Smugly reviews all of Lucha Underground (or at least tries to before it becomes hard to find on the internet due to takedowns and capricious copyright holders)

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 33: “Havoc Running Wild” or Son of Havoc gives Son of Madness some serious Road Rash

• As I worked through a seemingly endless array of bad Nitros and Thunders last year, I wondered what trying to muddle through 1999/2000 WCW would look like if I didn’t have a deep and abiding love for and nostalgia connected to that promotion and to the turn of the millennium in general, and now I know. It looks like me watching the third season of Lucha Underground, a show that I have no particular nostalgia for and which has had its good spots, but hasn’t had a K. Allen Frye-led early 1992 or full 1996 or even a first nine months of 1998 like WCW did.

 

• But we are mercifully close to the end of the season (and the show, for that matter – under thirty episodes remain across the rest of the third season and the full fourth season). I wonder what this show looks like in a different universe, one where El Rey is on more stable ground rather than being a cable channel launched as cable is rapidly losing market share to cord cutters who like streaming apps or if WWE bought it eight years earlier and gave it a safe place on the WWE Network and then left it alone except for sending talent over from the main roster or NXT to participate in it (OK, that last one is pure fantasy, but run with the idea for a second).

 

• What we got, however, is a TV show that is probably struggling with its budget as its cast grows, but El Rey’s viewership fails to grow with it, and one that seems to have forgotten that what made it special was the interweaving narrative threads and not the in-ring action, the latter of which best supplements the former rather than displaces it.

 

• Recap: It's Puma vs. Mundo in the Ultima Lucha Tres main event. **pukes**. It’s like LU’s own John Cena vs. Randy Orton. And oh yeah, some other stuff: Matanza hates Misterio, Marty hates Fenix, Marty loves Melissa, Melissa loves Fenix, Melissa hates Marty, Madness hates Havoc, and Cortez Castro Reyes hates competent undercover policing work.

 

• Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto walks down to the cell underneath the Temple and apologizes to his lil’ bro Matanza for not letting him try to tear Rey Misterio Jr. apart earlier. Dario wants Matanza to destroy Misterio on account of the 6-1-9 that Misterio gave Dario toward the end of last week’s main event. Dario books Matanza/Misterio for the one hundredth episode of Lucha Underground in two weeks. I realize that we’re getting close to the end of Misterio’s run in LU, and I’m going to miss him. That guy rules.

 

• Ultima Lucha Tres is four shows away! Matt Striker and Vampiro promote this ungodly boring Prince Puma/Johnny Mundo LU Championship main event, but they then wonder what else will be on that four-episode mega-show. Seriously, four episodes! This show is gonna be about three-and-a-half hours in total across those four eps. Well, if Ivelisse isn’t still injured by that time, she’s wrestling Catrina. I’m guessing that they’re going to string out this Killshot/Dante Fox feud until then as well. There’s not one promising match they've telegraphed for this card, at least in my humblest of opinions. This does not bode well.

 

• Son of Madness is going to beat up Son of Havoc’s diminutive buddy Mascarita Sagrada, who you may remember Havoc made an honorary member of the biker gang/cult that Madness wants to drag Havoc back to, whether he drags Havoc’s whole body or merely his head. So basically, this angle is just the angle earlier in the season where Kobra Moon was trying to forcibly bring Drago back into a group full of evil intentions, but with two masked bikers instead. Madness jumps Sagrada at the bell, enraged that Sagrada is repping the gang on his jacket. Sagrada endures, manages a close two count on a DDT and a flash La Magistral, and then tries a suicide dive that ends with him taking an elbow to the temple as Madness cuts him off. Sagrada turns back a Madness charge, but Madness comes back with a boot to the face and a brainbuster for three. Whichever mini is rocking the Mascarita Sagrada costume on these LU shows absolutely rules as a worker.

 

• After the match, Havoc slides into the ring and jumps Madness; Dario Cueto walks out and demands that security breaks up the fight. Meanwhile, Paul London sneaks up to the apron, cradles the beaten Sagrada, and absconds with his teeny form. Almost nobody notices this because Dario is too busy booking Havoc and Madness in a Boyle Heights Biker Brawl for tonight's main event; the winner earns an Aztec medallion.

 

• Poor Missy Santos tersely attempts to get through her ring introduction of Marty “the Moth” Martinez (w/Mariposa Martinez). Marty huffs in her left ear while Mariposa lovingly caresses the Moth's hair. Then she slaps the shit out of him to get him all fired up for the task of kicking Argenis’s jobber ass. You won’t believe it, but Marty kicks the shit out of Argenis's jobber ass. He’s somewhat mean about it, doing things like hooking Argenis’s palate to shove him up and into the corner. Argenis makes a brief comeback attempt, but his springboard arm drag attempt gets stuffed when Marty slams him face first to the mat. The Moth casually tears at Argenis’s mask, and maybe that gets Argenis mad enough to trip Marty on a leapfrog attempt and then hit a plancha that knocks Marty down at ringside. Mariposa, sensing that her dumbass bro needs some help, steps in and distracts Argenis; Marty initiates a brawl with his opponent in the bleachers that Argenis manages to win with a leaping rana from the bleacher stairs. Mariposa again jumps in and smashes Argenis’s dome into the post; Argenis blades off the impact while Marty gives Mariposa an all-too-intimate kiss on the cheek. Ew.

 

• Marty punches at the gushing wound; Melissa Santos is grossed out by Marty’s actions at ringside. Argenis actually manages one more comeback after kicking out of a cover after a Moth dropkick, but Marty quickly regains control over the bloodied Argenis and lands a Dominator into a Codebreaker – I’ll call it a Domibreaker until they name it – and covers for the easy three count. He finishes up by ripping the rest of Argenis’s shredded, blood-soaked mask off his face. Martinez is like one of the few guys having interesting matches on this show right now, solely because he’s doing uniquely nasty or creepy spots and getting blood on his opponents.

 

• Marty has something to say, and Mariposa bum rushes Missy Santos to yank away her mic, then hands it to her strange sibling. Marty asks Melissa if she enjoyed that little mask-taking, then tosses the bloody mask at Melissa, who jerks away from it as it lands near her. Marty pretty much intimates that this mask-taking was a warm-up for taking Rey Fenix’s mask, which he plans to do at Ultima Lucha Tres if Fenix will accept the challenge. Marty’s out here yanking at his hair like prime Mankind while he talks. Fenix sneaks up and hops on the top rope to do a rope-walking attack, stumbles on the rope because he’s not that great in terms of his balance up there, and loses his balance before simply hopping down to beat up the Martinez sibs. He then says that he’ll put up his mask, but only if Marty puts up his hair. YEAH, HAIR VERSUS MASK LUCHAS DE APUESTAS! Scratch what I said earlier: There’s now at least one match at Ultima Lucha Tres that seems interesting!

 

• Joey Ryan wrestles Sexy Star in our third match of the night. Striker says this: “Smart women love smart men more than smart men love smart women.” That statement seems like it might be true. I have no idea what the fuck it has to do with this match, though. Vampiro points out the extremely swank nature of Ryan’s blue, white, and purple floral print tights, shin guards, and boots. I mean, wearing this get-up is the best thing that Joey Ryan has ever done in the ring. It’s not even close. The match goes for a couple minutes before Taya Valkyrie skips down the stairs holding a GO SEXY STAR sign, which she mockingly waves around at ringside. Ryan licks his dick-flavored lollipop. Striker: “Joey Ryan, killing the business one match at a time!” That statement definitely seems like it might be true and is entirely appropriate analysis of this match to boot. Star fires up, tosses Ryan around by his chest hair, and hooks Ryan for a successful Three Amigos. Her cover only earns two, though.

 

• Star scores a legdrop and then goes up top, but she spots Taya waving the sign and screaming SI SE PUEDE, which annoys the hell out of her and causes her to leap off the apron and attack Taya. That attack is successful, but so is Joey Ryan’s superkick that catches Star in the head as she re-enters the ring. Ryan gets a three count over a former Lucha Underground Champion! Anyway, Officer Cortez Castro Reyes runs out here a few seconds too late for Star to win the match, but just in time to save Star from having Ryan’s dick sucker jammed into her lips, which, uh, seems a little on the nose, doesn’t it?

 

• Seedy backstage interstitial: Cortez Castro Reyes is done smacking Ryan around with his kendo stick; he now enters Dario Cueto’s office. He fumes while Dario mockingly says that Castro has impressed him for the first time in over a year with that successful post-match backjumping. Castro threatens to arrest Dario for killing Mister Cisco…again…and Dario points out that it didn’t work out so well for him the last time he had Dario arrested (Season Two, Show Twenty-Six). Dario makes a sudden move and seizes his killin’ ceramic bull from his desk, but he doesn’t swing it at Castro's head. Instead, he tells Castro that he knows that Joey Ryan is also a cop and that since they’re both LAPD, they obviously love dishing out violence, typically to civilians. However,  next week, he's booking them to dish out said violence to one another in a Five-Oh Street Fight. Dario’ll even throw in an Aztec medallion for the winer. Castro accepts, then makes a sudden move with his kendo stick, but he only breaks it over his knee threateningly rather than breaking it over Dario's forehead threateningly.

 

• What makes a Five-Oh Street Fight different from a Boyle Heights Biker Brawl? Probably nothing, but if you like wandering weapons brawls, you are in for a series of treats on the next couple of episodes of LU! Son of Madness and Son of Havoc have their Biker Brawl in the main event. As a quick reminder, the Rabbit Tribe members have the first three medallions that have been handed out, and I doubt that any of them will win the Gift of the Gods belt. Havoc, yeah, I could see that, maybe, but otherwise, I’m not sure that I see a potential title holder who is likely to be a title contender anytime soon in the group of wrestlers who have or will be wrestling for one of the first five medallions. My guess is that the Gift of the Gods winner will be one of the final two medallion holders.

 

• This crowd actually chants HOLY SHIT for a reason this time because they are astonished to view a nasty-looking move that is also unique; Madness hits a slingshot double-stomp from the ring to a prone Havoc on the floor that looked brutal as fuck. He should have gone for a pinfall off that move just because I feel like moves that look like death should at least be moves that wrestlers make covers on in kayfabe. Madness and Havoc bash each other around the ringside area in the typical deal that you get from these matches. They also hit each other with plundah, which fits in with that whole “typical deal” thing I wrote about a sentence earlier. I do get a kick when Striker and/or Vampiro remember a match from WCW: Striker asks Vampiro about the time that he observed a biker brawl at Road Wild ’99, which either refers to the Dennis Rodman vs. Randy Savage extravaganza or just a random brawl in which a bunch of unruly crowd members threw hands at one another in the dying South Dakota sun.

 

• These crowd members, despite their oft-annoying chanting, are far better fans than the ones at Sturgis were, and I want to make that clear because when I complain about how their modern way of experiencing the show makes for lousy television for me, I do also acknowledge the nice things about them. For example, Madness shoves Havoc off the railing as Havoc tries to stand on it and launches him into the crowd, which catches him and gently puts him back on his feet. Aw, that was sweet. The Sturgis crowd would have spit their tobacco juice on him as he lay there writhing in pain, probably. Meanwhile, the brawl continues in the crowd until Havoc throws Madness over the railing and to the floor, then gets help from a fan to balance on the railing so that he can complete a successful dive.

 

• I have to give these fellas credit for beating the hell out of one another. There have been some hurty-looking moves in this match, and I think it’s a couple of cuts above the typical LU wandering brawl because they eschew elaborate bullshit setups for simple but nasty moves – hey, like this Havoc back body drop that slams Madness into the metal guardrail that separates the crowd from the combatants. The other thing is that they actually sell the moves! This stuff is painful and they make sure to register that for us so that they’re not taking gross bumps for no fucking reason! There is a sense that these wrestlers don’t like one another and are inflicting a whole lot of pain on one another in an honest-to-God fight! Perish the thought!

 

• I’m gonna be real: This is probably Havoc’s best match in the run of this show so far. I’m surprised at how good it’s been, and it really picked up after the spot where Havoc got shoved into the laps of a few audience members. At the point where Havoc hits a suicide dive that shoves Madness all the way back into a group of fans in the bleachers, some of whom scatter as Madness slams backward into them, I think that this has been a pretty fun main event. Havoc hits an array of kicks, stomps, and moonsaults back in the ring, but he only earns two on the cover. I don’t even mind this goofy rebound cutter that Havoc loves to hit, though that also only earns about 2.5. Havoc has nearly unloaded the clip, but Madness won’t stay down, and you know what, they finally indulge in some nonsense where they no-sell one another’s corner charges to immediately hit a corner charge of their own, but I won’t let this dumb spot erase the good work they’ve done in the eleven minutes prior.

 

• Madness hooks Havoc and drops him with the same brainbuster that beat Mascarita Sagrada earlier in the night, but Havoc kicks out. Vampiro and Striker pointedly rant about the marks on the internet talking shit from safely behind their computer screens rather than fighting it out like real men do, so I suppose someone online said some shit about them or about this show that they didn't appreciate. On that note, let me talk shit from safely behind my computer screen: Eat a bag of rhino scrotums, Striker. Vampiro, uh, you’re cool, actually. I already apologized a bunch of reviews ago about talking shit about you because of your underwhelming WCW run from safely behind my computer screen.

 

• Upset that the brainbuster didn’t work, Madness grabs a trash can and lid from outside the ring and tosses them inside, then tries to hit a move that crashes Havoc onto the can. Havoc tries to fight Madness off, but ends up getting flattened with a Death Valley Driver (no Video Review) onto the can. The cover only earns Madness another two count, so he decides to up the ante with a claw hammer. His wild swing misses Havoc, who grabs a beer bottle sitting on the mat and goes up top; Madness retrieves the hammer and runs at Havoc ready to swing it, but as he leaps up to land the killing blow, Havoc swats him with the bottle. The bottle shatters, Madness falls to the mat, and Havoc follows with an SSP for three. This was shockingly good. I never would have guessed that this would be such a nasty little brawl.

 

• Just when I thought that Lucha Underground would never get by on quality by booking a wrestling-heavy show again, they manage to get by on quality with a wrestling-heavy show during a period where the wrestling has been generally abysmal. It’s quite nice to experience this sort of happy surprise. 4 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 34: “Career Opportunities” or Not-So-Dynamite Cops!

• I gotta hurry up and get through this third season, y’all.

 

• Recap: Prince Puma is the Cueto Cup winner, the Rabbit Tribe won three Aztec Medallions, and Johnny Mundo held onto the Lucha Underground Championship with a lot of help, freeing Rey Misterio Jr. from having to pick up any title defense responsibilities and leaving his schedule open to wrestle Matanza Cueto!

 

• Matt Striker and Vampiro hype episode number one hundred of Lucha Underground next week. Striker lets us know that Dario Cueto will be making an exciting announcement about that show, likely to promote the Matanza/Misterio match.

 

• Drago (w/Kobra Moon) is wrestling Willie Mack for an Aztec medallion, and I forgot that Drago was a Trios Tag Champion until he laid the physical belt down in front of him as part of his entrance. He’s been a Trios Tag Champion since the end of the second season, and that is the least effective long-term title run anyone has ever had in pro wrestling, maybe. Mack and Drago have a speedy exchange that ends with a standoff and Mack giving Drago the single bird. I’m making a guess that Mack will win this match because I would assume that the Reptile Tribe will defend the Trios Tag belts at Ultima Lucha Tres. Then again, those belts have been so out of focus this year that it wouldn’t surprise me if the bookers totally forgot about them. The Trios Tag titles made for a bunch of fun six-person matches in that second season especially, and LU's overall match quality this season has been badly harmed by lacking a similarly vibrant trios tag scene.

 

• Mack basically controls Drago during the match, which is why Kobra gets on the apron and taunts Mack, asking him WHATCHA GONNA DO like she’s a lady Hulk Hogan. Mack walks over and lightly shoves her, but that allows Drago to jump him, land a few kicks, and wrap him in the Tail of the Dragon for a win that proves that I don’t understand anything about how these bookers operate. Mack scores a Mack Stunner on Drago after the bell, but before he can do the same to Kobra, Pindar and Vibora make it to the ring and stomp Mack out.

 

• Dario Cueto excitedly promotes episode one hundo of one hundo-and-twenty-seven, coming to us next week. Ah, the seventh and final medallion will be contested between the feckless El Dragon Azteca Jr. and Pentagón Dark on that episode. I haven’t gotten it right when guessing the recent booking decisions on this show, but I suspect that the winner of that match will also win the Gift of the Gods belt. Further, I suspect that the winner of that match will be Pentagón Dark. If I get this one wrong, I might have to stop making booking predictions for a little while. Dario also announces an eight-man tag match between the Worldwide Underground and a team led by Prince Puma that Dario will allow Puma to choose. Finally, Dario announces the Rey Misterio Jr./Matanza Cueto match that only the interstitial-watching viewers have been privy to since Dario first decided to book it last week.

 

• This little puke Dario demands Misterio’s presence so that he can talk shit to him. Rey should just backhand this guy as soon as he steps through the ropes. He doesn’t, sadly. Dario tells Rey that Matanza is getting a warmup in a handicap match against the Rabbit Tribe tonight, but Rey won’t be around to get involved because Dario is kicking him out of the building for the rest of this show. Rey starts to leave, then figures that he doesn’t need to listen to Dario because he’s a damned legend. What’s Dario going to do? Fire him? Send him back to making cheddar in the Dub? Dario then ups the ante by telling Rey that if he doesn’t leave, El Dragon Azteca Jr. is going to get fired. That convinces Rey to leave, but not before he promises to end the Cueto family legacy next week: first Matanza, then Dario himself. I mean, if I’ve got my story straight, Dario is going to die in about six episodes. Or he'll fake his own death, pretend to be his father Antonio for another twenty-two episodes, then change his name to César Duran and try to revive the Temple in MLW. One of those two things.

 

• The sixth of seven Aztec medallions will be handed out to the winner of this Five-Oh Street Fight between Officer Joey Ryan and Officer Cortez Castro Reyes. Cops in riot gear surround the ring; a cop car with the sirens lit up sits at ringside. Striker shares the news that these men are both rumored to be in law enforcement. In kayfabe, Dario doesn’t tell his commentators a goddam thing. Striker talks about how rad LEOs are, and Vampiro offers him some Chap Stick to moisten up after that uncalled for ass kissing. That’s why you’re the best, Vampiro.

 

• What is up with these showrunners? We had a Weapons of Mass Destruction Match with a bunch of war props, and now we have this match with police batons and riot cops and a cop car and all this sort of nonsense. They were pretty restrained for last week’s Biker Brawl, as were Son of Havoc and Son of Madness. The latter two didn’t do any awkward motorcycle spots; they just beat the shit out of each other. On the other hand, Joey Ryan throws a clearly worked handcuff-assisted punch – the cameraman didn’t help him out at all – though he keeps punching and Castro blades on the top of his head. Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WCW: Striker says that Ryan swinging a baton is reminiscent of Big Bubba Rogers, but isn’t that more of a Big Boss Man thing? This should be Striker and/or Vampiro remember a dude from WWF, really. Or if it's a WCW thing, it's reminiscent of the Boss or maybe the Guardian Angel? I'm sort of hazy on late-'93/early '94 Boss Man. 

 

• However, at the point where Ryan pulls out a surgical glove and claws Cortez’s anus, I lose interest in this match almost entirely. Hurry up and kill both of these characters off, showrunners. These sorry-ass excuses for detectives throw hands outside the ring and end up crashing into the riot cops that surround them. They figuratively waltz over to the car to smash into it (and so that Castro can whiff on a baseball bat swing and crack the car). Joey Ryan grabs a sledgehammer, which as we all know is a stupid fucking weapon to use in a pro wrestling match if you’re going to actually pretend to hit someone with it. Ryan, however, merely swings and misses with it, both cracking the windshield of the car and also proving that even this complete dolt Ryan is somehow a smarter pro wrestler than Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Also, Ryan hits Castro with a uranage on the hood of the car, which admittedly is pretty rad. I don’t think I’ve regained all of my previous interest in this match, but that sequence was solid.

 

• At the point where both men walk over to a table full of coffee and donuts, I lose interest again, especially when Castro pours ostensibly boiling hot coffee onto Joey Ryan’s dick and then tasers his problematic little penis besides. Yeah, okay, I’m about done with this match. We can end it now. But no, wait, Ryan recovers from a badly singed and tased penis after like fifteen seconds so he can superkick a box of donuts into Castro’s face. I mean, the taser should be an automatic match ender, which I suppose proves that Cortez Castro is as dumb a pro wrestler as Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Omigosh, please end this stupid match. Okay, here we go: Castro maces Ryan and then hits a running cradle brainbuster-y deal onto a pile of riot shields for three. I did not like this, but outside of the dumb comedy spots, it also wasn’t the worst. This match was somehow both less awful and exactly as awful as I would have expected it to be at the same time.

 

• The poor Rabbit Tribe is going to get absolutely rolled by Matanza Cueto (w/Dario Cueto). The Rabbit Tribe tries to do their dumb dance with Matanza, but he’s all like nah and then he kills them off. The Rabbits try a couple of trios tag combos, and Matanza actually stands there for long enough so that Mala Suerte can do his stupid fake dive spot that isn’t funny and isn’t cool and that totally stinks. Eventually, Matanza stops standing around so that these idiots can do all their consistently unfunny comedy spots, but not before they a) do a lot of them, and b) Paul London gets 2.8 on an SSP and a dogpile pin. How did this heat Matanza up for a big match with Misterio? What a stupid match. I am baffled that LU managed to make Paul London suck somehow. How is that even possible?! Matanza wins with a Wrath of the Gods on Saltador.

 

• Here's Prince Puma to announce the other three members of his four-person team for next week’s tag match against the Worldwide Underground. He doesn’t even get three sentences in before Johnny Mundo walks out here and interrupts him. Blah blah Slamtown, blah blah beat you in the first episode of this show. Puma reminds Mundo that he won the Lucha Underground title first and also beat Mundo at least one other time (the sub-mediocre All Night Long Match in Season One, Show Thirty-Two). This promo battle sucks. They natter on about who can beat whom; Mundo demands a, um, Luchas de Apuestas Match for Puma’s mask at Ultima Lucha Tres? Even though we already have one booked for that show? Thankfully, Dario Cueto interrupts and cuts a meta-promo in which he notes that Marty Martinez and Rey Fenix are already having a Luchas de Apuestas where a mask is on the line, and booking another one would seem braindead and repetitive, as if Dario were out of ideas for his show. Yeah, it sure would! Now explain in kayfabe why you’ve booked all the repetitive hardcore matches this season, Dario. Anyway, Dario changes the terms so that Puma’s mask won’t be on the line if Puma accepts, but Puma’s career will be. Hell, Puma might throw this bout so he can go be Ricochet in WWE already. Vampiro freaks out over at the desk and frantically waves his arms to indicate that Puma should decline Dario’s offer, but Puma accepts even though he didn’t have to because he already won the title shot fair and square and had no need to put anything up against Mundo's title belt.

 

• We never found out who Puma’s partners were, by the way.

 

• I don’t think we had a single seedy backstage interstitial tonight. BOOOOOOOOO. This wasn’t a good show, but I mean, a show centered around a Joey Ryan/Cortez Castro wandering trash brawl also could have been much, much worse. I’ll be (relatively) nice with my scoring. 1.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 35: “Cien” or Matanza Cueto hits with the power of E. Honda’s One Hundred Hand Slap

• Recap: Dario Cueto runs down tonight’s card, which includes Pentagón Dark vs. El Dragon Azteca Jr., the Worldwide Underground vs. Prince Puma and three other someones, and Matanza Cueto vs. Rey Misterio Jr. Also, Puma’s putting his LU career up against Johnny Mundo’s LU Championship at Ultima Lucha Tres.

 

• Seedy backstage interstitial: Oh yeah, we’re allowed to have these. The Worldwide Underground giggles about an ID that Ricky Mandel had made. They pass it around; Jack Evans’s jaw is still wired shut, so he has to scrawl out a HA HA HA on his little whiteboard. When did Evans legit injure his jaw? It must have been on an earlier episode, but I can’t think of when it likely happened. Taya Valkyrie thinks that this ID thing is going to piss off Johnny Mundo. Mundo seems less pissed off and more mildly irritated about the ID though, which shows that Ricky legally changed his last name from “Mandel” to “Mundo.” J. Mundo tells him to change his name back because “there’s only one Mundo in the Worldwide Underground.” R. Mundo, excited that J. Mundo has for the first time implicitly stated that he’s part of the Worldwide Underground rather than merely a close associate, boisterously bearhugs J. Mundo. The rest of the Worldwide Underground has to break it up before Mundo upchucks. Mundo hits his catchphrases, and while I think that making Mundo’s heel character “WWE caricature that hits all his catchphrases and thinks that he defines all that pro wrestling is and all that it can possibly be” is an interesting idea that Mundo is objectively executing with precision, but in practice, I am not particularly enjoying it.

 

• Matt Striker and Vampiro hype the one hundredth LU show at the desk; Striker lets us know that Puma’s partners for tonight’s match against the Worldwide Underground were put up on some social media post that I bet didn’t get archived properly. He relays that Puma will tag up with Sexy Star, Rey Fenix, and – whoa – Brian Cage. That last person might be a bit of a handful, and not just for his opponents, but also for his teammates.

 

• Let’s kick off the show with the eight-person tag opener: Prince Puma, Sexy Star, Rey Fenix, and Brian Cage clash with the Worldwide Underground (Johnny Mundo, Ricky Mundo, P.J. Black, and Taya Valkyrie, w/the injured Jack Evans). I note that the Aztec power coursing through Cage’s veins has distracted him from doing even cursory fun things that a pro wrestler human would do during one's entrance, like posing or reacting to the crowd. He simply walks toward the ring, his temper barely simmering underneath the surface, wearing a face that is a solid 9.25/10 on the Rick Rude is Giving Someone a Stern Look Scale. Ricky tries to correct Melissa Santos about his new last name, but Johnny steps in and tells him that since he wasn’t confronted about the name change, he’ll have to sideline Ricky tonight as punishment. The disappointed Ricky leaves the ring as Johnny announces his replacement: Oh boy, it’s Marty “the Moth” Martinez. Melissa looks bummed as hell about that change in the lineup.

 

• Sexy Star starts it off with the Moth, and Star really hates all of these heels. Remember, the Moth kidnapped her (Season One, Show Thirty-Nine) and held her captive for six months, which I think explains why she still holds a grudge against him. Anyway, this is a neat opening filled with all sorts of interesting interactions. First, Star gets flicked off by Johnny and shoves Taya, who is incensed. Taya chases Star into the ring, but is cut off, and Star then outwrestles the Moth before walking over and flicking Johnny off in turn. But some of that is missed by the commentators because they’re focused on Cage standing on the apron and glaring lovingly at his Aztec god power gauntlet; as if in thrall, he keeps making a beckoning motion with his gauntleted fingers, entranced by the sudden surge of power that is coursing through his veins, but not thinking about all the drawbacks – shriveled gonads, back acne, and the unleashing of ninth level god power destruction across the globe – that come with his increase in ability to pump out reps or explode skulls with one punch.

 

• This is a busy match that is weaving together lots of little threads, and also some cool stuff happens like Fenix and Black crashing into each other on a double crossbody block in a spot that looks like it’d properly knock the wind out of you. In another interesting little narrative thread, Fenix and Black both make tags: Fenix tags Cage, and Black tags Johnny. Johnny enters the ring, spies Cage stepping through the ropes, and immediately turns around and tags Taya like the shitty boyfriend that he is. Cage doesn’t want to take off the gauntlet, and in fact the last time that he was told to take it off by a referee, he mollywhopped said referee (Season Three, Show Twenty-Seven). This time, the ref doesn’t try to body up to Cage and take it away, plus he’s got three team members pleading with him to remove it, so he reluctantly removes it and places it on the apron.

 

• Taya has wrestled Cage before and lost (Season Two, Show Seven). Yet, she seems incapable of not taking kayfabe liberties with a guy who already throttled her. That earlier match sold me on Taya just because she bumped like a maniac. She bumped like a maniac because Cage tossed her around like a sack of potatoes. She must have a short memory in kayfabe; she hits an ineffective dropkick on Cage when his back is turned, and when he swivels around and stares at her like a T-1000 locking onto its target, she deliberately tries to provoke him by patting him on the face harder and harder until she is pretty much slapping him in the face. Cage immediately goozles her, and the Underground hops in and attacks him. Their group attack doesn’t much phase Cage, who gets up and stalks toward them. Shitty boyfriend Mundo pushes Taya into Cage, but he tosses her aside and continues on to Johnny, hoisting him up for a stalling vertical suplex. Cage is really stalling on this vertical suplex, just enjoying causing the blood in Johnny's body to rush to his head, and therefore he is not able to monitor the well-being and safety of his gauntlet. That's bad luck for him because Jeremiah Crane sneaks out here and steals it (!!!!!). 

 

• OK, question here: If Dario Cueto was hellbent on having Cage do the gauntlet thing and unleash the Aztec Gods, why didn’t he instruct his referees to let Cage keep the gauntlet on during matches to prevent something like this happening? Also, I do have to note Cage’s tag partners just watching Crane sneak up like a teeny lil’ Repo Man and take the gauntlet without doing anything to stop it.

 

• Cage sees Crane holding the gauntlet and chases him out of the ringside area in an attempt to retrieve it. Puma leaps into the ring and demonstrates fantastic core strength and top conditioning, but right now, I think the yapped gauntlet is the most interesting thing on this show. Of course Crane might have the knowledge to understand what the gauntlet is – he understands what Catrina is and what the mystical stone can do, after all – and he needs to kill off Mil Muertes so he can get with  Catrina even though Catrina loves Fenix and also so does Melissa Santos and YEAH, I want more TELENOVELA LOVE QUADRANGLE SHIT in my pro wrestling. The point, though! The point is that Crane well might be planning to attack Mil with the gauntlet, thus keeping Mil from stopping Cage and keeping Catrina from getting the other half of the amulet from Captain Mama Vasquez that she needs to fully step back into the land of the living, when in fact if Crane and Catrina communicated with one another honestly, Crane might just simply give the gauntlet to Catrina directly so that Catrina can give it to her mom and get the other half of the amulet straightaway. It wouldn’t make Catrina fall in love with him, but if he loves her, he’d probably still want to do her that favor anyway. See, this is the problem: Lack of communication!

 

• Meanwhile, the babyfaces are now down a person, so after Star and Fenix hit nice dual dives on their enemies Taya and the Moth respectively, that leaves Black and Johnny to score a series of double-team moves on Puma, culminating with an End of the World that puts Puma down for three. Someone legit biffed a move because we got a YOU FUCKED UP chant from the crowd. I didn’t see what was fucked up, but I also was deep in thought about this gauntlet dealie. And speaking of the gauntlet dealie, as far as we know, Crane is still dating Ivelisse, and Ivelisse hates Catrina, so throw that wrench in there, too!

 

• The Moth has slipped Fenix and now stalks Missy Santos, who screams as Marty grabs her by her hair. She slaps him to a nice crowd pop once, then twice, then like seven or eight times, which rules. The crowd enjoys her defiance, too. Marty seems to be sort of getting off on her slapping him (yuck), but he’s soon too unconscious to get off on the pain from the superkick that Fenix hits him with. Would it be too much to have Melissa take a blowtorch to Marty at the end of this feud? Is there enough in the SFX budget to make that happen? Can they figure out a way to simulate melting flesh without getting kicked off the air?

 

• Seedy meditation room interstitial: And guess what, I was happily wrong about what Jeremiah Crane might do next! Crane goes directly to Catrina with the gauntlet rather than trying to use it himself to bash up Mil Muertes. Catrina drily declares that Crane is “more useful than I thought.” Wait, though, Crane wants a kiss from Catrina before he agrees to give her the gauntlet. He doesn’t get that kiss, though, because Mil spears him and starts a brawl. And then, speaking as a red-blooded man, I spy an unforgivably pathetic sight: Two men brawling over the affections of a woman who doesn’t want either of them while she stands off to the side, getting what she actually wants: an emotional charge out of having two men she doesn’t care about fighting over her, oops, no, I mean the gauntlet. She wants the gauntlet. Spotting the dropped gauntlet on the floor with no one around to take it from her might be the first time I’ve seen her genuinely smile on this show, by the way. Lucha Underground, show one hundred: A show of miracles!

 

• Catrina retrieves the gauntlet…and Cage rushes in and goozles her, then notes that she can’t blit-blurt away because the gauntlet is cracking with such power and raw Aztec god vitality that IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND, oops, sorry, no, I mean that it's blocking her blit-blurt powers and she can’t just phase away with it in her possession. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. She drops it and blit-blurts immediately out of Cage’s grasp. Meanwhile, Crane and Mil brawl back over to Cage and start an impromptu seedy backstage interstitial Triple Threat. They have a sick-looking stylized fight with blows that feel weighty and impactful (thanks, post-production sound effects), and none of the three are able to escape one another for long enough to grab the fallen gauntlet. That leaves Dario Cueto (!!!!!!!!) free to step in, retrieve it, and spirit away with it in his possession. Last we saw Dario discussing this gauntlet and its purpose of unleashing the Aztec gods, he looked mighty uneasy at Agent Winter’s confident assurance that the gods were on their way back to destroy everyone and everything (Season Three, Show Thirty). Methinks he's going to try and get rid of this gauntlet based on that uneasy reaction.

 

• Boy, these showrunners are really pulling out all the stops for this landmark episode of LU, aren’t they?

 

• Striker and Vampiro let us know that Dario’s crazy ass has booked Marty and Mariposa Martinez against Rey Fenix and Melissa Santos for next week. I love the idea that this fuckhead Dario retrieved the gauntlet and felt so good about successfully doing so that he decided to book his non-wrestler ring announcer in a match as a celebratory act.

 

• Alright, the seventh and final Aztec medallion match pits Pentagón Dark against El Dragon Azteca Jr. Are we sure that Azteca Jr. is going to be the guy who saves us from a giant Aztec tribal war in the modern day? I feel like Azteca Sr. meeting up with Prince Puma instead of Azteca Jr. indicates that Puma was supposed to be the guy who saved the day (Season One, Shows One and Two). Wait, hold on, Penta is still mean mugging Vampiro every chance he gets. In fact, this particular mean mugging distracts him enough that Azteca can gain control with a pair of boots to the chest and a corkscrew crossbody after taking a spate of damage to start. However, the crossbody is to the floor, which means that the fight goes out there, which also means that Penta can use the surroundings as targets into which he can launch Azteca the Younger.

 

• Azteca manages to survive by using his agility and array of dives, then manages to springboard back into the ring with a regular crossbody of the non-corkscrew type for a two count. This match is perfectly solid even though I’m not particularly hyped to watch either guy. Azteca is working his ass off, and it actually earns him a chant from the usually partisan-for-Penta crowd. This is a back-and-forth affair; no one can keep much control, though Azteca manages another pair of close two-counts on a legdrop and a pop-up DDT. Penta earns a two-count of his own, then follows that close count up by tripping Azteca as the latter is perched on the top rope; Azteca topples into a seated position on the top, and Penta quickly hooks him and lands a package piledriver for three. Penta takes his medallion, considers leaving the ring, and then prepares to instead snap Azteca Jr.’s arm again….when Matanza Cueto slides into the ring and faces off with Penta (!!!!!!!!!!!). Dario rushes out and tries to call Matanza back by wielding Matanza's cell key, and then Penta and Matanza do the Tazz-in-No-Mercy shoulder bump, which gets an audible OOOOOH from the crowd. Dario manages to calm Matanza down enough to refocus him on Azteca Jr., whom Dario wants Matanza to destroy. Penta thinks about beating the shit out of Dario, but he merely shoves him and leaves with his medallion, allowing Dario to enjoy Matanza tossing Azteca around. Well, at least until Rey Misterio Jr. rushes down the stairs and into the ring.

 

• I feel a bit confused about why Dario has now decided to target Misterio, and maybe writing about this will help anyone who reads it to tell me what I am clearly missing. Dario wasn’t all that concerned about Misterio beating Matanza at Aztec Warfare III (Season Three, Show Ten) and generally seemed to not only be happy to have a legend like Misterio on his show to give it a broader reach, but also unhappy to have annoying-ass Johnny Mundo as his champ. Heck, he gave Mundo a worse number in the Aztec Warfare match than Mundo originally had, and he clearly doesn’t like Mundo or Benjamin Cooke threatening to sue him every two seconds. He theoretically should have been, if not happy with, fine with Misterio taking the title from Mundo. The idea that Dario has his eyes on a bigger prize – unleashing the Aztec gods on earth – and thus needs to stop Misterio from mentoring Azteca Jr. enough to build Azteca Jr. into a competent protector of earth and stopper of Aztec god war hijinks doesn’t make sense either; we see Dario acting like he now doesn’t want the Aztec gods to be unleashed, so Misterio isn’t a threat to him in that regard, either. His decision to interfere in the Mundo/Misterio title match on Mundo’s behalf only makes a thin type of sense (Cooke and Mundo threatened to take the belt away from the Temple if anyone interfered on Rey’s behalf, which Dominic did), but even then, Rey attacking Dario for pulling the ref out of the ring before the three-count could happen seems to have amped him up disproportionately to said act or to any long-standing beef he's had with Rey so far.

 

• One other note before we move on: The Gift of the Gods Match participants have been set for Ultima Lucha Tres, at least assuming that no one steals a medallion from a current holder a la Chavo Guerrero Jr. yapping Brian Cage's hard-won medallion (Season Two, Show Fifteen) and inserting it into the Gift of the Gods belt himself. The competitors shall be Paul London, Saltador, Mala Suerte, Drago, Son of Havoc, Cortez Castro Reyes, and Pentagón Dark. I suppose Havoc could credibly win this, but Penta once again seems like the bolted-on winner, which I also thought about him w/r/t the Cueto Cup, so I guess that means Drago will win or something.

 

• Anyway, we segue right into Misterio/Matanza from here. Dario demands that someone RING THE BELL. Misterio is in an ugly singlet that is half black and half aquamarine-ish. The match is a strong little/big bout, of course, with Rey bumping and selling for Matanza launching him into the air and bashing him against various Temple fixtures in between bursts of offense. Matanza slowly stalks Rey, clawing at his eye sockets, but when he pulls Misterio to standing, Misterio sneaks a crucifix pin for two. The classic WCW flash pin transition happens as Matanza kicks out and immediately hits his opponent with a lariat to regain control; the match goes back outside, where Matanza continues slowly mauling this absolute legendary babyface hero. I think the crowd actually deeply cares about Misterio pulling this out from how I read their reactions. Rey transcends indie-style crowd smarkiness as few can.

 

• Matanza bashes Rey into the announce table; Vampiro pops up and warily faces off with Matanza, who gazes at him. This match is loaded with tension, and actually, so is this whole show. It’s VINTAGE LUCHA UNDERGROUND, as Mikey Cole might say (and as Road Warrior Hawk might call Michael Cole). Rey manages to sunset flip powerbomb his way out of a potential top rope suplex, then lands a DDT for a close two count and a springboard seated senton for two more. He tries to keep up the momentum, but he springs off the ropes and into a big boot.

 

• The monster decides that it might be time to put that pesky Misterio away while Vampiro praises Rey for being the first breakout star from Mexico on a national level – “[he] conquered U.S. television, and when you do that, you are the king” – and compares his level of popularity to Mil Mascaras’s popularity in the 1970s in Japan and the Southwest as well as Mexico. Vampiro injecting a little history into his color is always fun. Anyway, Matanza gets a chair, but a series of chance events occur from there that lead to the chair being wedged between the ropes and Rey hitting a chair-assisted 6-1-9 on Matanza followed by a springboard legdrop attempt…that is cut off by Matanza tossing the chair right into Misterio’s oft-reconstructed knee. NOOOOOOOOO. I think this one is about over, sadly. Matanza scores a series of suplexes – gutwrench, overhead pumphandle – but posts himself on a corner charge. Misterio tries a desperation moonsault, but Matanza catches him and swings him around into a Wrath of the Gods. Rey gets his foot to the ropes, but Dario shoves it away, and the ref never sees it as he counts to three.

 

• After the match, Matanza grabs the chair, pins it against Misterio’s back, and grabs them both together before completing a chair-assisted Wrath of the Gods. The crowd lustily boos and chants THIS IS BULLSHIT because they are emotionally invested in babyface Rey getting a big win. Yes, so am I! We agree on something, Temple crowd. Unfortunately, what happens is Rey getting yanked around by the neck with a chair in a variation on a Pillmanizing. Matanza carries Rey off to do some ungodly manner of action with his unconscious body. Maybe he’s going to pack him in a crate and send him back to OVW, oops, sorry once more, I mean send him back to WWE.

 

• Monumental show, but man, I wish the babyfaces won stuff sometimes. 4.75 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 36: “The Rise of the Ring Announcer” or The Ring of Fate is Calling! Rebel One, Action!

• We are suddenly only one show from Ultima Lucha Tres. The pacing on this season has been so strange, feeling full of quickly escalating narrative development at the beginning and end, but like a time-bending slog in the middle.  

 

• Recap: There are seven new Aztec medallion holders ready for the Gift of the Gods Match that is, surprisingly enough to me, later tonight instead of at ULIII. Also, I wonder how Famous B. and Brenda are convalescing after they had their arms snapped by Pentagón Dark; I also wonder if this changes their chances at landing Texano, who they didn’t exactly help beat Penta before Penta went on to snap their arms. Finally, Melissa Santos enters the ring as a combatant rather than an announcer…tonight!

 

• Seedy training ring interstitial: Melissa Santos and Rey Fenix put in some work. Missy manages to lock on an arm bar. I’m not sure that anyone was clamoring for her to get in the ring, but sure, what the hell? The sparring session is mostly an excuse to look at a sweaty Melissa’s heaving chest, I think, which is cool for the viewers who are into that. Anyway, Melissa suddenly demands to see Fenix without his mask and then pouts when he doesn’t show her his unmasked face. Fenix, paraphrasing: This mask gives me rad fuckin’ rebirth superpowers if I keep it on, so I kinda can’t take it off. Melissa, paraphrasing: I don’t care, show me your face anyway, or I might have to break up with you. Then she dips him and they make out. I’m not convinced by this interstitial. Melissa and Fenix are the most awkward couple in this feud, and might I remind you that this feud includes a brother-sister pairing that does weird incest nuzzling!

 

• Famous B. is tonight’s substitute ring announcer, and Brenda works the ring bell. B. holds his right arm at his side, the cast covering it filled with signatures and drawings that act as impromptu ads for his agency. B. uses the left arm to hold the mic, which he uses to introduce Dante Fox. Should I just let my eyes glaze over now? B. then rants about how he saved the next competitor from taking a broken arm by distracting Penta and taking the punishment himself before declaring that he wants this competitor to accept his representation already, and sure enough, here comes Texano.

 

• Texano is distracted by B., and Fox jumps him. Striker, about Dante: “And he wasn’t even supposed to be here today.” Vampiro, in response to this Clerks reference that makes no sense in this context because obviously Dante is supposed to be here today since he was booked for a match: “Dude, too much.” Yeah, it was. This match is whatever. Texano is a proficient worker who doesn’t really do much for me. Fox is who he is, but I have to say that he doesn’t spend this match running around the ring like he’s in a track meet and actually sells Texano’s offense, so he’s actually watchable enough tonight. Even so, he’s still a thigh-slapping chump whose moveset is basically all finishers. These wrestlers who wrestle like the one CAW you’d make in No Mercy or Smackdown with every high-impact move and as many finisher slots as possible are, just like Matt Striker, too much.

 

• After some back and forth, Texano blocks a Foxcatcher attempt with a boot and then lands a double-underhook backbreaker for two. B., sitting next to Brenda over at the bell, decides that it was three and then gets in the ring to congratulate the confused Texano, who turns toward B. and is quickly rolled up from behind by Fox for three. Texano makes a move to kick the shit out of B. but Dario Cueto steps out of his office and stops Texano from actually kicking the shit out of B. because he’s the substitute ring announcer for the show. I bet B. is taking payment in “exposure” like some desperate Twitter artist, which explains why Dario stepped in.

 

 

• Dario does set Texano vs. Famous B. for night one of ULIII. When B. protests that his arm is still broken, Dario replies, “Well, I guess that makes it a handicap match.” Does Dario have a child we don’t know about, what with his dad-jokin’ ass? Anyway, Dario says if B. manages to win, he’ll give B. Texano’s LU contract and force Texano into accepting his representation. Oh, and before I forget, Killshot was perched at the top of the arena gathering intel on his opps Fox during the match.

 

• Seedy backstage interstitial: Son of Havoc is in Dario’s office; he inserts his medallion into the GotG belt and then declares that he will win the title and insinuate himself into the title match at ULIII. He also mean mugs Pentagón Dark as Penta enters to insert his medallion. This sucks; they just blew off the medallion presentation in a seedy backstage interstitial instead of having it happen in the ring this time around. All this air time this season, but they couldn’t find five minutes for the GotG medallion setting? Penta also has a little speech prepared: Something something break a few arms, something something cero miedo. He leaves. Dario Cueto likes the promise of violence and picks up his phone, then tells security to get medics on standby for that main event.

 

• Marty “the Moth” and Mariposa Martinez enter the ring for this mixed tag match against Rey Fenix and Melissa Santos. Why is this crowd chanting THIS IS AWESOME before the bell rings? This is mundane! Nothing is happening! The bell hasn't even rung! Once it does, though, there’s a fun little opening sequence; Mariposa doggedly holds onto an armlock, cutting off Fenix’s various attempts to escape. See, that was neat. I notice that these fun little sequences happen whenever a Martinez sibling is in the ring. They need a third so they can be Trios Tag Champs.

 

• Fenix and the Moth have an okay exchange. At one point, Fenix springboards into no man’s land while Marty just stands there and sort of watches him crash and burn, and it reminds me of the Tom Zenk vs. Brian Lee match that I just watched today in which Zenk sprung up to the second rope and attempted a crossbody while Lee stood in the other corner with his back turned, never even spotting this idiot Zenk trying a move that had no chance on the other side. While I’m sure Lee just missed that he was supposed to wander over there and then dodge it, the effect of the spot was that Zenk looked like a complete fucking overcaffeinated and jumpy moron. It was amazing.

 

• I digress, though. Missy Santos wants in, but Fenix doesn’t tag her in, and this means that he spends time as FIP while the siblings work him over. He eventually escapes trouble with a superkick to the Moth’s jaw, and when the Moth tries to cut him off, Fenix shoves him forward into a Santos superkick. Fenix helps balance her on the top rope and she dives onto the Moth with a seated senton splash. Well, at least the Moth got Melissa’s crotch in his face, finally.

 

• You can tell that Fenix kayfabe trained Melissa because she does like fifty superkicks after this, and they combine to tandem superkick Mariposa, who stumbles backward off the ropes and then is tripped forward, landing head-first in Marty’s crotch. Well, at least Mariposa got Marty’s crotch in her face again. Fenix wheelbarrow slams Melissa onto Marty, but none of her covers work. She tries to hold Marty down so that Fenix can dive onto him, but Mariposa trips her, and Marty grabs Missy by the hair. Mari ties Fenix to the bottom buckle so that he can’t save Melissa from Marty, who stalks the final girl around the ring. Melissa backs into Mari, then turns around and sees that Marty has caught up with her. She tries a dick punt, but Marty catches it, and then he and Mari hoist Melissa up for a dual Pedigree that puts Missy down for three. Mari grabs the lunchbox and hands Marty a pair of scissors, but Fenix manages to finally free himself and leap at Marty before he can spike Melissa in the temple with the point of the scissors. The siblings manage to escape as the weird, creepy victors of this goofy little match.

 

• Matt Striker and Vampiro run down the ULIII card: El Dragon Azteca Jr. attempts to avenge his mentor Rey Misterio Jr.’s loss to Matanza Cueto last week in a steel cage match against the monster. Ivelisse finally returns from her latest injury to make good on her challenge to Catrina, the latter of whom has so many irons in the fire. Rey Fenix and Marty Martinez face off in a Luchas de Apuestas Mask vs. Hair Match. Sexy Star and Taya Valkyrie are wrestling one another, which I knew, but the fact that it’s a Last Luchadora Standing Match is news to me. Killshot and Dante Fox – dammit, fuck – are wrestling a Hell of War Match which – shit, fucking hell – is essentially the LU equivalent of a Three Stages of Hell Match, so we get three MINUS FIVE STARS rated matches in one! Fuck off, Lucha Underground. Also, Prince Puma will wrestle Johnny Mundo in a Career vs. Title Match, though I do suspect that, based on the foreshadowing from the previous seedy backstage interstitial, the winner of this upcoming Gift of the Gods Match will immediately cash it in so they can make themselves a third competitor in that bout. I notice that there is no Trios Tag Title Match booked. There's no time since we gotta get in three fucking Killshot/Fox matches, right? I repeat: Fuck off, Lucha Underground.

 

• The main event for the Gift of the Gods title bout includes the following competitors: Paul London, Mala Suerte, Saltador, Officer Cortez Castro Reyes, Drago (w/Kobra Moon), Son of Havoc, and Pentagón Dark. B. fairly spits out that last name, by the way. Penta gets his own ramp entrance rather than coming down the stairs like the other six wrestlers. Uh, I might finally be right that he’s going to win this thing. Honestly, they really need to put the big belt on him as soon as possible so at least someone mega-over is holding it. It’s not like the match quality on this show or in the main event is so good that Penta being limited in the ring matters. He’s actually scorching hot, even when considering that the Temple crowd is so boisterous that they’d root for a boiled potato if it managed to do a tumble and a flip.

 

• You can guess the layout of this match; Penta and Havoc clear the ring, and then we get a series of one-on-one spots while five other people lay around. I do think that Saltador springboarding off of Penta’s back as he’s bent over and then hitting him with a rana is a neat spot in isolation, though. There are many dives. The Rabbit Tribe members do a couple of vaguely sexual team spots. London sure loves thrusting his junk, man. In a completely silly finishing sequence, Penta scores a package piledriver on Saltador. No one is in the ring except for those two and a downed Paul London. No one is coming to save Saltador. Penta would normally just cover the guy and then consider an arm snapping after the bell. However, this time, he has to eschew the cover and package piledrive Paul London solely because we need a reason for Havoc to get a pinfall at the same time Penta does. Dumb as fuck. Real weirdo WCW finish vibes there. Anyway, Havoc drops an SSP on Saltador and covers at roughly the same time that Penta covers London, and the ref counts three for both of them.

 

• How will this resolve? Let me guess: In a one-on-one match at ULIII. Here’s Dario Cueto to let us know that, yep, they’ll wrestle one another for the Gift of the Gods belt at ULIII in a Ladder Match.

 

• Seedy limousine interstitial: Agent Winter chews out Dario Cueto for picking the wrong man to wield the gauntlet in Brian Cage, but Dario suggests trying out the gauntlet on Cage again…or maybe Jeremiah Crane or Mil Muertes. Let ‘em wrestle in a Triple Threat Match and give the winner the gauntlet, suggests Dario. Winter asks what happens if Cage wins the gauntlet again and still isn't as pliable a subject as he needs to be. Well, I guess what would happen is that Cage would explode Winter’s face with one punch. Dario says that if Cage turns out to be too much machine and not enough man to be controlled, Winter can come down to the Temple and destroy Cage himself using whatever Aztec god magicks he has at hand. The leader of the Order sits in the shadows of the limo, lights a cig, and nods. I think he’s happy with the plan, and I do believe that we’ve got another match for ULIII.

 

• This wasn’t a good go-home show and the ULIII card looks like a flaming wreck, but maybe it’ll surprise me. As for LU in general, it seems to veer wildly between “pretty bad” and “very good.” What about a run of 3.25 – 3.75 shows, LU? That would make for a welcome run of stable goodness. 1.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

[zendragon]

I feel like the mixed tag is one of the better matches featuring a non-worker that I've seen

 

[SirSmUgly]

7 hours ago, zendragon said:

I feel like the mixed tag is one of the better matches featuring a non-worker that I've seen

 

It was certainly better than it had any right to be, and Santos showed some decent athleticism! 

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 37: “Ultima Lucha Tres, Part I” or The Long Dark: Act One

• We finally made it, folks.

 

• Recap: This Killshot/Dante Fox feud is hopefully coming to an end. If Dante Fox is such a badass, why didn’t he shoot his way out of that Taliban camp like his eternal frenemy Killshot managed to? Killshot should win this feud just based on going all Commando and not sitting there waiting to get beheaded like Dante did. Oh yeah, and there will be enough time for Famous B. to wrestle, and maybe even to manage stumbling to victory against, Texano, even considering that broken arm he’s sporting.

 

• Hey, I have that exact Lucha Underground shirt that Matt Striker is wearing at the desk! I love the mask logo, actually. It’s one of the coolest design things related to this whole endeavor. Striker and Vampiro run through the three fall types in the Hell of War bout between Killshot and Dante Fox. Match one is a First Blood Match. Match two is, um, a no DQ match, which seems like a de-escalation rather than an escalation of the falls, but okay. I suppose if they work a blood loss gimmick for the loser of the first fall (which should probably be Killshot), it could be interesting watching the winner try to exacerbate that blood loss with all manner of plundah while the loser desperately tries to fight back. Anyway, if the third fall is necessary, it’ll be a Medical Evac Match, which is the military-themed named for a regular ol’ Ambulance Match.

 

• But first! Famous B. (w/Brenda) attempts to bring Texano (or as B. pronounces it in his faux-Southern accent, TAY-HAN-OH) under his advisory. I wish this show would have given at least a bit of a nod to Dr. Wagner Jr. not joining B. in the Temple anymore. Is he still represented by B., but tearing it up in Mexico? Did they amicably part ways? I haven’t read much about the third season to avoid spoilers, but considering all the dropped threads, injuries, and strange narrative pacing, I sense that this season probably was just as intriguing behind the scenes as it was on screen, and possibly moreso.

 

• B. shoos away Melissa Santos (B., dismissively assessing the quality of her ring announcing: “Mediocre!”) and then addresses TAY-HAN-OH directly, noting that he’s still sporting a snapped arm and can’t possibly beat him, but that he made some calls to Dario and was allowed to choose a partner to make this “handicap match” an actual handicap match. Could it be Dr. Wagner Jr.? Yes, it is! I swear that I wrote that note about Wagner before B.’s reveal that he was in the house tonight. Hey, maybe if I request a Silver King appearance, that’ll happen too?!

 

• Wagner and Texano do most of the early work in this decent little opener. B. smacks Texano with his cast from his spot on the apron after Texano backdrops Wagner into the lights; Texano pursues him halfway up the stairs, rips his cast off his arm, slams that arm against the railing, and then beal tosses him all the way to the floor (!!!). OK, what a sequence that was! Wagner recovers in the meantime and grabs a trash can, then batters Texano with it as he turns his attention away from B.

 

• Brenda’s nasal, whiny voice is annoying (on purpose), but she’s also very funny. As she struggles to help B. up after that fairly wild bump: “I’m so crippled right now! I can’t help at all! It’s really bad!” She intoned “so crippled” in a Valley Girl dialect. It cracked me up. Wagner keeps control in the ring and tags B. in, who kicks at Texano while wailing, “Why didn’t you just sign a contract?!” Of course, he loses control, gets laid out with a pumphandle powerslam, and is covered for one, then two, and then Wagner casually makes the save. Texano goes at Wagner and catches him in his signature sit out powerbomb, but the ref is paying attention and notes that B. is the legal man and not Wagner, so he can’t make the count on the cover. Texano dutifully releases Wagner and walks over to B., sets him up for the powerbomb…and is distracted by Brenda, who climbs onto the apron and gets real flirty with him.

 

• Texano drops B. to go make out with Brenda instead. You can guess what happens next. Fine, I’ll tell you even though you almost certainly guessed without needing to read the next sentence: B. sneaks up behind Texano, manages a schoolboy with his feet on the ropes, gets three, and wins Texano’s contract. This match shouldn’t have been as fun on paper as it was, but it actually ended up being super-enjoyable. B. and Brenda are a reliably fun midcard act, and props to B. for that wild bump.  

 

• Matt Striker and Vampiro run down the card for the other three nights of Ultima Lucha Tres. Still no Trios Tag Title Match on this card. Dammit. As for the other matches, I think Penta, Azteca Jr., and Taya all need to go over in their matches. The second night of ULIII will feature Ivelisse Velez vs. Catrina and a Unique Opportunity Battle Royal with a bunch of midcarders and also Pimpinela Escarlata is back to participate in it! That rules. We’ll see what sort of monkey’s paw prize Dario Cueto offers to the winner of that bout. But the big match of next week’s part of ULIII, and really the only match they’ve built to that I actually care about from an emotional standpoint, is Rey Fenix vs. Marty “the Moth” Martinez in the Luchas de Apuestas. I hope everyone bleeds. Sorry to be barbaric, but yeah, lots of blood, lots of punching, Fenix trying not to die: That’s what I want out of that match.

 

• Welp, time for the Hell of War Match between Killshot and Dante Fox! The first fall is First Blood, or Primera Sangre as Melissa Santos puts it. This match type sounds hard as fuck in both Spanish and English. She actually sounds pretty excited when she notes the requirement to “make your opponent bleed,” enough so that it gets a tiny roar of a bloodthirsty pop from a few fans in the crowd. Do you think she was imagining her boyfriend Fenix taking a fork to Marty’s forehead as she said it? That’s what I’ve decided.

 

• Look, I don’t want to spend a lot of words talking about work that I don’t particularly like and that you already know I don’t particularly like. What if I mostly just told you when I liked something and what the finish was for each match? That seems like a reasonable way to talk about these matches. Look here, Fox does something a little silly, but a little neat: He dodges a series of Killshot chair shot attempts and then deliberately peeks his head between the rungs of a ladder that is balanced between the apron and the railing, baiting Killshot into playing Whack-a-Mole and missing; Fox then yanks the chair away on that last miss. See, that was a neat psychological detail that stuck with me more than his follow-up SSP onto Killshot as Killshot laid on the ladder. Fox being in control of himself enough to sucker in the more emotionally tilted Killshot is a nice way to build the story of this match, and sure enough, Vampiro supports this on color: “Fox is in control of every emotion and nerve in his body. The guy’s got no facial expressions. He’s full of focus right now.”

 

• I think that even though this match is really a series of big spots that feels more like two guys having a theme park ride of a match as opposed to two guys who hate one another enough to try and split each other’s foreheads, just that little bit of extra character work helps me, if not enjoy this match, feel that I’m anchored within it.

 

• But I do wish, if I can make a small critique that isn’t all bread and roses, that both men had decided to work this match differently. They’re doing stuff like legdrops from the railing to the apron, which wouldn’t split someone open, instead of punching each other with the point of their knuckles and using tools meant to puncture. Fox finally goes into the storage closet, grabs a pane of glass, and then yells at ref Rick Knox YOU’RE GONNA HELP ME OR YOU’RE GONNA BLEED, thus successfully enlisting (heh) Knox into helping him set up the glass balanced onto two chairs. They tease tossing one another through the glass for a couple of minutes, complete a couple of non-bloodletting big spots, and then set the whole contraption up with the chairs and the window pane in the ring. Fox tries a Super Foxcatcher, gets that blocked by Killshot, but then blocks Killshot’s Super Pedigree attempt and backdrops Killshot through the glass pane, which draws all sorts of specks of blood on Killshot’s back and awards Fox the first fall. Well, that fall was better than it had any right to be, at least [Killshot – 0; Fox – 1].

 

• The second fall is no disqualification, but the last fall was too, except with the added blood rule. They should have switched the order of the falls for the sake of proper escalation or worked a big blood loss angle in this fall where Killshot is pouring buckets out of his forehead. I mean, you can suffer blood loss from your back, but the theatrical nature of wrestling demands Killshot having his mask halfway torn off, blood pouring from the yanked-open eyeholes.

 

• The second fall starts mostly with Fox diving off of things onto Killshot as Killshot is laying on other things. The disconnect here is that I want a bloody brawl with taped fists and beer bottles being swung at heads, but we’re getting a Japanese light-tube-and-barbed-wire sorta dealie. Not typically my thing, word to Onita. Fox kicks out of a Killshot top-rope double-stomp at one and they do some WWE-esque acting to sell how angry Fox is before Fox takes a powerbomb into a barbed-wire board. Killshot follows up with a cradle piledriver into the shattered glass for three to tie it up [Killshot – 1; Fox – 1].

 

• A few GIs stand at ringside next to a stretcher and salute as the bell rings for the Medical Evac Match. I would guess that if this sort of match is your style, you will like the hell out of it, dear reader. This match exists as a reminder for me why a large chunk of my favorite Japanese pro wrestling happened in the ‘70s in All Japan rather than in FMW or Pro Wrestling NOAH or aughts and New Tens NJPW. I’ve already figured out quite a lot of what I like about pro wrestling and why, but this is a great match for reinforcing my personal taste in the grunt-and-groan game, as they apparently used to say in the 1940s according to this Gorgeous George Wagner biography that I just read.

 

• There are many spots. Everyone dives off of stuff. Each dive seems from a progressively higher point in the Temple than the last. I must say that I feel an emotional desire for Killshot to win, but honestly, it’s because I feel like Fox is overpushed and not because I actually care about Killshot. They fight onto the raised bandstand. Fox chokes Killshot with a cord and yells about being better than Killshot and everyone else in this stinkin’ arena; Killshot grabs a bottle while Fox does this and cracks Fox in the head, who does a movie villain deal where he woozily stumbles to the ledge of the bandstand, wavers, and then plummets through a conventiently-placed glass pane below. The commentators go full on Owen Voice and the crowd murmurs with exhaustion as Killshot slowly climbs down from the bandstand, hoists Fox over his shoulder, and stuffs him in the ambulance to win the fall and the match [Killshot – 2; Fox – 1]. Weirdly, that finish felt like an anticlimax, largely because the crowd was so quiet. This is the danger of doing so many high spots that you burn the crowd out at the climax of the match! In contrast, the big spot that worked the most for me on this show was B.'s beal toss bump because that was the only big bump of the match, so it especially stood out. 

 

• You know, this match, and this episode as a whole, wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but the main event evoked a style that just doesn’t work for me. There’s a lid on the score here, but I freely admit that this could be a 5/5 score for almost anyone else who might read this. I feel as though I should throw an extra half a LU-CHA chant just because everyone worked hard and did their best, so I will! 3.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Edited November 19, 2025 by SirSmUgly

[zendragon]

Pro wrestling is Homo-erotic enough as it is without referring to it as "two men engaged in the grunt and groan game"

[SirSmUgly]

2 minutes ago, zendragon said:

Pro wrestling is Homo-erotic enough as it is without referring to it as "two men engaged in the grunt and groan game"

What I'm learning is that the '40s in general were surprisingly homoerotic.

 

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 38: “Ultima Lucha Tres, Part II” or The Long Dark: Act Two

• Night one was watchable, which is a huge compliment from me considering that card. Night two looks like it'll likely be the best night of the four; let’s see if it plays out that way!

 

• Recap: Famous B.’s agency is now called Infamous Incorporated, I guess. That’s Texano’s new home; I hope he checks the fine print on whatever supplementary contact B. goads him to put his signature on! Also, Killshot finally vanquished his fellow veteran Dante Fox. As for tonight: Ivelisse Velez challenged Catrina to a ULIII match a long time ago – in the very first episode of this season, in fact – and hopes to get her first win at an Ultima Lucha event after losing her previous two matches as a direct result of Catrina’s intervention each time. Fenix also puts up his mask against Marty Martinez’s luscious locks. Oh, and Jeremiah Crane is still stepping out on his girl Ivelisse to try and bang her mortal enemy Catrina, but Catrina loves Fenix, but Crane thinks Catrina loves Mil, and Mil loves Catrina, but Mil and Crane don’t like one another, and meanwhile Fenix is in a relationship with Melissa Santos because that’s just how love is sometimes, man, it’s a mercurial mistress.

 

• Seedy backstage interstitial: We cut straight to Jeremiah Crane and Ivelisse having the sort of toxic breakup in the back somewhere that reminds me of my college days. Yep, this scene sure looks familiar. Crane, yelling over Ivelisse: MYAH MYAH MYAH MYAH, I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE SAYIN’, SHUT UP. This is the sort of drama which causes grocery shoppers nationwide to purchase up all the Orville Redenbacher off the shelves. Somehow, they avoid punching one another during this exchange – the closest we get is Ivelisse poking her finger forcefully into Crane’s chest before he sweeps her arm away and screams DON’T TOUCH ME. Ivie just wants to know who it is that Crane is breaking up with her to pursue instead, and after a pause, a deflection (“I’ve known her since I was a kid”), and a heavy eye roll, Crane admits that he’s leaving her to get with Catrina. He admits it in exactly these words: Y’KNOW WHAT, IT’S CATRINA. I’M IN LOVE WITH CATRINA, NOT YOU. I mean, this is such a spectacular relationship-ending meltdown on Crane’s part that 21-year-old me (that total dumbass) would be scribbling notes down for later, just in case. Wow, that guy Crane knows how to make sure that no matter who initiates the breakup, he’s going to make his ex feel the effects of that breakup for a long time, that’s what 21-year-old me would think. Someone should really sit that guy down and set him straight.

 

• You know when someone is so flabbergasted that they’ve been gravely insulted that they don’t even get mad, they just go quiet and suddenly calm down? This is what happens to Ivie after that reveal. She’s basically done with men entirely, which I think is probably good at this point because she’s picking the wrong guys for her and also she’s not the greatest partner herself as I recall from back in the first season. She decides to go kick the shit out of Catrina and then kick the shit out of Crane after that before turning to leave the room. OK, cool. She got in the last word, but that’s okay. This didn’t end in immediate violence. Maybe Crane can let her go get her rage out on Catrina; that release of rage could cause her to simmer down. Cooler heads could preva—oh, no, I forgot who we were talking about here. Crane quickly scans for the thing he could say right now to annoy her the most and comes up with YEAH, WALK AWAY, BITCH. Yep, that stops Ivie in her tracks. Crane laughs like she ain’t gonna do shit, but of course, he has miscalculated her; she kicks him hard enough to send him crashing back into a locker stall; the impact is such that he snaps the wood panel at its very back.

 

• It should be needless to say that I loved everything about it, but I’ll say it anyway. That was also the best thing I’ve ever seen Crane do under this or any other gimmick.

 

• After Matt Striker and Vampiro run through this card, we go to Melissa Santos for tonight’s opener, which is a Unique Opportunity Battle Royal. Said Unique Opportunity will be some bullshit rug-pull of a prize that Dario Cueto’s punk ass cooks up just for his own edification. Here are all the competitors in this battle royal: P.J. Black, Officer Joey Ryan, Ricky Mundo, Vinnie Masaro, Mascarita Sagrada, Argenis, Mala Suerte, Saltador, Paul London, Officer Cortez Castro Reyes, Son of Madness, Willie Mack, and Pimpinela Escarlata, who we haven’t seen since he was obliterated by the now-deceased Disciples of Death back in the first season (Season One, Show Thirty-One). Pimpi is the only one who gets a full entrance, and he milks that shit for everything it is worth. A guy tries to avoid the kiss. He does not avoid the kiss. Another guy dances with Pimpi and is fine with the kiss because what the fuck, it’s a famed exotico and you only live once, man.

 

• This is a standard battle royal but with lots of superkicks instead of clubbing forearms. Masaro goes out early; the Rabbit Tribe hoists up Son of Madness and tosses him right to the floor, and I guess that Madness wasn’t ever much of a threat to Son of Havoc at all, huh? Pimpi and Sagrada eliminate Reyes and Ryan at the same time. Boy, this match is flying. Pimpi bites London in the junk after he lewdly thrusts it in his direction, then eliminates him. Suerte is soon tossed, followed by Saltador due to the combined effects of the Pimpi/Sagrada superteam. Pimpi then eliminates himself while in the process of eliminating Argenis. Boy this match is a blip. Sagrada and R. Mundo both get eliminated, and Mack immediately hits a Mack Stunner on Black and tosses him to win after that. That was the length of a typical Nitro midcard match in 2000.

 

• Dario Cueto steps from his office and tells Mack that he has won a Trios Tag Championship shot at the Reptile Tribe next week. Neat, the showrunners remembered that those titles exist! The twist is that Dario Cueto gets to pick his partners, and much like Ole Anderson booking WCW in 1991, he decides to throw every black person in this company together in one group (at least when they’re not fighting each other, that is): Killshot and Dante Fox are Mack’s tag partners. You may recall that Killshot and Mack entered the Temple as trios tag partners (alongside the dearly departed off-screen Big Ryck). You also may recall that I was glad to make it through this edition of Ultima Lucha having finished with Killshot and Dante Fox on my screen after they had a decent enough match. Dario is now evil monkey paw-ing me. I demanded a trios tag match in multiple reviews. I typed the words “Fuck you, Lucha Underground” about not getting one. I even complained that they were running essentially three Killshot and Dante Fox matches on the first night, but they were not giving me a trios tag match. Dario, that motherfucker, that piece of shit, gave me my own Unique Opportunity. I get the trios tag title match on ULIII that I was looking for, but it involves Killshot and Dante Fox. Ain’t that some shit.

 

• Catrina (w/Mil Muertes, who is w/swank suit) demands that Ivelisse “come out, come out, wherever you are, BITCH.” Ivie calls herself the “baddest bitch in the building,” but Crane and Catrina don’t understand that it’s only okay if she calls herself that. Ivie runs out here and tackles Catrina, and then they end up outside the ring, where they chop the shit out of one another. Ivie rips off part of Catrina’s top and smirks. Catrina runs into Dario Cueto’s office and locks the door behind her.

 

• This is a nutty fucking match, man. I didn’t expect this sort of violence. Ivie goes around to the other door and tries to open it, but it too is locked. Well, at least until Catrina yanks it open and smashes a glass bottle over Ivie’s head. Dario, who was in the office the whole time, gets up, glances at the crowd, and declares all this senseless violence to be “beautiful.” Catrina agrees; she grabs another bottle and shatters it over Ivie’s head, then a third bottle. Ivie pops a gusher. What the fuck? I didn’t expect them to start making one another bleed. Catrina drags Ivie up the stairs by her hair, and this is the sort of straightforward violence that I expected from the Hell of War Match on night one.

 

• Catrina drinks the blood from Ivie’s face (!!!!!!), is smacked away by Ivie, and then stalks her into the stands, where Ivie kicks her in the neck, realizes that she’s bleeding, and then gets properly fired up. Catrina eats a few head bashes into the stairs and decides that she’s had enough of all that. She crawls toward a small box that Mil Muertes brought to the ring; it holds within the mystical stone that allows her to blit-blurt and other such freaky actions. Ivie pursues her and drives her back into the corner, but Catrina rebounds out of it and lands a spear.

 

• Last year, Catrina interceded in Ivelisse’s match against Taya. She hit a cradle neckbreaker on Ivie, and Taya made the cover off that impact to beat Ivie. I mention this because Catrina goes to her big move again to put Ivie away, but her cover only gets about 2.8. She decides to crawl back over to the box with the mystical stone; she opens the box, grabs the stone and tries to hit Ivie with it, but Ivie kicks her arm away and lands a spinebuster for two. The stone tumbles to the mat, landing within Ivie’s reach. Ivie points at it to signal her plan to the crowd, grabs it, and prepares to swing it at Catrina. Catrina desperately grabs at her arm and tries to pull the stone away (screaming, frustrated, upset: LET GOOOO), but Ivie doesn’t let go; she yanks her arm away, clobbers Catrina in the side of her melon with the stone, and then drills Cat with a DDT for three. This match was rad as FUCK. Holy shit, this was the best match on this show so far and might be the best match of this season. It’s been a long season, so I need to go back and check. I mean, Aztec Warfare is up there, so maybe it was the best non-Aztec Warfare Match. That was how a hate-filled feud should culminate: In a match that is nasty, brutish, and short. All that glass-and-barbed-wire shit Killshot and Dante Fox did on the previous episode, all the stage dives and tumbles from high places, and the match felt one-one hundredth as hateful as this match did.

 

• OK, as terrible a (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend as I was in my early twenties, I can tell you that all my fired slings and arrows, as provoking and mean as they may have been, were only of the verbal kind. I would (obviously, I hope) never swing a hammer at an ex’s twice-injured ankle that just recently healed. Now, Jeremiah Crane, on the other hand, that guy definitely would! And I know this because I just saw him do it to Ivie. She didn’t even get like two seconds to celebrate. Catrina crawls back into the ring, grabs her blit-blurt stone, and slides out while Crane triumphantly poses over Ivie's body. Marty Martinez is the biggest piece of shit in the Temple, but Jeremiah Crane is making a push to unseat him!

 

• Striker and Vampiro run down the matches for the next two nights of Ultima Lucha Tres. I will note that the Triple Threat Match between Brian Cage, Jeremiah Crane, and Mil Muertes for the Gauntlet of the Gods seems like anyone could win it; there are lots of potentially interesting narrative threads to be spun from any of those fellas managing to get their hands on that gauntlet.

 

• Melissa Santos sounds fired up for that creepy fuck Marty “the Moth” Martinez (w/Mariposa Martinez, lunchbox fulla plundah) to get his (probably) lice-ridden hair cut. Or, if Marty manages to knock of Fenix, she gets to see her boyfriend’s uncovered face, so there's a win even in a loss for her. Missy Santos gives Fenix a smooch upon his entry to the ring, and the crowd pops for it because they’re also romantics at heart. Striker, adding a bit of historical background to this Luchas de Apuestas bout, mentions a match that I just read about in that Gorgeous George biography that I reviewed in the Book Review thread, noting that this sort of mask vs. hair match has a history going back to the Destroyer vs. Gorgeous George mask vs. hair mask that happened at the very end of George's in-ring career. Neat!

 

• Fenix rolls the Moth to start; Mari grabs Fenix's ankle to stop his onslaught. Fenix gets free and goes back to rolling the Moth; Mari grabs Fenix's ankle again before he can launch off the top rop, allowing Marty to get up and leap onto the ropes, then land a super overhead belly-to-belly. Marty immediately takes the pad off a corner turnbuckle, and both men tease an uncovered buckle bonnk before Fenix kicks Marty off the apron and to the floor. He follows up with a nice dive, but Marty yanks Mari into the way and she takes the damage. This understandably pisses her off (shaking her head, disgusted: NO, UH-UH, NO, MARTY, NO). She hits the double-birds like a masked Stone Cold Steve Austin, signaling to Marty that she would prefer it if he got fucked, then leaves ringside.

 

• The Moth is kind of a mess as a human being; to quote Troy of Troy and Abed in the Morning (Nights!), it's like God spilled a person. Furthermore, Marty is especially a mess without the help of his sister. The Moth remonstrates with Mari, but she doesn't return to ringside. Then, to signal how much of a mess Marty is without his sister, he steps back into the ring…and immediately does a header after tripping over the middle rope. I mean, this guy is fucked, right? There’s no way he’s beating Fenix without Mari’s help. Fenix beat Mil Muertes in Muertes’s own specialty casket match! He should be able to handle this goof Marty. And yet, the Moth is such a sicko that you can never quite count him out. Even considering that Fenix just hit this goof with a running knee to the back of the head as Marty struggled to his knees.

 

• Marty manages to get boots up on a Fenix follow-up middle-rope moonsault, though, and he immediately works on Fenix’s mask, ripping at it and yelling crazily at Melissa Santos. He then splits Fenix’s melon by Alley Ooping Fenix face-first into the uncovered buckle. Fenix bleeds buckets; Marty licks some of it, then catches Fenix as Fenix springs at him and lands a TKO – no, sorry, lands a Diamond Cutter out of a fireman’s carry, that’s what it should be called even if it takes more words to describe – for a close two count.

 

• See, I told you. That crazy fuck Marty is just crazy enough to be eternally dangerous. As for Fenix, he is more than allowed to hit offense like, say,  rolling cutters on the apron because a) he’s bleeding a ton and b) he’s desperately fighting up from this nasty attack. Fenix is also selling the blood loss exquisitely, sucking in air and looking like he’s barely staying with us in the conscious world. Fenix is wrestling this match like someone who knows that he’s in deep trouble and has to keep trying to hit bombs before the Moth can corral him and finish him off. He’s like Rex Grossman as a Chicago Bear, trying to hit the deep route on every play. A Fenix Frog Splash gets two, but his follow-up springboard dropkick is met by a Moth counter-dropkick to the solar plexus to stop Fenix’s run of offense.

 

• The Moth, sensing victory is at hand, is spurred into an immediate follow-up. He sets up Fenix in the Dominator position, flips him out of it, and drills the Domibreaker, but only for 2.8. Fenix has new life (heh) and turns an Irish whip from Marty into a rebound cutter. He fires up, signaling a comeback, causing the crowd to explode with joy…and runs right into a Martinez clothesline. This match is pretty fucking great, by the way!

 

• Fenix’s selling can’t be undersold; he’s stumbling around with rubber legs, finding a way to intermittently fire up with crisp offense in bursts before going back to selling like he might pass out at any time. Fenix fires off a top-rope C-4…and gets 2.9. This crowd is fucking upset with Rick Knox’s count! They stew for a bit before remembering how smarky and with it they are, which is when they transition into a THIS IS AWESOME chant like a bunch of trained porpoises, but they let their guards down and really felt that last 2.9, which means that these fellas are doing some great work in there.

 

• Both men throw rights at each other from their knees, but Marty wins out. Fenix finds it within him to fire up once more and slap Marty in the face, so Marty bounces off the ropes and lands a curb stomp, but that gets only two. Marty is pressed, so it might be time to go to the ol’ lunchbox. Yep, he goes to the lunchbox and opens it, then takes out scissors (Melissa, from her spot at ringside: MARTYYYYY, WHY DO YOU HAVE SCISSORS?!?!). In what is an insanely violent spot full of naked hatred, Marty opens the scissors, stabs a blade into Fenix’s open head wound, and then moves the blade to his throat and prepares to carve right through it as best he can (!!!!!!!!!).

 

• Melissa Santos takes action in the only way she can, which is by mollifying this fucking creep. Santos climbs onto the apron, apologizing to Marty for all the trouble she caused by *checks notes* happening to exist as a person who Marty is attracted to; then, Melissa declares that she loves the Moth and they can run away together if he’ll just put down the goddam scissors! This pulls Marty away from Fenix; he walks over to Melissa, puts down the scissors, and then suddenly lifts her over the top rope by her hair. She screams and slaps him, then punts him in the balls. That distraction gives Fenix enough time to get up, land another running knee strike, and hit a springboard 450. Melissa dives on top to help Fenix hold Marty down for three. Was this not the dopest shit ever, or at least the dopest shit since the last match? Melissa scrambles for the mic and declares Fenix the winner with a sort of crazed-sounding triumph in her voice.

 

• Marty doesn’t want to get his hair cut, so he rolls on out of the ring. Mariposa walks to the top of the stairs and calls Marty toward her, voice soothing in its pitch, then comfortingly embraces him. Melissa: WHERE ARE YOU GOING, MARTY? DON’T BE A PUSSY! *whispers*  I think it’s okay if she says it. Marty’s like, Nah, I’m good, but Mari is still secretly mad on account of how poorly Marty treated her earlier, so she reveals that her kindness to him is a ruse! Mari grabs a chair and clatters Marty in the head with it, then handcuffs him to the railing. Huh, she even prepared a little barber’s table and hands Melissa a pair of scissors to start the fun. Melissa struggles to hack through the Moth's hair, and I think maybe they should get her some electric clippers. Marty freaks out. Like dude, it’ll grow back. Probably. Ah, there are the electric clippers! Fenix grabs them and starts shaving. Melissa, imparting a lesson to this dipshit Marty: I TOLD YOU, MARTY. I TOLD YOU TO STOP. She did tell you to stop, Marty, many times, in fact, and now you’re losing your hair because you didn’t leave her alone. It's cruel, but fair. 

 

• Lucha Underground is better when it talks. Lucha Underground is also better when it is full of blood and romance. Lucha Underground is undeniably better when it is full of blood and romance. 5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

[zendragon]

Reading that makes me hope Marty gets another run somewhere

[Ramo2653]

I know he had a really bad back injury that kept him out of wrestling for bit. But looks like he's been working pretty consistently in the Mountain States indies the last few years. He did a few Dark shots in 2021 when they were shooting out of Dalys place and worked ROH when they came to Utah in 2023. I'd assume anyone who wanted to get a look has already at this point.

Also he was a Tough Enough guy back in the day, competing in the same season as Ivelisse and Son of Havoc. That season also had the segment where Austin asked Cameron her favorite match and she said Melina vs. Alicia Fox and Austin just does the human version of the blue screen of death.

[zendragon]

Did anyone ever follow up with her and ask why that was her favorite? Not knocking her saying that cause I can think of many really enjoyable matches that aren't Savage v Steamboat at WM3

[Ramo2653]

She was a new fan and that was one of the first matches that she saw that connected with her. Which makes sense in the context of being a woman and a minority so seeing a Black woman and a Puerto Rican woman face off in a featured match is notable.

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 39: “Ultima Lucha Tres, Part III” or The Long Dark: Act Three

• I guessed that the second night of this show would be the best, and I suspect that my guess will turn out to be correct!

 

• Recap: Killshot beat Dante Fox in the Hell of War on night one, but is going to tag with him – and Willie Mack – against the Reptile Tribe for the Trios Tag Team Championship tonight. Meanwhile, Sexy Star is rounding out her feud with the Worldwide Underground by targeting the woman who helped cost her the Lucha Underground Championship in Taya Valkyrie, and Pentagón Dark and Son of Havoc had a terrible double-pin finish in their Gift of the Gods Match that led Dario Cueto to book them in a Ladder Match for the Gift of the Gods belt to definitively settle things.

 

• Matt Striker and Vampiro run down tonight’s card.

 

• Sexy Star tries to outlast Taya Valkyrie and become the Last Luchadora Standing in the opener. Taya and Star have used brass knux on one another in the weeks leading up to this show, including Taya first introducing them as a way to help Johnny Mundo lift the LU Championship off of her, and Taya has a pair hanging from a chain around her neck, and she waggles them in Star’s face at the beginning of the match. Star reveals her own pair of knux that she has hidden under her top, and after Star kicks Taya’s pair of knux away, they leap at each other. Star knocks Taya to the floor, but when she runs across the apron and tries to hit a seated senton, Taya catches her in powerbomb position and smashes her into the raised guardrail.

 

• Is Star wearing a mouthpiece? She doesn’t look like herself underneath her mask. Oh, hey, just as I typed that, Striker mentioned that she is. Taya bashes Star’s head into the desk, but she wipes out on a rolling splash and takes out a bunch of chairs. Star walks over as Taya gets to her feet and they slap each other in the face as hard as they can a few times. Star slaps harder and ends up rubbing Taya’s head across a grate; Taya is busted wide open as a result. Wow, lots of blood on these shows.

 

• I should like this match more than I do, but this is the third straight match with blood, and on top of it, Star uses a bottle over Taya’s wounded forehead, but all this stuff was fresher and more dramatic in the previous night’s matches. This is objectively a pretty good brawl, especially when they throw forearms or chop one another as hard as they can. Star takes three to the chest and just stands there, biting down on the mouthpiece in pain. I bet that if you had a week to reset after the previous show, this would have been more effective, but I saw night two only 48 hours ago, and it’s still fresh in my head. I still feel somewhat emotionally exhausted by it. But I’m not going to be mad at these two women hatefully slapping the shit out of each other!

 

• Both women fight into the stands; Star is sitting on top of the railing as she takes a chop from Taya. She fires off a chop in turn and then steps over the railing and onto a stand with a cameraperson shooting the action taking up most of the space. There’s not a lot of room to operate, and after Taya follows her onto the platform, they quickly topple from it and through a table that Taya set up earlier in the match. The ref starts his ten count, and Star technically beats it, but I think her knee was actually still down and the ref should have slowed his count so as not to expose the finish. Huh, the brass knuckles didn’t come into play at all during that match. This was solid, but it didn’t wow me. Partially because I’ve seen better of the same type of bloody brawl one show ago and partially because there was some solid violence in it, but they teased the knux coming into greater play since they were a big part of the run-up to this feud-ender, and they didn’t follow through.

 

• The Reptile Tribe (Drago, Pindar, and Vibora, w/Kobra Moon) defends the Lucha Underground Trios Tag Championship against the motley crew of Willie Mack, Killshot, and Dante Fox. The latter two men are all taped up after the bloodsport they engaged in against one another back on night one. Fox immediately blind tags Willie Mack and limps toward Pindar while the crowd chants reverently for him. Fox has to stop limping to do overelaborate springboard ranas and all, but he at least sells the moves as done with sudden bursts of adrenaline flowing; he lands after the rana and immediately sells his own back injuries from the Hell of War bout.

 

• This sort of trios tag is exactly the type of match where Killshot and Fox (and Mack, for that matter) working their fast-paced style is perfect; they tag in and out, doing these moves in short bursts, and the mandatory FIP segment restrains them a bit and forces them to do some selling. Fox and Killshot move at a good pace even despite intermittent selling of their previous injuries. Killshot does a solid job in that face-in-peril role, and I like that Fox still can’t stand Killshot, but he also really wants to win a title, so he ends up encouraging his constant frenemy from his spot on the apron.

 

• Killshot makes a hot tag to Willie Mack, who hops into the ring and lands boots and clotheslines on his opponents in a frenzy. It’s a very good hot tag. He takes out Pindar with a flying knee and Drago with a Samoan Drop, then kips up and hits a standing moonsault on Drago. Things are looking good for this trios team that I am now calling Always Bet on Black until and unless they are given a formal name by the showrunners, but Vibora hops in and kills his run. Fox and Killshot work together to attack him, but he disposes of them and then, though Mack recovers and attacks, Pindar jumps Mack from behind.

 

• Things are a mess at this point and it seems like it’s anybody’s game. Fox dives onto Pindar; Drago launches himself onto Fox. Killshot prepares to dive even though he can see Vibora standing right there watching him and gets a lariat for his troubles. Vibora prepares to dive next, but Mack runs at him, they criss-cross on the ropes, and Vibora ends up cleared out by a Pounce (period!). Mack and Killshot scramble back into the ring and communicate that it’s time to dive; both men do, and we get a shot of Fox’s gnarly-looking back, the wrap sagging to his waist and exposing a lower lumbar without much skin on it after all the bumps into glass that he took on night one. Gross!

 

• This leaves Pindar and Mack in the ring. Pindar hits Mack with a running front kick. Kobra Moon tries to get Pindar to use the manacles that she leads Drago out with, but Pindar waves her off because he thinks that he’s got this. He doesn’t got this! Fox catches Pindar as Pindar goes up top and hits him with a C-4. Mack scores a Mack Stunner and Killshot follows with a top-rope double stomp. Mack dives on Pindar for the cover just like the wrestlers in WWF WrestleFest do. That was some true video game shit, but in a good way. Anyway. The ref counts three, and Always Bet on Black are your new LU Trios Tag Team Champions. Solid action! Fox ponders celebrating with Mack and Killshot, who are holding up their belts together, and then decides, What the hell, why not. The crowd pops loudly for his decision. Fox is extremely over as a babyface in the Temple, so they might as well just have him make up with Killshot now. I have to give Fox and Killshot credit and quite a few toughness points for going out there, hitting big spots, and re-opening every wound they gave themselves in the Hell of War match.

 

• While the Gift of the Gods belt is hoisted in the air in preparation for the main event, Striker and Vampiro hype the fourth and final night of Ultima Lucha Tres, which will be double the run time of a typical episode, probably because they’ve got to rush us through a ton of storyline that should be coming to a head by the end of this season. I have seen the screencap for the first episode of season four; I know that Luis Fernandez-Gil shows up in an absurd wig and fake mustache, looking like an ersatz Dr. Wily and (presumably, as I haven't actually seen any of season four) playing Dario’s dad Antonio. That means that something catastrophic must happen to Dario at the end of this season which either causes his death or (what I’m going to headcanon) drives him into hiding and leads him to put on this very stupid, pencil-thin disguise and pretend to be his father. As for night four in the ring, I presume that there is a decent chance that the winner of the upcoming night three main event will be immediately cashing in his Gift of the Gods belt and entering the Prince Puma vs. Johnny Mundo Career vs. Title Match and turning it into a Triple Threat. Will Puma’s career still be on the line when and if this happens? Who knows. I don’t expect to see Puma back in the fourth and final season, but who knows? 

 

• Son of Havoc is very over with the fans in the Temple, but even considering how over he is, he doesn’t garner quite the elated pop that Pentagón Dark does when Melissa Santos announces his name. Havoc dives onto Penta like thirty seconds in. He bashes Penta into ladders and the commentary desk. I mean, he washes this dude. Penta’s not in the game at all. It’s only because Havoc takes time to enjoy the cheers of the crowd and then slowly slide the ladder into the ring that Penta can recover and leverage the top of the ladder into Havoc’s face.

 

• There is a lot of ladder grabbing and laying around in this portion of the match. Penta ends up tossing a bunch of ladders in the ring, and just as I recall The Public Enemy getting buried by a bunch of fan-tossed chairs in that famed ECW incident, Striker also recalls it on commentary. There are six ladders in this ring, and when Havoc gets up and hits the Muta springboard elbow into Penta and crashes him into one of these ladders, a significant portion of the crowd spitefully boos him.

 

• All those ladders, and Havoc ends up sidestepping a Penta charge and helping him along headfirst into a chair wedged into the corner. Havoc uses that chair to bash a ladder sitting on its side into Penta’s nutsack. Striker: “How can Pentagón climb if his loins are compromised?!” I would be shocked to find out that Michael Cole hasn’t said that exact line on some godforsaken WWE PPV from the past decade that barely anyone remembers even happened. Anyway, this match is fucking boring. They do a couple spots, and then someone lays around so that the other guy can go grab another weapon or three to slowly set up in the ring. Unlike his lil’ bro Rey Fenix, who works spotfests in regular TV matches because that’s what the fans want to see, but who can slow things down and work exquisitely from underneath when he needs to, Penta only really does one thing in every match. So does Havoc, sorta. These two fellas are not very versatile.

 

• Havoc prepares to hit an SSP onto a ladder with Penta underneath it. That should take them both out in kayfabe. Anyway, Penta gets up and quickly lands a counter cutter to cut Havoc off. Then, it’s time for Penta to set up a giant obstacle course. We could have taken two minutes from this main event and tacked it onto the opener so that Taya and Star could have one final sequence centered around the remaining pair of brass knuckles that Star didn’t kick away at the beginning of their match, couldn’t we have? Meanwhile, this match is just a bunch of dudes setting up a whole-ass aisle at Lowe’s and occasionally doing semi-contrived spots onto the hardware that they’ve carefully positioned. They take a couple of minutes to set up four chairs and then work a careful counter-counter-counter sequence while standing on them before Penta hits Havoc with a package piledriver onto the opened chairs.

 

• Penta could just climb up the apron and get the belt, but instead, he sets up yet another ridiculous contraption. At least Striker and Vampiro criticize him for taking years to set up multiple ridiculous contraptions just to do more unnecessary violence when he could have instead maybe won the match. Penta sets up a whole deal with a table and some ladders and puts Havoc on the table, but before he does a moonsault onto Havoc, he changes his mind and climbs for the belt instead; of course, Havoc gets off the table and grabs his leg to slow him down. Penta working a “too in love with violence to efficiently win matches” gimmick is one thing, but Penta working an “easily distracted and too dumb to focus” gimmick is entirely another. Anyway, Penta tosses Havoc through a table and then climbs up and wins the belt anyway. I can safely say that this was one of the lesser ladder matches that I’ve been un-blessed to see.

 

• Seedy dojo interstitial: Dark Master Vampiro essentially tells Prince Puma not to fuck it all up when he faces Johnny Mundo next week. He sends his charge to prepare and is left alone in the room, where he gets a message from a shadowy voice: YOU HAVE DONE WELL. A sinister-looking Vampiro thanks HIS master for the compliment. Was his master mayhaps the Black Scorpion? It sure sounded like it. Is Vampiro’s master going to do a magic trick in which he turns Prince Puma into an actual puma, thereby utterly shocking Johnny Mundo and also Sting (again)?

 

• The main event was quite bad, but the first two matches were solid. I oddly don’t care about Vampiro both being a dark master and having his own dark master. After the initial dark master reveal at Ultima Lucha Uno, there was no way they were going to keep up that level of intrigue unless they really pushed the Two Faces of Hodginkson angle they sort of had going for the first half of the second season, and they unfortunately dropped that. Anyway, this show was ultimately watchable enough, and I’m taking on a quarter-chant to the final score just because everyone in the first two matches really worked their asses off and took a ton of punishment to put on enjoyable matches, even if some of the match layout in the opener didn’t completely land for me. 3 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

 

[SirSmUgly]

Season 3, Show 40: “Ultima Lucha Tres, Part IV” or The Long Dark: Act Four

• We march on not only to the end of this season, but toward the end of the Temple in only 23 more episodes. Obviously, we’re ending on cliffhangers for a lot of these long-running storylines, but there is still so much to do in just 23 episodes of television that I’m curious to see how this show handles the compressed time that remains for it to push along toward the Aztec War – or the aversion of said war via the uniting of the seven tribes – that it obviously was supposed to climax with.

 

• Recap: So, if you’ll recall, there’s a whole deal where Matanza Cueto killed Black Lotus’s parents, but Dario Cueto told her that El Dragon Azteca Sr. did, and Lotus took Azteca Sr. on a trip to the Permadeath Count, and then she escaped back to Hong Kong without even getting her comeuppance once, which is bullshit even if she’s injured, have her get killed off-screen or something because her escaping any consequences was UNJUST, I say, completely UNJUST, and anyway Rey Misterio Jr. has been training up El Dragon Azteca Jr., who confronted Lotus about possibly killing Azteca Sr. at Ultima Lucha Dos, but then Pentagón Dark jumped into the middle of their match like Reptile cutting in on your bout in the first Mortal Kombat game, and the long and short of it is that Azteca Jr. finally started targeting Matanza once his snapped arm healed and he got done trying to get revenge on Penta, and of course, he got his ass kicked the first time, but maybe this time he can win? I sure hope so. Yes, I wrote that run-on sentence on purpose.

 

• Still on recap: Catrina needs to get the Gauntlet of the Gods to Captain Mama Vasquez post-haste so that she can exchange it for the other half of the Piedra Immortal, but Brian Cage stands in her way. She’s got a great two-in-three chance to get it back tonight, though, as both Jeremiah Crane and Mil Muertes would gladly hand it over to her if asked. Agent Winter certainly doesn’t want to see Cage win it back, either! Also, Prince Puma puts his career on the line against Johnny Mundo’s Lucha Underground Championship. If Mundo wins, that means that the first three seasons of this show will end with a heel Lucha Underground Champion being victorious at the show-ending season. Heel victory fatigue is already real, and that would just deepen it. This show needs to crown the amoral babyface-who-acts-like-a-heel Penta as quickly as possible.

 

• Matt Striker and Vampiro introduce what is a double-the-length episode of Lucha Underground for the final show of the season. Vampiro is in a suit tonight. He is quite proud of how well he cleaned up for this event. He and Striker hype tonight’s big main event before sending things to the ring.

 

• Melissa Santos stands inside the steel confines of an unforgiving cage and lays out the stipulations: This match can be won by pinfall, submission, or escape. Escape would be anti-climactic in this match as El Dragon Azteca Jr. has pledged to destroy Matanza Cueto (w/Dario Cueto), and Matanza likes destroying people as a matter of course. Azteca starts the match by fucking MOONSAULTING off the top of it and onto Matanza. What the fuck? This gets a subdued HOLY SHIT chant because this crowd has seen it all. They barely react compared to how they should have reacted. I feel bad for the wrestlers who tape their matches late in these big shows because the Temple crowd can’t possibly keep up their energy when every match is wild spots and blood and wild, bloody spots.

 

• Unfortunately for Azteca, his efforts leave him getting his ass kicked after Matanza recovers. This crowd is so burned out for Azteca’s comeback…until Matanza overhead release belly-to-belly suplexes Azteca through the fucking cage door. He bumps all the way out to the floor. That was a wild fucking spot. I’ve never seen something that crazy. Well, Azteca technically escaped the cage, but Dario cuts Missy Santos off and now declares the match only winnable by pinfall or submission because that cage escape was a cheapie and also Azteca Jr. has to face his “destiny,” which seems like an ominous claim.

 

• I mean, on the one hand, the point of a cage match is that you can’t escape the cage, right? The big draw of this match for me was wondering how Azteca would survive in a confined space with a walking, breathing Aztec god. On the other hand, that spot to bust open the cage was cool and also, they’re playing it like they will corral these two back into the cage as soon as the techs can fix it. In the meantime, Matanza errs by trying to pop Azteca up into the air for a Samoan Drop at ringside; Azteca turns that into a tornado DDT to put Matanza down for a second, then walks over and attacks Dario Cueto, ripping his tux jacket off and trying to tear his dress shirt open. I see Azteca is still easily fucking distracted from his mission, which has been “destroy Matanza” from the fucking jump. Matanza quickly runs over, saves Dario from the attack, and goes back to giving Azteca a shitkicking at ringside.

 

• The techs fix the panel, so Matanza guides said shitkicking back into the ring. I don’t see any way that Azteca can survive this mauling; Matanza alternates between gouging and grinding Azteca’s face and tossing him through the air. Azteca attempts a rana, oesn’t get it, and holy shit, Black Lotus shows up, climbs to the top of the cage, and crossbody blocks Azteca, who then gets up and eats a Wrath of the Gods for three. Dario rips the mic from Melissa Santos and announces Matanza’s victory, but as Matanza climbs up the side of the cage for some reason, Lotus slips underneath him and hits a powerbomb, then attacks Dario, screaming in his face that he is a LIAR as far as the story he fed her about Azteca Sr. killing her parents when Matanza really did it! Duh. Dario begs off until he sees Matanza rise to his feet behind Lotus and then gleefully admits that he’s a liar. Matanza lumbers up, goozles Lotus, and smashes her with a Wrath of the Gods. Dario leans down and reasserts that he lies all the time right in the unconscious Lotus’s face. I guess we’re setting up for an Azteca Jr./Lotus team-up even though Lotus was too dumb to immediately attack Matanza and apologize to Azteca Jr. for obstructing him last season? I don’t know. This finish was strange.

 

• Alright, the Triple Threat Match for the Gauntlet of the Gods is next, and we’re only eighteen minutes into this show. Either the main event is going thirty-plus minutes (please NO) or we are going to get a huge narrative dump or two somewhere in this show. Jeremiah Crane is out to the ring first, followed by Brian Cage and then Mil Muertes (w/Catrina). Dario has put a fresh shirt on before this match; he steps out of his office looking reasonably made up once more and proclaims that whoever deserves to win the gauntlet will do so via elimination rather than the match going to one fall, which immediately makes this a more promising match than the vast majority of triple threats.

 

• Now, I want to clarify that “more promising than the vast majority of triple threats” doesn’t necessarily mean “good.” Everyone trades strikes while Striker gets over Mil as a dangerous dude by pointing out that he put the much-missed King Cuerno out of the Temple at Ultima Lucha Dos. This match is what it is; there are a lot of moves and spots done in quick order. If you are impressed by beefy dudes working at this pace, which I usually am, there is something aesthetically novel about things; then again,  this sort of speedy pace is so normalized in this company that even the effect of Cage or Mil running at one another isn’t what it was two seasons ago. I think Jeremiah Crane is already busted way open; yep, he’s bleeding buckets. So many buckets have been bled at Ultima Lucha Tres, man. This effect peaked on the second night, though. The final two matches on that show felt like there was legit hatred involved in the feuds, so the blood had a greater effect.

 

• Mil puts Crane through a table and then hits a tilt-a-whirl headscissors on Cage at ringside, followed by a big uppercut, and this burst of offense was enjoyable to watch! Mil rolls Cage back in the ring and hits a low-release powerbomb for two. Crane eventually makes it back into this match and stabs Cage in the top of the head with a bunch of bamboo skewers, then DDTs him onto the top of his head. Well, that’s nauseating, and not in a way that I find entertaining. Crane grabs his trusty “Ivelisse-ankle-breaking” hammer and then wanders into the storage hallway to find a pane of glass. OK, I’m out. We already saw this sort of Onita-style deathmatch on night one between Killshot and Dante Fox, and at least that was warranted because of their long-term heated storyline over Fox being stranded in Afghanistan to die. I am really not into any of what is happening right now.

 

• This is what happens when your house style is built around escalating and escalating and escalating some more; you have guys shoot harming themselves for no fuckin’ reason. I mean, look, to some degree, pro wrestling is a physically harmful act. Hell, I enjoyed the blood in the matches on night two even though I recognize blading or busting oneself open hardway on purpose as a barbaric act in many ways. However, there is a line for me, and this match crossed it. Maybe I could get there if there had been more extreme hatred built up between all these wrestlers over a longer period of time, but this just seems like escalating violence for the sake of escalating violence. Anyway, Cage suplexes Crane off the apron and through a table on the floor that already has Mil laying across it, then puts Crane back in the ring and eliminates him by pinfall with a Weapon X.

 

• After a break, we come back to Cage and Muertes doing more weapon-based shit. I’m not sure that this show needed to be this long. This match could have been much shorter. Anyway, Cage hits Mil with an elbow, but Crane runs back out here and hits Cage in the back with a chair. Cage dispatches of Crane, but Mil hooks Cage's arm as Cage turns back to him and tries for a lariat; he hits a quick Flatliner onto the chair that Crane dropped in the ring for three. Catrina gives Cage the Lick and then raises her mystical stone before walking over to Dario, who stands outside his office door, and grabs the gauntlet. She should blit-blurt outta here and right to Mama Vasquez at her LAPD office…but she doesn’t? She lets Mil wear the gauntlet? That seems like a mistake!

 

• Not that it matters because as Mil strikes the mat with the gauntlet, the lights go out…and when they come back up, King Cuerno is in the ring! He kicks Mil in the face, body slams Catrina, and then goes back over to Mil and clubs him down. Cuerno hoists Mil up and drills him with a Thrill of the Hunt. Well, every hunter needs a trophy, right? In this case, Cuerno takes the gauntlet as his trophy. Huh. I didn’t see that one coming!

 

• Seedy questionable art-house documentary interstitial: We see the completed documentary that Taya has spent parts of this season shooting. I mean, on the one hand, this is a cool payoff, but on the other hand, Mundo on top has been so blasé. I find him stale even though his work has been perfectly solid. Mundo talks about how great he is while Taya also talks about how great he is on voice over. The rest of the Worldwide Underground fawns over him. You know what it is. There’s a segment where Dario taunts him for being jealous of Prince Puma that is quickly replaced with a FOOTAGE NOT FOUND screen. I thought about offering up a chuckle at that part, but decided against it. This segment was perfectly solid and my feelings about it or the work of the people in it do not accurately communicate its subjective baseline of perfectly reasonable quality.

 

• Shit, there are 45 minutes left in this show as we go to the main event. This is going to go thirty minutes, isn’t it? I note that Prince Puma wears a mixture of his good-guy orange-with-black highlights and his shady-tweener-guy black-with-orange highlights on his tights. I like the gradient design on those tights. Johnny Mundo walks down to the ring alone. I am moderately surprised that Pentagón Dark didn’t immediately cash in his Gift of the Gods belt at the end of last week to make this a Triple Threat.

 

• I suppose that if I’m correct and Puma is off to be Ricochet again, it makes perfect sense for Puma and Mundo’s rivalry to get a definitive ending. I will get a wry kick out of Puma and El Dragon Azteca Sr., who had seemed to be fated to come together as a seemingly powerful duo in the first two episodes of the first season, either being dead or banished from the Temple by the end of the third year if Puma loses. I feel that this show needed to have a five-season commitment with a clear ending sketched out and that they needed to allow wrestlers on this show the freedom to take indie bookings when not shooting, and we could have had a stew going instead of a, um, pot pie of dropped angles? Whatever. 

 

• I’m not talking about this match much because it immediately ends up with them outside and diving onto and off of stuff. Puma pulls off a wild athletic feat by jumping from the railing all the way onto the apron and then double springboarding into a successful moonsault back to the floor. Puma’s an awesome gymnast, and that reads as a snide comment, but I don’t mean it that way (at least this time). He really is an insane athlete. But man, I’m just so bored by this. There are 35 fucking minutes left in this show. This match is probably running another fifteen or twenty of those minutes. Ultima Lucha Tres was too long, man, and that it peaked for me about two hours worth of show ago isn’t helping.

 

• Imagine the type of match these two men would normally have, full of their typical spots and flips and with a bunch of two-counts that I don’t bite on because I know better in general, but also because they’re wrestling a match in the LU style that demands that only finishers or maybe the occasional blatant fuck finish on the heel's part will end a match. And on cue, there’s a ref bump, *sigh*. The Worldwide Underground intercedes and helps Mundo beat up Puma. Strangely, Taya steers backup ref Rick Knox into the ring even though Knox sees everyone cheating. He counts Mundo's pinfall attempt anyway. It only gets two. They beat Knox down for only counting two.

 

• Mundo and Black prep a Con-Chair-To, but Angelico makes another return from injury and clears the heels out. Mundo swings at him, but accidentally crowns Taya instead. Angelico dives onto Mundo and then a revived Rick Knox does a shitty struggle slingshot plancha onto the Worldwide Underground. Puma hits a springboard 450, but only gets 2.9 on Mundo because it’s not his finisher. Alas, there is more of this match to go.

 

• We go to break and then come back to both guys punching each other in the middle of the ring. There are more spots before the big spot that ends the bout, including Puma kicking out of an End of the World. The crowd chants FIGHT FOREVER. Yeah, it sure feels like they are. Finally, Puma drops a 630 Senton Bomb on Mundo and wins the match and the gold, which I am pleased about because a) Puma actually won a match at Ultima Lucha, finally, and b) for once, a babyface ends an Ultima Lucha holding the LU Championship. Vampiro looks awfully proud of his charge. Dario Cueto steps out of his office and congratulates Prince Puma on keeping his LU career and becoming the first two-time LU Champion…before dropping the bomb that the night is not over and that there is one more match to come (Puma: WHAT THE FUCK?!; Temple crowd: CERO MIEDO! *clap clap clapclapclap* CERO MIEDO! *clap clap clapclapclap*).

 

• Dario Cueto notes that he’s breaking his “I need a week to promote a Gift of the Gods cash-in” rule because, as he says directly, “rules are like bones; they are made to be broken.” Anyway, Pentagón Dark has cashed in his Gift of the Gods belt to face Prince Puma immediately even though Puma took a ton of damage while defeating Johnny Mundo. Dario also adds a stip in which the winner leaves this show with the gold and the loser leaves this show without employment in Lucha Underground and thus they finally get to move the fuck on to WWE already, you’re being let out of your contract, so you can quit asking us to leave already, Ricochet, goddam.

 

• Well, at least a babyface will still end an Ultima Lucha holding the LU Championship, no matter how morally dubious a babyface that he is! Penta snaps Puma’s arm about forty-five seconds in, so it’s immediately going poorly for the champ. Trainers swarm the ring and give Puma some tape for his freshly snapped elbow; Puma tries to fight valiantly through one of Penta’s two killer moves (and Vampiro tries to focus on this match between his two mentees), but it’s all for naught. I do appreciate Puma trying to sell the arm injury by losing his grip and having to regain it, but he also lands on his arm after hitting an SSP, which I think he'd try to avoid, right? His offensive array is just hard to hit without the use of both arms. I think Penta probably should have just mowed Puma down after the arm snap, but that arm snapping spot should have been placed later in the match.

 

• I get a kick out of this crowd mostly being okay with Puma going away. That’s the funniest thing about this match. He has his fans, but the crowd obviously has a preference. Vampiro gets up from his spot at the desk and yanks Penta out of the way of a Puma 630 attempt – diss! – and then Penta superkicks Puma and lands a cradle piledriver – double diss! – and then a package piledriver for three after Puma kicks out of the previous piledriver – triple diss! Striker is mad at Vampiro – DON’T COME BACK OVER HERE – but whatever, man. Anyway, Vampiro and Penta were in it together the whole time! Again! Striker: PRINCE PUMA, WE WISH YOU THE BEST LUCK IN YOUR FUTURE ENDEAVORS! Does WWE still use that language when they release someone? The crowd claps for Puma on his way out, at least. Puma gins up a few tears as he makes the long walk out, but you know he’s thinking about how he can get some of that WWE main event money in a couple of years if he can just sustain his first big push. Penta grabs a mic and celebrates in the ring with a typical Penta promo. Vampiro is happy, but the crowd may be happier.

 

• Seedy end-of-season montage interstitial: Prince Puma leaves the arena as both a former champion and a former LU employee. He takes his mask off and drops it on the ground before walking away. The good guys who are trying to stop this whole Aztec war dealie are dwindling to practically nothing!

 

• King Cuerno sits in his den and contemplates the Gauntlet of the Gods that he hasn’t even taken possession of for its power; it sits in a case so that he can admire the prize that he earned from his successful hunt.

 

• Sexy Star signs autographs after the show when a girl walks up and brings her a present. The creepy little girl hands it over and then whispers “She hasn’t forgotten about you” into Star’s ear. Star opens up the gift box, and you guessed it, there’s a tarantula in the box. Star screams. I had wondered if they’d forgotten about that tiny little plot point!

 

• The Rabbit Tribe abducted Mascarita Sagrada, if you’ll recall, and now they bow to him as their king, claiming that he is the White Rabbit. Sagrada protests that he is not the White Rabbit, but that he can lead them to the TRUE White Rabbit. He marches off; the tribe members gladly follow him. 

 

• Rey Fenix and Melissa Santos hop into Fenix’s car and drive off; in the background, Catrina walks with mystical stone in hand and gazes at their car as it pulls away. Jeremiah Crane also sees the car drive off from his spot on the roof. Imagine how he'd feel if he knew that the guy Catrina loves was actually in that car!

 

• OK, I didn’t expect this callback. So, remember Daga, the non-descript midcarder whom Kobra Moon stalked for a little while? We last saw him at Ultima Lucha Dos (Season Two, Show Twenty-Five), losing a Gift of the Gods title match much to Kobra’s lament. The next time he was mentioned was when Kobra threatened Drago by claiming that Daga was “ripped apart by Lord Pindar” and that Drago might be at risk of the same grisly death (Season Three, Show Ten). Daga appears here, alive and (maybe?) well, contrary to Kobra's claim, and is wearing a light mustache and goatee of EVIL while holding a sword. Pindar failed Kobra in the Trios Tag Team Match on night three, so she has her lizard war general executed by Daga via beheading; a chained Drago watches this and seems to be re-thinking his affiliation with Kobra Moon’s crazy murderous ass. Oh, excuse me: Crazy murderous royal ass. Seriously, Kobra’s basically a masked Mary Tudor. Permadeath Count: 12 (Bael, Konnan, El Dragon Azteca Sr., The Three Nerdsketeers, Trece, Barrio Negro, Mister Cisco, Siniestro de la Muerte, Councilman Delgado, Pindar).

 

• Vampiro tells his Dark Master, who I am now calling his Darker Master, that he’s fulfilled his orders to rid the Temple of Puma and to make Penta the champ. The Darker Master is like, Great job, now let’s teleport outta this dank dojo! And they do!

 

• Matanza Cueto is sitting in his cell underneath the Temple when he senses the presence of someone in the darkness. Oh, it’s Rey Misterio Jr., trapped in the cell across from him where Black Lotus was held for a little while back in the first season. I assume that his family has started a massive search for him? He’s Rey Misterio Jr., not some random masked midcarder. I don’t think holding him prisoner for very long is a viable option, Dario!

 

• Speaking of Dario Cueto, he pours a drink and talks to Agent Winter of both the FBI and the Order. Dario, holding the red ceramic bull of impending death, promises to get the gauntlet back from King Cuerno, but Agent Winter tells him that he gets a pass on having to get the gauntlet back from Cueto, mostly because he’ll be too dead to have the problem of getting the gauntlet back in the first place. Winter stands up, draws his pistol, and shoots Dario twice; Winter declares that there will be new management in the Temple next season, thanks Dario for the drink, and quietly leaves Dario's office. Dario initially appears dead, but he suddenly gasps awake and struggles to grab the phone on his desk. He dials – it’s rotary, and a touchpad would have made dialing while shot so much easier – but he manages to get his papa Antonio on the line before falling back into his chair and passing out, blood splattered everywhere. Permadeath Count: 13 (Bael, Konnan, El Dragon Azteca Sr., The Three Nerdsketeers, Trece, Barrio Negro, Mister Cisco, Siniestro de la Muerte, Councilman Delgado, Pindar, Dario Cueto [maybe?!?!]). Yeah, there’s nothing to say that a healed Dario isn’t going undercover as his dad next season, so that’s what I’m going with. Fuck it. I mean, I'll add him to the count because we saw him die, technically, but he's Cesar Duran in MLW just a few years later, so he probably survived even though that character exists outside of strict LU canon. 

 

• Strangely, most of these hooks don’t do much for me. I think I’d sense the impending end of this show even if I didn’t know it was coming in advance. It’s fairly clear that the show had one peak leading into Ultima Lucha Dos and then a second peak through Aztec Warfare III before becoming muddled and ill-paced. I’m glad to have Cuerno back in the Temple, but losing Puma is like losing Doug Ross on ER – once foundational characters start being written out, I start losing interest. LU is not your typical wrestling promotion, and of course, there are upsides and downsides to that, but the biggest downside is that complete resets are a lot harder in a strictly episodic show like LU, whereas a regular wrestling promotion has the room to make a longer transition from an old set of stars to a new one because they’re not working from a (theoretically) singular set overarching narrative building to a company-wide climax.

 

• Anyway, this closing episode of ULIII wasn’t great, but it wasn’t overall bad. It was just there. Twenty-two episodes and one season to go; see you at the start of that last season after Thanksgiving (probably)! 2.75 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Edited November 23, 2025 by SirSmUgly

[SirSmUgly]

Season Three Recap

Trending Up

• Matanza Cueto – At the end of last season, I felt that he hadn't gotten down the "devastating monster" act in the ring as well as he could have. Well, he nailed it by the end of this season! 
• Rey Fenix - I have to put aside my distaste for his regular TV match because as a guy fighting up from underneath, he borders on sublime. He's a truly great babyface worker when the situation calls for it.
• Catrina - She is legitimately one of my favorite wrestling characters ever. Her work in that regard is excellent, but that she also had one of the best matches of this season despite being a somewhat limited worker merits her inclusion on this list. 
• Famous B. and Brenda – Lucha Underground's comedy often misfires, but this pairing chugs along having entertaining segments each week. They've built a nice comedy act together as a duo over the past couple of seasons. 
• Marty "the Moth" Martinez - He reached peak heeldom this season and was a magnificent scumbag in every way. Seeing him get his comeuppance at Ultima Lucha Tres was fulfilling. 

Idling

• Pentagón Jr./ Pentagón Dark– He’s still not much in the ring, but what a presentation and promo guy he is. Hey, that sentence feels familiar...
• Aerostar - Much like El Dragon Azteca, his use as a character was suboptimal, and he just disappeared from view after being defeated by Drago, but there's a cool heroic spaceman and future seer character in there that could be better paired with a guy stuck in the Trending Down section. 
• Johnny Mundo – He's still much better as a heel, but his act just got old. He was overexposed on WWE television by the time he got into a prominent position in LU; he's also got a bit of the Jeff Jarrett to him in that he just isn't compelling enough to be the focal point of a major title division. 
• Dante Fox – As bad as I found a number of his matches this season - the stinker with Jeremiah Crane being foremost in my mind - he's much like Fenix in that when a match really calls for him to slow down, to sell, to remember that his body is damaged and that he needs to incorporate that into his dives, he does it and does it well. From the point at which he wrestled Texano late in the season, he showed that he can do more than just run and flip and run some more. 
• Melissa Santos - I still have quibbles about some of her ring announcing, but I think it's better than it was in the first season. She and Fenix didn't have much chemistry as a couple, but she and Marty made for genuinely uncomfortable and terrifying scenes multiple times during the season. She was inconsistent, but ultimately, I've softened on her work, especially because of the little touches she adds to some of what she does (e.g. when Marty invades her personal space without consent, she reacts much differently than the Rabbit Tribe doing so for a bit before leaving her alone when she's done watching them frolic). She could go either way next season. 

Trending Down

• Jeremiah Crane – He was so good in the break-up scene with Ivelisse that I almost put him at idling, but excellent as he was with that character work, boy was he a walking disaster in the ring. He put on a slew of bad matches and nonsensical in-ring performances that made no sense to me from a psychological standpoint or that just amped up the legit violence for reasons that I didn't buy. I have a deep antipathy toward his matches, but I won't mind seeing how he does in any Ivelisse-related interstitials (or any Catrina-related ones, for that matter). Also, I just realized that his LU name mimics his former NXT name: First name of an important person in the Old Testament, last name of a bird. That is totally irrelevant to this analysis, but I felt it important to write here anyway. 
• El Dragon Azteca Jr. - He's a decent worker, but his positioning on these cards is totally opposite to the apparently important role that he's supposed to have. This is more about his booking than about him, I think.
• Killshot – I am baffled that this guy is currently a headliner in a major wrestling company with weekly television, but I do admit that he is very young to be on television during the Lucha Underground portion of his career. People are not fixed beings! They do improve at things. 
• Paul London – This Rabbit Tribe deal has produced some of the weakest comedy wrestling that I've seen in quite a while. I should be looking forward to watching London, not semi-dreading it. 
• Sexy Star - At the end of last season, I noted that she was getting set up for a title run that her work didn't really earn her. This season, I note that she was so set up for it that she really should have gotten a run longer than a week, and hell, Penta also isn't good enough in the ring to be champ (though he is extremely charismatic to make up for it). Does it even matter how good someone is in ring in this company? I would say no! Anyway, her booking was among the weirdest and most erratic booking I've seen for a major character on a wrestling show - or any show, period - that I can think of. I feel like even though she's set up to come back next season, the incident where she shot on Rosemary and hurt her arm happened around the same time that this season ended, so she might not be back at all, which would be a wild ending to her LU story considering how she was built on the very first show! With the way that she was booked and her apparent disinterest (as I have so read) in the pro wrestling business at this point, I almost wonder if she shot on Rosemary partially to force her way out of her onerous LU contract. 

Five Matches You Should Watch (season, show, original air date)

• Prince Puma vs. Mil Muertes (Season Three, Show 7, 19 October 2016)
• Aztec Warfare III (Season Three, Show 11, 16 November 2016)
• Son of Havoc vs. Son of Madness, Boyle Heights Biker Brawl (Season Three, Show 33, 30 August 2017)
• Rey Fenix vs. Marty "the Moth" Martinez, Luchas de Apuestas Match (Season Three, Show 38, 4 October 2017)
• Ivelisse Velez vs. Catrina (Season Three, Show 38, 4 October 2017)

Five Seedy Backstage Interstitials or Interviews/Video Packages You Should Watch (season, show, original air date)

• A series of interlocking interstitials reveal that Captain Vasquez is the young Aztec girl in the past tasked with preventing the great Aztec war in the future and that Catrina somehow has half of the Piedra Immortal that Vasquez has used to stay alive to this point (Season Three, Show 2, 14 September 2016)
• An interstitial shows life at the personal and the cosmic both by seamlessly shifting from Ivelisse Velez and Jeremiah Crane having romantic relationship issues to Dario Cueto and Councilman Delgado having "bringing the Aztec gods back to ravage the earth and destroy life as we know it" issues (Season Three, Show 8, 26 October 2016) 
• Marty Martinez reveals the shrine to Melissa Santos that he uses as jerk session material to the world! Also, EWWWWWW! (Season Three, Show 23, 21 June 2017)
• In one of the best reveals the show has ever done, Captain Vasquez is revealed to be Catrina's mother; she willingly gave Catrina half of the Piedra Immortal to keep her from death and now bargains to give her the other half in exchange for the Gauntlet of the Gods (Season Three, Show 30, 9 August 2017)
• Jeremiah Crane and Ivelisse Velez have a breakup so toxic that even Heathcliff and Cathy think they need therapy (Season Three, Show 38, 4 October 2017)

Feuds Worth Re-living From Season Three

• Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Matanza Cueto
• Prince Puma vs. Mil Muertes
• Pentagón Dark vs. The Black Lotus Triad
• Midcard foes vs. Matanza Cueto and Dario's Dial of Doom

Edited November 23, 2025 by SirSmUgly

[tbarrie]

20 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

I oddly don’t care about Vampiro both being a dark master and having his own dark master.

That sounds awesome. I can only assume there's an infinite regress of dark masters, each darker and more masterful than the last.

[zendragon]

Like the Sith?

[Curt McGirt]

Or the Freemasons? The Scientologists? 

[zendragon]

All the Heels are buddies because they are all secretly Stonecutters

[SirSmUgly]

20 hours ago, tbarrie said:

That sounds awesome. I can only assume there's an infinite regress of dark masters, each darker and more masterful than the last.

Nah, it's only near infinite, with the Darkest Master of All eventually turning out to be some super-kawaii Stardom worker who is barely five feet tall.

[SirSmUgly]

Season 4, Show 1: “El Jefe” or Aztec Warfare enters its Mass Effect: Andromeda era with Aztec Warfare IV

• Let’s get one more show in before the holiday!

 

• This final shortened season of Lucha Underground could go just about anywhere (or nowhere, considering the short run time, but let’s hope against that).

 

• Recap: Agent Winter clapped up Dario Cueto over Dario's inability to give the Gauntlet of the Gods to a host whom the Order can use as their Aztec-god-bringer-backer. In other news, Always Bet on Black are the new LU Trios Tag Team Champions and Pentagón Dark is the new LU Champion.

 

• Seedy funeral home interstitial: Dario Cueto is having a, let's say for the sake of propriety, lightly attended open-casket funeral. The few attendees include Agent Winter and another Fibbie…and Dr. Wily. No wait, Antonio Cueto. I presume that Dario paid good money for that dummy body to be carefullysculpted and put in the casket. In any case, we’ll leave Dario on the Permadeath Count even though you and I both know that he’s alive under an assumed name in MLW today.

 

• Anyway, Antonio Cueto hobbles up to the casket holding his cane and surveys it while Winter tells a fib about gangbangers shooting Dario and the previous Temple not being of use anymore because it's too hot in the colloquial sense (though I bet it's sweaty as hell in there, too). Antonio’s got a new location in mind for reconstituting the Temple though. Ah, and then we get the rub: Winter reveals that while Dario called Antonio with his *ahem* dying breath, Antonio was the one who ordered the hit. OK, Dario ordered his own hit and then got this elaborate wax figure made of himself so that he could go undercover. Obviously. Antonio takes the giant cell key from around Dario’s neck and hobbles away.

 

• Melissa Santos starts this episode in the new Temple by ordering a ten-bell salute for the late, not-so-great Dario Cueto, but three bell rings in, it’s interrupted by Antonio Cueto, and look, the crowd laughs initially at his appearance because why wouldn’t they? Anyway, Luis Fernandez-Gil is showing the type of slightly cheesy, yet entertaining range that I would suggest would have gotten him regular work on a daytime soap after this show was cancelled if daytime soaps still existed.

 

• So, in what I think is a wild way to book this show and the first sign that this metaphorical train ride is soon coming to a sudden derailment, Antonio tosses a stand holding a portrait of his son Dario out of the ring and then declares that now he runs the Temple and thus, he is going to do things his way. “His way” includes hotshotting the yearly Aztec Warfare match on the first show of this season and making the champ Penta defend the LU Championship. For a show that was so deliberate about building to big events in its first three seasons, this reads like a warning light.

 

• There aren’t even any war drums before the match this time around. Man, they cut the war drummer budget!

 

• Apparently, Dante Fox left the company because we come back from a spot for ads to Antonio Cueto blabbing at Killshot and Willie Mack as they stand in the center of the ring; Cueto says that since Fox went AWOL (heh), the two remaining trios tag champs are going to start Aztec Warfare, and whoever makes it to the ring at number three will take possession of the third trios tag belt as their partner. I hope whoever it is happens to be black so that Always Bet on Black can keep their name!

 

• This season is already pretty disheartening, not gonna lie. Anyway, Killshot (Entrant 1) and Willie Mack (Entrant 2) open this match, and, uh, the third entrant already walks out here even before the match started, and it’s Son of Havoc (Entrant 3), so I need to come up with a new name for the trios tag champs. Anyway, the drummers are in fact in the Temple! I hear a drumbeat before Joey Ryan (Entrant 4), who is unfortunately still in this company, comes to the ring. For once, he doesn’t handcuff himself to something immediately upon entry. Instead, he walks to the ring first and then handcuffs himself to the top rope. He is immediately a target. The fifth dude out is a new wrestler in the Temple: Mr. Pectacular (Entrant 5), who the internet tells me is a guy named Jessie Godderz whom I have both heard of and I think also seen wrestle and promptly forgotten about after seeing him. Mack leaps into him and then celebrates, but Killshot rolls him up from behind for a quick three count [Elimination 1].

 

• The defending champion Pentagón Dark (Entrant 6) enters the ring, rids the ring of everyone but the handcuffed Ryan, and then turns toward Ryan, who begs off, then uncuffs himself, then begs off some more before trying a sneak attack. He is summarily caught and hit with a package piledriver, then gets covered for three [Elimination 2]. Killshot is the next to eat a package piledriver from Penta; Son of Havoc follows up with a SSP for another three count [Elimination 3].

 

• Hark, what do I see? Is it the Fonz jumping a shark on water skis? Nah, it’s just the wrestling equivalent, which is old-ass Tommy Dreamer (Entrant 7) in a House of Hardcore shirt. What happened to my sweet lil’ lucha show? Dreamer throws a bunch of crap in the ring and waddles toward Havoc while Penta superkicks Pectacular and gets an easy three count [Elimination 4]. Why the crowd is excited about this Dreamer/Penta faceoff, I don’t know. They go at one another, and it’s whatever.

 

• Next out is Mariposa Martinez (Entrant 8 ), who looks different to me. Maybe it’s her outfit or how she’s moving. Anyway, she’s quickly eliminated by a Son of Havoc rebound cutter [Elimination 5]. And this struggle Aztec Warfare Match continues! With thumbtacks! This is dumb! Penta kicks Dreamber backward into the tacks which have been introduced to this zero of a match for no fucking reason. Penta tosses Dreamer back into the ring and top rope double-stomps him for three [Elimination 6].

 

• Vinnie Massaro walks down the stairs (Entrant 9), but his pizza delivery reaches him before he gets in the ring. Massaro doesn’t even pay the guy. Wow, stiffing the pizza delivery guy. That’s how you know he’s a heel. There’s some unfunny comedy where Massaro offers Penta a slice while Striker yells PIZZAGATE on color, which of course is fucking stupid, but also, I didn’t realize that dumbass modern paranoia-driven fable known as Pizzagate was even a thing in 2018. I thought it came into existence a couple years later around the pandemic. Anyway, Penta cradle piledrives Massaro onto his own pizza for three [Elimination 7], but more importantly, Hernandez (Entrant 10) is confirmed NOT ON THE PERMADEATH COUNT because he’s here in this match. I notice that he waited until Prince Puma was banished from the Temple and Drago was chained up by Kobra Moon before he showed his face again. Hernandez swaggers up to Penta and slaps the shit out of him, obviously remembering weak-ass jobber Penta from the first season. Alas, two seasons and one Dark Master later, Penta is a different man. He gets up from the slap and snaps Hernandez’s arm, then pins him [Elimination 8].

 

• Havoc and Penta go at it next; Penta counters a Havoc rebound cutter with a Backstabber and gets three [Elimination 9], then grabs a kendo stick and faces off with Johnny Mundo (Entrant 11), who walks down the stairs to enter the fray. This match is a mix of the ’94 Royal Rumble with Penta playing the role of Diesel and the ’95 Rumble where it’s being sped through and is full of guys who I don’t give a shit about. Tommy Dreamer was basically Dick Murdoch in this match. That is probably the only time I or anyone else could ever accurately compare those two dudes.

 

• Number twelve is supposed to be Angelico, according to Striker, but Angelico doesn’t appear. Instead, twelve ends up being Ricky Mundo (Entrant 12), who holds a scorched little doll. I don’t know, man. What are we doing here? Ricky helps Johnny beat up Penta for a bit, but Ricky is distracted by this doll that he started carrying around out of nowhere. Johnny exhorts Ricky to help him, but the doll tells Ricky to roll up Johnny. Ricky listens to the doll and only gets two; Johnny, angered, hits Ricky with a Moonlight Drive and gets three [Elimination 10].

 

• Rey Fenix (Entrant 13) joins his big bro in the ring and squares up to him before doing some bouncy-bouncy rope walk spots. Jeremiah Crane (Entrant 14) is next up and immediately does a spot with a chair involved. They should have just had Crane and Dreamer out here at the same time so they could go off into a corner of the Temple and hit each other with various objects. Mil Muertes (Entrant 15, w/Catrina) still has beef with Crane, but even though he rolls him at first, everyone else gang attacks Mil, culminating in a Fenix top-rope double stomp that eliminates Mil [Elimination 11] after about a minute of ring time. Catrina is sick of all Mil’s failure in these Aztec Warfare Matches – fair! – and storms away, leaving a befuddled Mil watching her leave.

 

• This match sucks. Let’s get through it already. Daga (Entrant 16, w/Kobra Moon) has his first match in the Temple since the second season. He and Fenix have a slightly sloppy exchange. I’m supposed to buy Daga as a threat, I suppose. Not happening. The drums are already going again. Geez, man. OK, so Chavo Guerrero Jr. (Entrant 17) is next out, so I guess Antonio let him back into the Temple? Crane faces Chavo as Chavo walks to the ring, but is so focused on Chavo that he doesn’t notice Penta sneak up behind him or hit the CERO MIEDO hand sign, and he only realizes that Penta is there when Penta grabs him and hoists him up for a package piledriver that eliminates him [Elimination 12]. O…kay.

 

• In the biggest shocker in this match, Chavo then eliminates Fenix after a short exchange with a, uh, vertical suplex [Elimination 13]? What the fuck? Does Fenix still have blood loss from his match at Ultima Lucha Tres or something? This match is ass. What the fuck, man? The second and third versions of this match were insanely great, and this version is complete garbage. I guess this is what happens when your roster is gutted between seasons. Diabolical stuff.

 

• Oh, and Johnny Mundo eliminates Daga with an End of the World in there, too [Elimination 14].

 

• King Cuerno (Entrant 18) gets a well-deserved big pop when he steps to the top of the stairs. I wouldn’t mind it if he won. Kobra Moon throws a temper tantrum at ringside; the ladies are not happy with the failures of their charges tonight. Cuerno is a very good worker with very long hair this season; he controls the ring and then lands an Arrow From Hell as the drums count down to El Dragon Azteca Jr.’s (Entrant 19) entrance. Kobra Moon wanders back out here and commands Vibora, who is trailing behind her, to destroy Johnny Mundo since Mundo eliminated Daga. Vibora proceeds to destroy Johnny Mundo. He Tombstones Mundo at Kobra’s command just as Marty “the Moth” Martinez (Entrant 20) completes the set. The Moth takes the easy elimination as soon as he slides in the ring, pinning Mundo [Elimination 15] without having to do a thing to earn it.

 

• Well, Shawn Michaels and the British Bulldog are still in this thing even though they entered at one and two…no, wait, sorry, I got confused at which match I was watching for just a second. Aztec Warfare IV just looks so similar, you know? King Cuerno shoves Chavo off the top rope as Chavo prepares to Frog Splash Azteca and then does it himself, earning a three count [Elimination 16].

 

• Low energy, man, that’s what this match is. Cuerno tries a Thrill of the Hunt on Penta, but Chavo gets revenge on Cuerno for shoving him off the top rope by kicking him from behind and then dropping him with a Gory Bomb for three [Elimination 17]. Chavo has taken some prime pelts tonight, which honestly I don’t think he should have as much as I dig the guy. Cuerno and Fenix? And after all that, he eats a superkick from Penta and goes down quietly for the count [Elimination 18]. What is up with this match?

 

• I do like that Penta does his little Cero Miedo hand sign in Marty’s face and the Moth just grabs his hand and gnaws on his fingers. That’s a cool spot. He gets a close two count on a brainbuster after that, which is as close as he gets to victory: Penta hits a diving flipping piledriver and then a follow-up package piledriver to become the first and only person to successfully defend his title in an Aztec Warfare match. Honestly, this was almost as dominant a performance as Matanza’s by the numbers. It’s just that it happened in a match that stunk.

 

• Post-match, Penta takes his tribute by snapping the Moth’s arm, which is no less than Marty deserved. Antonio Cueto exits his office and congratulates Penta, then says that his good-fer-nothin’ son would have probably made Penta defend his title immediately after this match, but he’s way smarter a promoter than Dario ever was. Instead, Antonio is going to take a week to promote Penta’s next title defense – against Matanza Cueto. OK, that’s an interesting matchup. Penta is o-fer against him so far, but I suspect that will change next week.

 

• Any Aztec Warfare Match laid out this poorly earns a negative score because how do you fuck up a match this naturally awesome? -1 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

 

• Bonus: Here follows what will likely be the final Aztec Warfare Elimination Table!

Aztec Warfare Elimination Table #4 (Season Four, Episode One)

Entrant	Eliminations Made	Eliminated By (Order)
1.      Killshot	1 (Willie Mack)	Son of Havoc (3rd)
2.      Willie Mack	None	Killshot (1st)
3.      Son of Havoc	2 (Killshot, Mariposa Martinez)	Pentagón Dark (9th)
4.      Joey Ryan	None	Pentagón Dark (2nd)
5.      Mr. Pectacular	None	Pentagón Dark (4th)
6.      Pentagón Dark (c)	9 (Joey Ryan, Mr. Pectacular, Tommy Dreamer, Vinnie Massaro, Hernandez, Son of Havoc, Jeremiah Crane, Chavo Guerrero Jr., Marty “the Moth” Martinez)	WINNER AND STILL LUCHA UNDERGROUND CHAMPION
7.      Tommy Dreamer	None	Pentagón Dark (6th)
8.      Mariposa Martinez	None	Son of Havoc (5th)
9.      Vinnie Massaro	None	Pentagón Dark (7th)
10.  Hernandez	None	Pentagón Dark (8th)
11.  Johnny Mundo	2 (Ricky Mundo, Daga)	Marty “the Moth” Martinez (15th)
12.  Ricky Mundo	None	Johnny Mundo (10th)
13.  Rey Fenix	1 (Mil Muertes)	Chavo Guerrero Jr. (13th)
14.  Jeremiah Crane	None	Pentagón Dark (12th)
15.  Mil Muertes	None	Rey Fenix (11th)
16.  Daga	None	Johnny Mundo (14th)
17.  Chavo Guerrero Jr.	2 (Rey Fenix, King Cuerno)	Pentagón Dark (18th)
18.  King Cuerno	1 (El Dragon Azteca Jr.)	Chavo Guerrero Jr. (17th)
19.  El Dragon Azteca Jr.	None	King Cuerno (16th)
20.  Marty “the Moth” Martinez	1 (Johnny Mundo)	Pentagón Dark (19th)

 

 

[zendragon]

Your Dario is still alive is up there with all the "Tupac is still Alive" conspiracy's I heard in the late 90's

[SirSmUgly]

I have to disagree with that comparison.

 

I observed: A guy who looks like Dario Cueto, going by a thinly-veiled alias with his initials flipped around, who wanted to bring back a fighting temple that he named Azteca Underground and who has all the mannerisms and affectations of Cueto.

Tupac truthers observed: A blurry photo of some dude sipping a Mai Tai at a Barbados resort who might look like Tupac if you squint or have heavy cataracts.

We are NOT the same.

Edited November 28, 2025 by SirSmUgly