that Dario was lying about Azteca Sr. killing her parents. Dario is shocked – shocked, I say – to think that Lotus would ever believe that he was lying to her. Then, he diverts the conversation to Ultima Lucha Dos, which is only four shows away including this one (!!), and he books Lotus against Azteca Jr. for Ultima Lucha, telling her that she can take his mask back to the clan if she beats him. Lotus isn’t all that bright, so Dario’s booking of that match at least partially neutralizes her anger. Well, since the Team of Destiny probably isn’t getting the trios tag titles back after a reign that was all too short, I’m going to complain that either a) this season isn’t longer so that they could have had a few more weeks of title defenses before losing to the Barthian Bastards or b) that they didn’t get Misterio and Azteca Jr. onto this show earlier in the season and just have them beat the Disciples of Death for the titles rather than putting the titles back on Dysfunction Junction for a few more weeks. The Team of Destiny is such a fun trios tag team that I feel a bit cheated by their brief transitional reign. Also, how long does Misterio stick around? I hope he’s here in season three. If he only shows up for a single 26 episode season, I’m going to be very bummed out about it. To the desk! Matt Striker notes that Matanza Cueto has run through all of the immediate challengers to his Lucha Underground and will be chilling out and waiting for a new number one contender to be determined for his next defense at Ultima Lucha. Of course, Dario Cueto will determine that person in a convoluted way that probably assures a series of mediocre-to-bad wrestling matches: First, twelve top contenders will face each other in six-on-six tag action this week. The winning team will have a Six to Survive Elimination Match next week against one another until only one person is left standing. If LU would only do six-person tags and eschew all other multi-person matches, I would be very grateful. Alas. Vampiro also announces a Nunchaku Match between Drago/Aerostar and Jack Evans/P.J. Black for later in the show. He seems intrigued by the possibilities for violence. Marty “the Moth” Martinez (w/Killshot’s dog tags, no notice of the physical space boundaries that other people are trying to set) flaps his arms behind Melissa Santos, but instead of just trying to inhale stray strands of her hair as he usually does, he instead takes the microphone from her in the grabbiest way possible halfway through her announcement of his name. The crowd hates this dude, and someone audibly yells YOU’RE WEIRD, MARTY, which gets a small pop from the people surrounding him. **StingIAgree.gif**. The Moth huffs into the microphone and taunts Killshot to come to the ring and get his tags back. When he doesn’t see Killshot, he thinks the guy has no cojones, but as he grins and flaps his arms, he suddenly feels Killshot pressing his finger guns into the back of his head. The Moth turns around into a Killshot tackle that spills both men to the floor, where they throw hands. Both men trade strikes and bashes into the railing; Marty hits Killshot with a sick-looking powerbomb right into the railing that Killshot folded his body in half to take. Very nice bump on his part. Marty drags Killshot by his mask until he gets into the range of the commentary desk, where he grins and waves at Striker. Striker: “Why are you waving at me, you weird human being?” When even an awkward weirdo like Striker is put off by your weirdness, that tells you something! Marty prepares to spike Killshot into the commentary desk, but Killshot reverses it and launches Marty shoulder-first into the side of the desk. The ref finally counts these two out, so they’ll need a third match to settle their feud. After the match, referees try to separate them, but they gouge at each other’s eyes until finally, the refs back Marty off a bit. Marty chastises the refs and turns right around into a Killshot soccer kick. Marty hits the deck; Killshot gets his tags back…for a second. He drops them when Marty runs up behind him and hits a release German. Marty grabs them and cackles before barely escaping with them when Killshot recovers and pursues him. Those dudes took some nice bumps in that little segment that makes me hope their blowoff match at Ultima Lucha leans heavily on ringside brawling. Seedy LAPD interrogation room interstitial: They got my boy Mister Cisco Garza locked up! He’s questioned by Officers Reyes and Ryan, but Cisco just spits in Reyes’s face. Captain Vasquez walks in and lists off Cisco’s charges, then tries to cut a deal with him rather than merely prosecuting him and putting him in gen pop for the next three decades. Cisco is disgusted that he made friends with a bunch of undercover cops and at first refuses Vasquez when she tells him she can make all those charges go away if he wears a wire. She leaves, but when he has a second or two to consider her offer, he calls her back into the room. Cisco wants to know what to look for if he agrees to go back into the Temple. Vasquez wants evidence against Dario Cueto. She reads off the usual crimes that one would guess Dario might be into – drug trafficking, money laundering, murder – but adds a spicy crime that I don’t think we have a legal statute for: “the linchpin to the End of Days.” Cisco ponders her offer as the interstitial ends. It's time for the Nunchaku Match between Jack Evans/P.J. Black and Drago/Aerostar. Melissa Santos keeps getting interrupted tonight, this time by Evans demanding that he be announced as THE DRAGON SLAYER. Santos has to put up with a lot of nonsense in kayfabe, y’know? This match is a tornado-ish tag with various pairs of nunchaku hanging from hooks placed around the Temple. Striker lists of every notable user of the weapon he can think of: The Great Kabuki (yep, though I more associate him with poison mist, TBH), Larry Zbyskzo (heh!), Liu Kang (I think of him as more of a bicycle kick-and-fireballs guy), Ninja Turtle Michelangelo (obviously), Daredevil (yeah, I suppose), and Moon Knight (I only know Moon Knight from Marvel Ultimate Alliance and can’t remember anything about that particular superhero). Vampiro helpfully mentions Bruce Lee (duh, he should be the first or second mention along with Michelangelo). Striker even manages to shoehorn in a mention of Wu Tang just because this dude has never met a pop culture reference that he doesn’t love to make. Vampiro: “Lucha Underground ain’t nothin’ to eff with.” Well played, Vamp. It's almost impossible to have a tornado tag that isn’t at least fairly enjoyable. Maybe if it’s a late ‘90s WCW/WWF-style watered down hardcore wandering brawl, it might be pretty bland, but even those tend to be considerably more watchable to me than the singles match version of them. We get a lot of double-team moves early (and also sound effects to Evans and Black playing air guitar, which I think is a goofy Tarantino-style sound effect best left for the seedy interstitials). Evans tries to grab the first pair of nunchaku by standing on Black’s shoulders, but, Aerostar jumps out of the stands to topple the heels over. That was a cool, visually appealing spot. The men fight back to the ring, where Black hits a suicide dive on the babyfaces and then holds them in place for an Evans Asai moonsault. The heels then head for a second pair on nunchaku hanging over a set of stairs in the stands. The babyfaces scramble after them, but are kicked away; the heels once again stack on top of one another and grab the weapons. Striker points out how high the nunchaku are hanging and posits that Dario put them up there so that there would be more chance that someone might take a damaging spill while trying to retrieve them. Yeah, that sounds like our Dario, the linchpin of the End of Days! Evans yells THIS IS WHAT THE DRAGON SLAYER’S ALL ABOUT before he hits Drago right in the abs with the nunchaku, then screams COWABUNGA before doing the same to Aerostar. What a bastard! I mean that in the critical theorist’s sense, of course. He might be an alright guy in real life, I dunno. The babyfaces quickly retrieve the nunchaku and swing them at the heels before Drago dives onto one of them. I love the sound of someone getting whapped in the abdomen with nunchaku and would not mind if this sort of match was more commonly booked in place of generic hardcore brawls. Aerostar wanders the stands in search of a second pair to have for his very own, but Evans jumps from one railing to another railing and then onto him way up in the air. Evans retrieves the nunchaku, but when he gets back onto the railing to celebrate, he pratfalls right onto the roof of Dario’s office below. Aerostar plucks the nunchaku out of the air when a fan tosses them toward him; he swings away as Evans tries to avoid the blows, but Evans ends up hanging from the roof by his fingertips and plunging onto Black as Aerostar swings at his fingers. This match is entirely contrived in its big spots, but unlike many matches where that is true, I have not really had a huge sense of immersion being broken in spite of that. Part of that is that singles matches simply can’t do this sort of thing as easily because unlike in a tornado tag, the onus of the action is always on the two people setting up the contrived spot. Part of that is because LU’s producers clearly decided to shoot this whole match like it’s part of an action film. It gives me Game of Death/The Raid vibes, sort of, though I haven’t seen either movie in a minute and would have to rewatch them to tell you exactly how. But there’s something about this match – the dim lighting as all four men fought in the stairwell, the daredevil stuff that Evans was doing in that previous segment of the match – that screams “well-shot underground action movie, except with a screaming crowd in the frame.” It has a ‘70s grindhouse feel that is in line with the general presentation of the Temple. I think this particular match only works as constructed in Lucha Underground, actually. The match finally makes it back in the ring, where Drago absolutely wears out Evans with a pair of nunchaku; Evans spin bumps on the final hit. Drago backs Evans into the corner, hits him with poison mist, and then finishes him off via pinfall with a Tail of the Dragon. That was a nailed on Charming Uniquity. To mimic Striker: Only here on Lucha Underground! Okay, here are the teams for our twelve-person tag main event: Son of Havoc, Willie Mack, Texano, Sexy Star, Prince Puma, and Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Rey Fenix, King Cuerno, Ivelisse Velez, Chavo Guerrero Jr., Johnny Mundo, and Taya Valkyrie. Obviously, the first team winning this match would make for a more interesting set of potential title contenders at Ultima Lucha Dos, especially since other than Brian Cage, Rey Misterio Jr. is the only guy who I would buy beating Matanza at this point. Sorry, Pentagón Jr., but I need to see you steamroll a few higher-level opponents before I’m ready to believe that the new and improved you is a Matanza-killer. I ain’t even trying to follow all this action. I’ll let you know about all the spots worth knowing about, though. Wait, hold on, here’s one super-important spot that happens before the match starts: Only a few seconds after I spoke of the devil, Penta rolls out in this motorized wheelchair that we at home know he doesn’t need and that Vampiro knows he doesn’t need but which no one else (including Ian Hodgkinson) knows he doesn’t need…yet. He rolls up right behind Chavo as Chavo stands in the aisle and tells Chavo that he appreciates the earlier mentorship that Chavo gave him even though us longtime viewers will recall that Penta absolutely shit on Chavo’s terrible mentorship right before ditching him for a newer, darker master (Season One, Show Eleven). This is an obvious trap that Chavo has unwittingly walked into, a chance for Penta to get some long-awaited revenge on Chavo for failing him. In fact, after he thanks Chavo, he then says that now he must destroy him. He gets up out of his wheelchair and beats down Chavo at ringside before breaking Chavo’s arm (Vampiro on commentary, subconsciously trying to hold it together and continue being more Ian than he is Vamp: “I’m not going to get involved”). Striker reads surprise on Vampiro’s face; actually, that’s surprise on Ian’s face. Check in with Vampiro if you can get him to make himself known, Striker, and I bet you’d read something a bit different on his visage. Dario Cueto and Black Lotus step out of Dario’s office; Dario welcomes Penta back from that back-breaking beatdown that Matanza gave him (Season Two, Show Seven). Since Chavo caught “a bad break,” Dario says that if the crowd wants Penta to replace him in this twelve-person tag match, he’ll make that substitution right now. The crowd, which sees Penta as the ultimate babyface, is very into the idea. Dario replaces Chavo with Penta, but warns Penta against the possibility of getting manhandled by Matanza again if he manages to gain number one contendership. Penta, as you might guess, has cero miedo of that possibility. I am what can only be described as the opposite of excited to see a Penta/Matanza rematch, but that seems to be where we are headed. Bleh. Taya and Ivelisse immediately start beefing, and Star gets a quick rollup on Taya while Taya has her back turned to her. They start this bout out, and I will report that the most over wrestlers in this match are Star, Penta, and Misterio, with Havoc and Mack not too far behind them. Havoc ends up tagging in and having a standoff with Ivelisse before Penta blind tags Ivelisse and Havoc tags Mack. Mack tries a running splash in the corner and yells OH SHIT as Penta moves and he hangs himself on the top rope. Penta takes over; Vampiro utters out a sudden “Rip his ligaments!” Ian, you need to talk to your psychiatrist about upping your medication, buddy. Penta is a collection of spots and taunts and a cool catchphrase. That’s it. If he were an English-speaking, 6’4” white guy, he’d be the perfect WWE product. Basically, Edge is prett much Anglo Penta (except without the cool catchphrase). I love watching Penta in interstitials and could listen to him talk all day, but man, unless he’s in a garbage brawl where someone is bleeding, I couldn’t muster up a single shit about his matches (which makes him better than Edge, who I really don’t want to hear talk unless Christian is with him). If Penta does manage to knock off Matanza, I sincerely hope he transitions the gold to someone else as soon as possible. On the other hand, Misterio is the best. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Striker hypes Misterio by mentioning Misterio's awesome Psicosis match in October of 1995 ECW and his Great American Bash ’96 match against Dean Malenko (not their best match together, and in fact, they had one such better match not long after on Clash 33, but a good one). Vampiro is emerging from Ian’s psyche, so whereas he was dapping up Rey when Rey came out and exclaiming about how cool it was, now he testily says the following: “Well, how about Sturgis 1999 when one Vampiro kicked Rey Misterio’s ass? How come we don’t bring that up?” Well, Vampiro, it’s because the Dead Pool lost cleanly to the Filthy Animals, that’s why. At least you didn’t get pinned (Shaggy 2 Dope ate the pinfall), and at least Misterio didn’t win the pinfall (Billy Kidman did), but yeah, that’s why no one brings it up. You and the Insane Clown Posse got worked over, son. I think what’s happening is that Vamp only kayfabe remembers the part where he hit Rey with a Nail in the Coffin outside the ring and has otherwise blocked out the rest of the match. That’s my assumption. Some other stuff happens. Cuerno hits an Arrow From Hell, for example. Star lands a plancha-style dive between the ropes. Ivelisse goes up top and dives onto the whole mass of humanity. Mack and Penta chop one another as loudly as they possibly can. Speaking of a collection of spots! Mack wins the exchange and hits a plancha onto Penta at ringside; Star gets hyped and celebrates with him. Mack and Star need a third friend so they can be trios champs, dammit. Anyway, everyone dives onto everyone else. You know how these matches are. They’re pointless until the finish unless you like spots for the sake of spots. Said finish is Mundo hitting Puma with a Super C-4 to earn the victory. Mundo’s team is in the Six to Survive bout next week. Bummer. This was a nothing match in which the team that I have the least interest in won, but as an isolated bout, it was perfectly okay for what it was. Seedy home den interstitial: Catrina has located Mil Muertes’s body where it is being held in King Cuerno’s den. She once again resurrects him. The first time she resurrected Mil, his pupils turned white. This time around, they turn red. Mil headbutts the glass lid off the casket and seems maybe a bit peeved at being murdered yet again by his opponent in a Grave Consequences Match, I would say. The first match was a good angle-builder and the second match was so unique that this was another good show. Whereas the first season felt meandering for a huge chunk before it finally focused up in the last fifteen or so episodes, this season has rushed along too quickly for my taste. The downside is that some storylines or title reigns didn’t have enough time to breathe. The upside is that the feuds and long-term stories have such forward momentum that very few shows have felt bogged in the narrative mud. This was another show that propelled events forward in an interesting way. 4.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

TNA got Hogan and Savage's final matches. What a strange little company.

Season one is a very slow burn through the first half of the season. I didn't give it enough time back in 2014/2015 to grab me, I don't think. This show really works once it expands its cast of characters and builds up the folklore behind the Temple. Joey Ryan deciding to live his gimmick made everything outside of his "bad corrupt cop" stuff age extemely poorly even in the context of pro wrestling, in which many gimmicks age poorly. I saw that DSOTR episode and don't remember him at all! I remember lots of James Vandenberg, of course, but not Cage. I'll have to go back and watch that episode this week. As for Kanyon, he might be the American worker with the biggest influence in developing the modern pro wrestling scene in the U.S. If you look at who he directly trained, who he inspired, and how a lot of the work is reminiscent of stuff he was sort of pioneering on television in the '90s, it's either him or Shawn Michaels, yeah? Who else is on that shortlist?

Except for the handful of times when he entered to Lex Luger's music (including at least once without Luger accompanying him), he did come out without entrance music. EDIT: Since we're talking about Jimmy Hart-era WCWSN, here is Lord Steven Regal's final WCW match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hChaLxKHd8

Season 2, Show 19: “Judgment Day” or Killer Instinct (for) Gold I want to see that Cage/Matanza match, so let’s do another one! Recap: Dysfunction Junction is injured and without any gold; how will their members recover? Meanwhile, we’ve had a couple of fresh titleholders over the last few weeks: The Scumbag Society Barthian Bastards (Mundo, Evans, and Black, and that’s what I’m calling them from here on out and I like the new name that suddenly popped into my head better) are the trios tag champs and Brian Cage is the Gift of the Gods title holder. Hold on, it feels like I’ve recently written a sentence like this in a recap… Matt Striker and Vampiro inform us about tonight’s card: The Team of Destiny gets a rematch with the Barthian Bastards for the Lucha Underground Trios Tag Team Championship; Brian Cage trades in his Gift of the Gods belt for a shot at Matanza Cueto’s Lucha Underground Championship. Son of Havoc wrestles our opener against Daga. They trade arm wringers to start (one escape reminds Vampiro of something that Dynamite Kid might do, and yeah, he was right to make the comparison) before everyone picks up the pace and Havoc sends Daga to the floor with a headscissors. The match goes outside and is watchable enough. Daga lands a kick, but gets posted and eats a planking elbowdrop before being rolled back into the ring, where Havoc tries a top rope move. Daga gets up to block it, but Havoc flips away, trips Daga, and scores a standing moonsault for two. Havoc next tries a whip to the corner, but Daga reverses it and stops short as Havoc overelaborates on a leapover attempt and lands a huge sitout facebuster that looks sort of Falcon Arrow-ish. Daga takes over from here and earns a couple of two counts (Daga, aggravated at the ref’s count: “Rapido!”) before trading standing strikes with Havoc and then transitioning into a half crab. Here comes Kobra Moon down the stairs, sporting quite the toothy grin on her face as she slinks toward the ring. In the ring, Havoc has made the ropes, but he eats a running uppercut and two boots to the chest. Daga charges Havoc, but Havoc flips to his feet and makes a comeback. This match is very boring, and I’m hoping that Kobra does something cool soon. She eventually makes her way over to Daga while he tries to avoid a charging Havoc attack in the corner, and come on fellas, let’s get to the finish, but no, Daga ends up eating a suicide dive at ringside at the end of this sequence. OK, finally! Havoc rolls Daga into the ring and goes up for an SSP, but Kobra grabs his foot and keeps him from launching; Daga is able to recover and hit a step-up kick without ever seeing that Kobra helped him out. Daga tries a superplex, but Havoc blocks it, lands a super front suplex, and manages to launch an SSP for three. That match was the LU equivalent of Brian Knobbs versus Bam Bam Bigelow on a random early 2000 Thunder in that it was a total snoozer. Kobra Moon checks on a woozy Daga after the match. He looks up to see who is touching him and shoves away his abhorrent admirer, but Kobra is a bit like the Moth in that she does not recognize the word “no.” Daga backs away from the ring, but I don’t think this particular rejection will be putting Kobra off. Seedy backstage interstitial: Rey Misterio Jr. works out on the heavy bag when El Dragon Azteca Jr. walks up and angrily informs Misterio that he has located Matanza’s cell and that he’s going to enact revenge for the death of Azteca Sr. Rey calmly tells him to slow his roll and maybe focus on getting the trios tag titles back tonight, but Azteca Jr. is fairly apoplectic. Misterio tries to remind Azteca that his goal is not revenge – and it’s not; it’s to unite the seven Aztec tribes (Season Two, Show Four) – but Azteca pops off about Rey not even having been in constant enough contact with Azteca Sr. over the years to know what the goal really is. So, these two start throwing light hands at one another, but before it can go further, Prince Puma walks in and tells them that it’s time for their match. Misterio: “Get out.” Puma doesn’t take kindly to that command. Misterio has a hand on Puma’s shoulder, and when Puma notes that actually, whatever is going on here does concern him as a member of their trios team, and then he growls with all the ferocity of a North American jungle cat. Rey removes his hand and corrals the troops to go have their match, but I’m not entirely convinced that they’re all on the same page. Speaking of that match, the Team of Destiny enters as the challengers this week in their match against the new Lucha Underground Trios Tag Team Champions in the Barthian Bastards (w/Taya Valkyrie). Hey, is it odd that the Drago and Aerostar vs. Jack Evans and P.J. Black feud seemingly got dropped after Aztec Warfare Dos? I feel like that’s odd. Did someone on the babyface side get injured? Looking ahead, it seems like Drago and Aerostar become important to the plot again this season based on the episode titles, so that probably isn’t it. Misterio and Black open the bout; Black gets an early two count, but Rey quickly gains control and throws a ton of punches, something that he normally doesn’t do, but which he is clearly doing because he is agitated. He continues throwing punches in the corner and then in electric chair position on Black’s shoulders, but Black shrugs him off and punts him in the dick on the way down. The heels doing a billion dick punts is like the best thing ever. Their team finisher should be a Superkick Party to their opponent’s balls. Evans tags in and immediately starts yapping. He hits a standing moonsault (while standing on Rey’s ribcage), but only gets two and yells I SWEAR, NO REF CAN COUNT TO THREE HERE! Then, as Rey crawls toward his corner to make a tag, he moves to cut him off while yelling C’MON, REY! I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN before clubbing Misterio with a forearm and dragging him back to his team's corner. As he tags out, I make a snap decision to introduce a new feature here that I will go back and apply to Vampiro’s previous mention of Major Gunns as well. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Evans is wearing sunglasses and a bandana while he works tonight, and Striker notes that those accoutrements stay perfectly in place just like the cap and glasses that Super Calo used to wear when he wrestled. Vampiro, amused: “Now that’s a name from the past.” In fact, the heels are all wearing matching bandanas, though Mundo whips his off before locking Rey in a chinlock. Misterio works back to his feet and lands a counter DDT, then makes a hot tag to Puma. Puma meets the freshly tagged Evans with a dropkick, then dropkicks an interfering Black and lands a Northern Lights before rolling into a vertical suplex. Azteca and Puma knock Evans into seated position in the corner, and all three babyfaces land low dropkicks on Evans from all sides. Puma then initiates a suicide dive to the floor, but is cut off by a kick from Black, though Azteca then hits a running plancha over Puma and onto Mundo at ringside. Meanwhile, Black re-enters the ring only to dive out onto the mass of humanity already at ringside. Rey prepares to join them, but Evans dropkicks Misterio out of an Asai moonsault and then declares to the crowd that he’s got a better dive loaded up than Rey had. Evans goes up and, as you’d guess, is immediately kicked by Puma, who then superplexes him onto the other four guys at ringside. Talk about a trust fall. Puma and Azteca are first back to their feet; Puma tosses Evans back in the ring and preps a 630 Senton Bomb, but the other two heels get to their feet and yank Evans out of the way. Evans then goes back up and steals Puma’s finisher. As he is not the master of the move, it keeps Puma down for 2.9. Evans tries a handspring back elbow next, but Puma catches him and hits a modification of a Go 2 Sleep, striking with his boot rather than his knee. Both men are hurt, and both make tags to Azteca and Mundo respectively. Azteca has to fight off both Mundo and Black and uses his agility to get Mundo and Black to strike one another before running rings around Mundo and scoring a tornado DDT for a perfectly-timed 2.9. I don’t expect the heels to lose the titles just yet, so what do they have in store for the babyfaces? As I ask that question, Taya gets on the apron and distracts the ref so that Mundo can hit a mule kick that smashes Azteca - you guessed it - right in the testicles. Even Vampiro, a connoisseur of cheapie ball shots if there ever was one, complains that it’s been “about twenty times” at this point. Yo, shut the fuck up, Matt Striker: “Marty Elias went to the Ed Hochuli School of Refereeing, and if you’re laughing at that, good for you.” I was going to let the Ed Hochuli reference pass even though Elias obviously didn’t go to that school because his guns are nowhere near as buff as Hochuli’s traditionally were, but it was the lampshading of potential laughter at the joke that isn’t funny that annoyed me enough to pop this segment in here. Anyway, the babyfaces are irate about all the ball shots, and in what I would describe as the biggest bullshit finish I’ve seen on this program in a while, an angry Puma kicks Mundo right in the balls in response…and gets DQ’d by Elias. All the things that happen in these matches that don’t get DQ’d, and this does? Fuck off, Lucha Underground. I honestly don’t know why they have DQs at all in this company. ECW pretty much got rid of them (Bill Alfonso’s rulebook-hawking heel ref gimmick aside) and was better off for it. LU is in that same boat. At the very least, the heels should have been disqualified last week by Rick Knox when he made it to the ring since he clearly was watching the match and knew to run out there to replace Marty Elias after the heels dragged him from the ring while he counted a pinfall attempt. Consistency, you fucks! Puma has lost his goddam mind and is so annoyed at the heels taunting him after the match that he superkicks Taya. Misterio and Azteca try to calm him down, but he even shoves them away as they try to hold him back, mostly because Jack Evans won’t shut the fuck up. I mean, I can’t blame him entirely. Who doesn’t want to throttle Jack Evans? Seedy backstage interstitial: El Dragon Azteca Jr. is all charged up when he makes his way right the hell back down to the basement to try and kill a caged, growling Matanza. Black Lotus stops him, and they have an exchange in which they disagree about who exactly killed Lotus’s parents. Lotus insists that Azteca Sr. did it and stops Azteca Jr. from attacking. Azteca Jr. leaves, but he is kinder than I would be in telling Lotus’s stupid ass that she should know better than to believe the lie that Dario fed her about Azteca Sr. being the one to kill her parents rather than Matanza. It's time for our main event, and huh, Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Striker claims that Norman Smiley and Chris Kanyon trained Cage. Wasn't Cage a product of WWE’s developmental? Smiley’s worked there forever, yeah? Kanyon didn’t that I recall. Maybe Kanyon initially trained him before he went to WWE developmental? I might look this up later. Anyway, Cage cashes in his GotG belt, which will split up the medallions once more for retrieval, to face LU Champion Matanza Cueto (w/Dario Cueto). Cage is taller than Matanza by enough that I think it’s a mistake not to shoot this match so that you can’t tell as much. Both men hit each other with shoulderblocks for a minute, and no one really moves, so Cage appropriately uses his aerial ability to land a headscissors and a slingshot plancha to the floor. See? When you pick out when to leave your feet, it means more! Cage certainly leveled up this season; someone must have gotten in his ear and given him some good advice. Cage then hits a moonsault from the top to the floor, and yeah, it’s pretty rad! I know that Cage won’t be winning this, but boy, I sort of wish he was. He beats the absolute dogshit out of Matanza at ringside, capping it off with a powerbomb into the raised railing in front of the seats. Cage rips up the protective mat at ringside, but Matanza has recovered in that time and grabs Cage as he comes back over to attend to him, smashing his head into the raised railing and then hitting rolling gutwrenches on the side of the ring that still has protective mats covering the hard floor. Cage flips out of the third one and throws a number of beefy forearms and even a beefy uppercut but Matanza ducks a wild lariat from Cage and hits a release German on the floor. Season two of LU is basically proof that beefy guys wrestling one another while using mostly power moves with the occasional awe-inspiring high-risk dive is just about the best form of professional wrestling. They could perpetually run singles matches between some combo of Cage, Matanza, and Mil Muertes, and hell, throw Willie Mack in there too because he's big enough in this company, and I’d watch the hell out of it. Tall jacked dudes are fine, but I want to see dudes at least as wide as they are tall tossing each other around. As the saying that I just made up right now goes, If they don’t have a barrel chest, they’re not going to give you the very best. Man, does Dario Cueto look pressed. He yells at Matanza to just win this by count out and maybe escape this match with a win, but Matanza prefers to toss Cage in the ring and choke him with two hands before hammerfisting him. Matanza tries a flipping headbutt, but Cage counters it by lifting a knee to Matanza’s head as he lands. Cage quickly scores a swinging neckbreaker for two and then lands his own series of clubbing fists. Cage hits some clubbering, but when he tries to follow up, Matanza lands an overhead suplex to counter. He crawls over and earns two, then scores a deadlift fallaway pumphandle slam into a bridge for two more. Cool move! Matanza stalks Cage, who lands a jawbreaker and then a low dropkick. He looks for another, but Matanza pops up and hits a lariat, then chokes Cage before trying to gouge Cage’s eyes out. He switches it up with an Irish whip, but Cage kills it and slips through Matanza’s legs, then hits an inverted pumphandle suplex for two. We get a Superman/Doomsday spot in which both men club each other with lariats and stay standing before trying huge front kicks at the same time that knock each other down. Cage is up first, but Matanza slips out of fireman’s carry position on Cage’s shoulders. He grabs at Cage, who slips behind him and hits a release German that Matanza no-sells. Matanza hits a release German…that Cage no-sells. It rules. The crowd pops huge for it. They then proceed to trade release Germans, more slowly popping up after each one until Matanza swings Cage around before hitting a release German that finally keeps him from getting right back up. Matanza’s not exactly moving all that quickly himself after eating multiple release Germans right on the base of his neck, though. Man, Chavo Guerrero Jr. managing to press Cage in their match last week looks more and more kayfabe impressive considering how Cage has taken Matanza to the limit. Matanza slowly rolls over and covers Cage, but the ref is only able to count to two before Cage kicks out. Matanza shoots Cage in and tries a Wrath of the Gods, but Cage spins out of it and scores a discus lariat for two. Matanza rolls to the apron while Dario implores him not to fail the Cueto name; Cage follows and deadlift suplexes Matanza back into the ring, then goes up top. Dario screams for Matanza to LEVANTATE, but Matanza is unmoving as Cage drops a Savage Elbow for about 2.5. Cage’s face seems to indicate that he doesn’t quite know what to do next, but he’s still got arrows in his quiver. He hasn’t even attempted a Weapon X or a Steiner Screwdriver yet. Cage lands a running boot, but when he tries it again, Matanza grabs him and lands a swinging side slam; his cover only gets two. Matanza next sets Cage up in piledriver position, but Cage blocks it and scores an Alabama slam followed by a standing moonsault for two more. Cage decides that maybe it’s about over and signals to the crowd for one of his finishers. He grapples Matanza and flips him up and over to put him in Weapon X position, but Matanza uses the momentum to slip out of the back and pull Cage in for an overhead release belly-to-belly suplex. Matanza follows up with a sitout powerbomb, but that only earns two. The way that Matanza holds his body indicates that somewhere in the miasma of madness that he lives his life within, a flicker of recognition that Cage might be his match has registered. He grabs Cage once more and shoots him in, then tries another Wrath of the Gods, but Cage hangs on and counters into a small package for two. Cage is quickly up and scores an F-5, which I guess he calls a Lucha Destroyer if Striker is to be believed, but the pinfall attempt only gets two. Cage still has his two killer moves to try; he sets up for one of them as Dario implores Matanza to get to his feet and meet Cage’s challenge. Cage lands a series of kicks as Matanza turns around, but it only wobbles him, so he loads up for another discus lariat. He swings, Matanza ducks, and then Matanza grabs an off-balance Cage and quickly swings him around into a Wrath of the Gods for a three count, barely escaping with his title. This was interestingly booked because, again, Cage only tried one of his two killer moves at any point, and he never hit either of them. That was about as much of a slip on a banana peel as you can get out of a match like this. I don’t see any other realistic path forward than Cage finishing off Matanza at Ultima Lucha. I suppose that I'd buy Rey Misterio Jr. knocking Matanza off, actually, but that's the only exception. Great match, by the way. At this point in the season, there’s usually at least one every episode. This was a fine show, and with only seven more episodes remaining, it looks like we’re on a downhill slope in terms of storyline progression, which is exciting. As for the score of this show, I'm docking it a quarter chant for the shitty finish to the second match. 4 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 2, Show 18: “Enter the Mundo” or Rampage: Mundo Tour Recap: Captain Vasquez’s moronic officers Cortez Castro Reyes and Joey Ryan do the best they can to get something on Dario Cueto, but they are hopelessly overmatched. Meanwhile, we’ve had a couple of fresh titleholders over the last few weeks: The Team of Destiny are the trios tag champs and Chavo Guerrero Jr. is the Gift of the Gods title holder. I assume that both of those teams well might be in competition tonight based on this opening recap! Seedy dojo interstitial: Last week, we left off with Vampiro preparing to smash Pentagón Jr.’s broken back with a stick covered in barbed wire after a beating with a regular stick didn’t convince Penta to get up and start walking again. This week, we see that the stick covered in barbed wire must have worked because Penta is on his feet once more. Wow, do physical therapy professionals know about this one neat trick? Penta is ready for revenge on Matanza, but in a mirror of the situation from last season with El Dragon Azteca Sr.’s mentorship and training of Black Lotus, Vampiro tells Penta that he isn’t ready to leave the dojo and that he certainly isn’t ready to confront Matanza Cueto. Last season, when Lotus decided to leave anyway, Azteca Sr. stopped her after a short bit of test combat. Guess what happens this season when Penta decides to leave anyway! Penta breaks away from Vampiro’s grasp and claims that he has absolutely no fear, but Vampiro can sense that maybe he does. He once again insists that Penta is cooked the minute he steps back into the Temple. Penta contemplates Vampiro’s words as we snap to the title card. I note that Vampiro seems fairly suppressed by Ian Hodgkinson over at the desk, which is good! He sits next to Matt Striker and announces the Brian Cage/Chavo Guerrero Jr. Gift of the Gods title match for tonight. Then, he gets on his phone and starts tapping away furiously for some reason. That leaves Striker to announce the main event of the Team of Destiny defending the trios tag team championships against Rey Fenix, P.J. Black, and Jack Evans. Vampiro gets off his phone and passes it to Striker, who takes what seems to be a spam call from Famous B.’s automated machine. Famous B. himself is in the ring right now to take the mic from Melissa Santos and smoothly insert a business card in her hand instead; he introduces Mascarita Sagrada (w/Brenda) before Sagrada’s match against Joey Ryan. The crowd has heard the spiel enough to lightly chant along with 4-2-3 GET FAME. Ryan, of course, jumps Sagrada before B. can get done with his introduction. Sagrada makes a comeback and scores a nice suicide dive while Ryan is obsessed with putting a Blow Pop on his blow pop. Sagrada throws Ryan back in the ring, but he takes too long to go up top and gets caught. Ryan does a spot where he tries to give his dick-covered lollipop to Brenda, but Famous B. jumps in front and trades a business card for it. OK, moving along. Ryan attempts to press slam Sagrada, but the LAPD is apparently not doing fitness tests for its officers, so he can’t quite pull it off. Vampiro, talking about Ryan during this spot: “Brother, any time a hairy man with oil puts his hands on you like that, that’s kinda like a sexual assault, I think.” Boy, I wonder if the folks who put together LU’s TV Tropes page made sure to get enough material for the Harsher in Hindsight section. Ryan has to give up the press slam idea and instead go for a regular body slam. Then, of course, he gets picked up in a fireman’s carry position and forward slammed by Sagrada. Sagrada follows with a double stomp and a top-rope moonsault for 2.9. Sagrada crawls to Brenda and talks strategy with her while Famous B. gives referee Marty Elias a business card and Ryan hides a protector in his tights. Sagrada tries to kick Ryan in the balls and hurts his shin; Ryan celebrates and taunts B. and Brenda at ringside, then turns around into a small package for another 2.9. Alas, that’s about it for Sagrada; Ryan recovers, hits Sagrada with a tornado DDT, and picks up a pinfall. Commentary points out that B.’s representation has not bought Sagrada much success this season, and I have to note that a loss to Joey Ryan certainly represents a nadir in kayfabe. Hype video: Taya Valkyrie admires herself in the mirror, beats up masked mooks in a seedy yet classy martini bar while wearing a red dress, and meets Johnny Mundo outside so they can drive away. Seedy home den interstitial: King Cuerno monologues at Mil Muertes, whom Cuerno has apparently placed in formaldehyde and presented in a coffin with a glass case right next to all of the rest of his taxidermy and ram’s horn laps and mounted heads of bucks and all that stuff. Cuerno declares himself to be the true king of the jungle, but he didn’t even do anything! Matanza was the one who finished Mil off! Cuerno didn’t even help Matanza out one iota! Anyway, I wouldn’t be out here holding Mil’s body while Catrina was out there in the cosmos somewhere, doing some dark magicks in service of regaining her place in the Temple. This seems like a terrible idea on Cuerno’s part. I’m not sure how Chavo Guerrero Jr. is going to escape his Gift of the Gods title defense against Brian Cage. He’s probably cooked. Vampiro notes that Chavo looks pretty confident, though! Chavo had better have backup plans to his backup plans to look this confident. The bell rings, and Cage uses his forearms to beat the shit out of Chavo, so, uh, I’m not sure Chavo even had an actual plan at this point. Chavo gets on his bike and catches Cage as Cage chases him back into the ring, but he is barely hanging on. Cage double goozles him, and Chavo pokes Cage in the eyes, then tries a slingshot crossbody that Cage catches. Cage bashes Chavo into various standing items at ringside while still holding him in front slam position, then tosses him back in the ring and shoots him into the ropes, where Chavo manages to stop a tilt-a-whirl with a headscissors and shoot Cage to the floor. Chavo scores a desperation suicide dive, then rolls back in the ring and celebrates as Cage pursues. Cage crawls back onto the apron, and Chavo puts him in a front facelock and transitions into a hanging DDT for two. Chavo then grabs Cage by his legs, gets kicked away and monkey flipped, and has to score a dropkick to the knee to cut Cage off. Chavo goes up to the second rope and leaps off, but Cage catches him and hits a Finlay-style forward flipping slam. He tries to follow with a second-rope moonsault, but Chavo rolls out of the way and then scores a dropkick for two when Cage rises to his feet. This is a strong match, and what I like about it is that Chavo has all of his veteran wiles, but Cage is just too young, too strong, and too good. Cage doesn’t ever much seem in danger of being beaten even when Chavo is able to assert a period of control. Cage tosses Chavo onto the apron to counter a Chavo corner charge, then hits a vertical suplex to bring Chavo back into he ring while standing on the second rope. They work over to the opposite corner, where Chavo tries a leapover, but is caught and hit with an Alabama Slam for two. Cage looks for an F-5, but Chavo leaps out of it, ducks a Cage discus lariat, and hits the ropes, rebounding off of them with a tornado DDT for 2.8. Vampiro, who actually managed to find the words to give Chavo props for possessing a “warrior spirit” even though he dislikes every former WCW co-worker he had (with the exceptions of Rey Misterio Jr. and the Great Muta), now tees off on Chavo for taking some time to hype himself up after that near fall instead of being tenacious about following up with more offense. I mean, he has a point! In fact, Chavo, double underhooks Cage, gets reversed, flips forward to escape, and hits a rolling wheel kick that barely bothers Cage, who returns fire with a successful discus lariat that earns about 2.85. Cage parks Chavo up top and tries a superplex, but Chavo fires a few forearms at Cage’s gut to escape, manages to land a sunset flip powerbomb, and then quickly goes up top and lands a Frog Splash…for 2.9. Well, you did your best, Chavo. I respect it. Chavo dances Eddie-style and then attempts a Three Amigos, but on the third vertical, Cage blocks it and hits his double powerbomb to the mat and then the buckles before following up with a Steiner Screwdriver for three and for the Gift of the Gods title belt. That match was excellent, one of the best of the season! After the match, Cage grabs a mic and immediately cashes the GotG belt in for a Lucha Underground title match with Matanza Cueto next week. I sort of hoped that they’d run that match at Ultima Lucha, but I'm still excited for it! Seedy backstage interstitial: Taya has a big surprise for Jack Evans and P.J. Black; she leads them to Fenix, who has been laid out. Evans is too dumb to understand what is happening and is upset for a brief second before Johnny Mundo steps forward and announces that he’ll be filling in for Fenix tonight. The heels are elated. Mundo kicks Fenix one more time before they go, and then everyone plays air guitar. And yes, actual guitar riffs play when they play air guitar. If any team other than the Team of Destiny were holding the trios tag titles, I’d back this annoying scumbag heel team to win them for chaos’s sake. Seedy backstage interstitial: Joey Ryan goes through Dario Cueto’s desk. No, wait, that wasn’t descriptive enough. Joey Ryan ransacks Dario Cueto’s desk. There, that's it. Ryan’s fellow officer Reyes walks up and asks what exactly in fuck Ryan is doing with his haphazard search attempts, but Ryan says that he hasn’t gotten any evidence on Dario for months and that his rep around the precinct is about as bad as Reyes’s at this point. Yeah, we’re eighteen shows in, so that's four-and-a-half months of original air time. Apparently, when the LAPD sends undercover cops, they’re not sending their best. Ryan nervously presses Reyes to help him, and Reyes's dumb ass starts searching. Ryan finds Dario’s drawer full of money and, true to LAPD undercover cop form, skims a couple bundles off the top. His seizure of suspicious goods for personal use is interrupted by Mister Cisco, who probably heard them talking and popped his head in to see what’s going on. Here’s my question: Where the fuck is Black Lotus at? She usually stands guard at the other door that leads into the hallway. She should have heard this commotion long ago and popped her head in here. In a funny little bit, Cisco is upset that his buddies chose to rob Dario Cueto without inviting him, and he declares that he’s going to spite snitch to Dario. Now, we have Officer Joey Ryan in the room, so I’m sure you can guess what happens next, and honestly, I was readying the Permadeath Count for a ninth member, but Reyes catches Cisco before Ryan can shoot the guy. Reyes arrests Mister Cisco, whose full Christian name is apparently Francisco Garza, without putting about twenty bullets in his body. What restraint shown by an LAPD officer! Award him a commendation! Well, that was quite the interstitial! Now it’s time for main event action, and poor Melissa Santos is once again interrupted while ring announcing, this time by Taya Valkyrie. Taya informs Santos that actually, Fenix will not be representing his trios team in this match and that Johnny Mundo has taken his place alongside P.J. Black and Jack Evans. In the process, Taya turns out to be a much better ring announcer than Melissa is. Seriously, if she was ever on the shelf recovering from injury, they could have her do that job, and it’d be a big upgrade. Santos tries to re-establish herself by introducing the Team of Destiny (Rey Misterio Jr., El Dragon Azteca Jr., Prince Puma) with a bit of pep and verve, but no, Taya was still much better. Evans gets in there and gets rolled by Azteca to start. Evans thinks he’s smarter than he is, but he’s way dumber than Azteca, who outmaneuvers him at every turn, slaps the shit out of him in the corner, and recovers from rushing in and being dropped throat-first across the ropes by Evans (Evans, triumphantly: “That’s what intelligence looks like!”) to quickly land a leaping kick, fake a dive, and taunt that slowpoke Evans. That was a fun sequence! Also… On a thigh-slap scale where “least obvious” is Prince Puma, “most obvious” is Fenix, and dead in the middle is Alberto El Patrón, these thigh slaps score a(n)…Alberto, but the camera really helped Azteca hide them, so maybe it’s Alberto, but trending toward Fenix. I still very much enjoyed that sequence, though. Puma and Black enter the ring and they hit a spot that I love: On a rope run, Puma tries a front headstand into a headscissors, but Black blocks it, stands Puma upright, and kicks him right in the solar plexus. He even hides his thigh slap decently enough that the extra (if unnecessary) sound effect landed for me. Great spot. It looked like it hurt badly in real time even though playing it back, it was completely safe. The crowd let out an OHHH on that one. The heels hang Puma in the Tree of Woe position in their corner and then make quick tags, landing legal kicks and stomps leading to a two count from Black. Black tags in Mundo and they hit a HUGE double back bodydrop that Puma gets a ton of air on for two more. LU takes two flippy guys and have them wrestle one-on-one, and it usually isn’t engaging to me. LU takes six flippy guys and has them wrestle a trios match, and they’re practically all bangers. Puma finally manages to avoid a couple of Black and Evans team lariat attempts, then shoves Evans forward into Black, who instinctively front facelocks his partner. Puma then follows with a lariat to Black, who falls backwards and DDTs Evans at the same time. That is the type of contrived move that I buy because Black sold it like he just naturally would front facelock a guy coming at him with his head down and because they pulled the whole thing off smoothly. That allows Puma the room to get a hot tag to Misterio, who comes in and tees off on Mundo like it’s a random Smackdown episode from five years ago. That leads to the babyfaces making a few quick tags and punishing Mundo, culminating in a legdrop/standing moonsault combo and a Puma pinfall that only gets two. The complex spots in this match are all working for me. Puma next tries to launch an onrushing Azteca into a tornado DDT, but Mundo manages to catch Azteca in mid-swing, whip his legs around into Puma’s midsection, and then hits an overhead suplex that tosses Azteca into the stunned Puma. Cool reversal! Mundo makes the tag as he heels try to put Puma back in FIP jail. They all take their shots at Puma as the match breaks down; Rey hops into the ring and eventually ends up in electric chair position on Mundo’s back, where they somehow tumble to the floor together with Rey still ending up in that position. Striker mentioned Mundo’s core strength when he stopped Azteca's rotation in mid-DDT earlier, and that was a great point at which to mention it, but I think the best example of Mundo’s extraordinary core strength in this match is that he tumbled through the ropes and landed on his feet with Rey still in seated position on his shoulders. That was something of an insane strongman spot. I watched it back like three times. I didn’t expect Mundo to have the best strongman spot on this show, especially since Cage was also on this show. After Rey manages to wriggle out of seated position with a headscissors that sends Mundo bashing into the apron, Azteca completes a slingshot rana onto Mundo, and this match is extremely good. I hate to shit on Dysfunction Junction again, but the trios tag title division has been elevated in-ring by putting both them and the Disciples of the Dead out of focus. Puma and Evans trade flippy kicks in the corner while Azteca and Black attempt to strike one another, and the long and short of it is that Puma is able to kick Evans away and then hit a struggle rana on Black; Rey comes back in the ring and boots Black into 6-1-9 position, followed by Puma landing a 630 Senton Bomb for one, two…and Mundo yanking the ref out of the ring before the three count, which should be a DQ. Rey goes over to address the situation and ends up being invited to a Superkick Party by Mundo and Taya. Back in the ring, Puma is still legal, and though Azteca tries to help out, the heels kick him in the balls and then complete a double stomp/neckbreaker combo on Puma, then a ballshot/brainbuster combo on Puma, and finally, a Mundo End of the World on Puma. I am resigned to the babyfaces losing as replacement ref Rick Knox enters the ring, but Puma still manages to kick out of the cover at 2.9 even though the heels absolutely murked him. Mundo attempts to hit Puma with a super back suplex that Puma fights out of with back elbows; Mundo tries again and actually hoists Puma backward, but Puma manages to land on his feet and stumble backwards into a hot tag to Azteca. Azteca tries a rana, gets blocked by Mundo, but turns it into a sunset flip. Alas, Taya has drawn the referee’s attention by getting on the apron and wielding a chair, so the ref misses the visual three count. The ref also misses Jack Evans grabbing a chair of his own, hopping in the ring, and hitting Azteca in the back with it, then shifting the pinning predicament so that Mundo is on top. Taya drops off the apron, the ref is free to count, and Misterio is too late to make a save as the heels win the titles. Great match, and these scumbag heels are almost surely going to get their comeuppance at Ultima Lucha Dos, which I am interested to see, but maybe this match should have ended when Puma got hit by a ton of moves. I get it; Puma has the power of the jaguar (R.I.P, kayfabe Konnan) power of the puma coursing through his veins and Azteca is but a rookie, but still. LU trios matches often go on for like two or three minutes longer than is probably optimal. This was a fantastic match, though, and in fact, the last two matches on this show were two of the best all season. Putting together a list of five must-watch matches from this season of LU is going to be a real challenge for me with all these great candidates. Last week’s dip in quality was an obvious aberration. 4.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Striker's got that hyperbolic WWE style combined with his Seth MacFarlane style of commentating in which making a reference counts as a punchline to him. I'm surprised at how open I've been to his work on this go-round because I remember hating both he and Vampiro on my first watch. I also think I've just mellowed out a bit and am able to find the enjoyment in things that I wouldn't have a decade or two ago (which it probably doesn't seem like when I get critical in a negative way in these reviews, but which I think is a quality that I've developed).