Lucha Underground Episode 14: A Shot of El Patron Workrate Report

ER: Liked the Alberto/Dario interaction, loved the way Dario just changed the subject when Alberto asked him about the key.

PAS: Not a ton about Matanaza this week, I had some suggestions last week, but if what the WON says is true, the only real use of Vince Russo would be as a monster kept in a cage. Dario said he liked to destroy pretty things, and Vince Russo is the one guy wrestling fans would truly look at with terror.

1. Argenis vs. Fenix

ER: Total spotfest, but I dug it. Argenis didn't really look that good, but his two rana variations did and I'm a sucker for a smooth rana. This was one of the better Fenix performances, his rope assisted flip dive was crazy. There was no selling or transitions to speak of, but they never made any allusions to those things so it didn't really bother me. I think that's the key with me, no selling really bugs me when it's sporadic throughout a match, but if they establish right out of the gate "this is just going to be 5 minutes of our highlight reel" then I can just enjoy it like junk food.

PAS: Sure, this was a nice job showing all of their stuff,  Fenix needs to never throw a punch or kick again, still some cool dives, and they didn't make either guy do more then they need to do.

ER: Damn the Mil Muertes and Big Ryck vignettes killed it. Muertes lifting up Catrina by the throat like Darth Vader, Ryck still cool smoking cigars because he recognized the cigar didn't hurt him, people did, Muertes walking down the dimly lit hallway like Maniac Cop, loved the way Ryck was filmed and loved the cigar smoke as his face comes into light. Great stuff here.

PAS: Yeah those were both awesome, coolest Muertes has ever looked and Ryck as Man on Fire Denzel bent for vicious revenge is going to rule.

ER: I also love how they use Mariachi El Bronx. That's a sweet little bonus for a house band. Usually when there's a wrestling show with a band playing it's some lousy metal band that are friends of the promoter.

2. Son of Havoc vs. Johnny Mundo

ER: Not my thing. It's funny I just mentioned a spotfest that pretends there's going to be selling vs. one that just goes for broke with spots, and here we have the other side of that. We get Mundo screaming about his knee about one minute into the match, and then never see that injury again, yet we get to hear Striker and Vampiro talking constantly about his blown out knee, how Havoc is hooking that bad knee, how "that's not good for the knee" every time Mundo does a backflip and lands on his feet. It's like enjoying a B movie that knows exactly what it is, as opposed to a movie with big aspirations that just falls on its face. There were a couple cool spots in this, my favorite being Havoc running away from a Mundo dive but Mundo using his parkour (on a BAD KNEE!!) to flip back through the ropes and dive diagonally out of the ring to grab him anyway. But this was one of those matches where I just keep hoping for it to end after awhile.

PAS: Big mistake to book Mundo with a knee injury. He is a guy with some real limitations, and selling is one of them, I imagine if he had a hurt arm or neck, he wouldn't need to limit his offense, here he just ignores it and does all of his stuff anyway. The announcers go on and on about his blown out knee, but if this match was on mute, no way you would know it. I enjoyed Havoc in this, seems weird to have Barry Horowitz have cooler spots then your pushed highflyers, but he really hits some cool stuff, that fake where he topes the ring rope is awesome looking.

3. Ricky Mandel vs. Pentagon Jr.

ER: Feels like they should have shown highlights of Pentagon breaking Famous B's arm the other week, but I suppose it makes sense they didn't with him doing the same thing to Mandel. Although this promotion doesn't really do replays which is odd. They show a bunch of "last week on" at the beginning of the show, but there are a lot of times when a guy is walking to the ring and we hear "we remember last week when…" but there's no clip of the thing they're talking about, just the guy walking to the ring. But they are going in the right direction with Pentagon, feeding some lower tier guys to him and letting him walk circles around them. I wonder if this is going to lead to a bunch of one armed men coming back to haunt Pentagon?

PAS: Man Pentagon is a nasty fucker, I loved the counter into the backbreaker and the kick to the spine. I don't know who the Master is going to be, I think Vampiro is too genial at this point, LA Park would be perfect, but I am not sure how the lucha politics would work.

ER: I don't know the details about this, but Alberto feels like a pretty big "get" for them. I also don't know the details surrounding him leaving WWE, but hopefully this isn't one of those things where Vince decides to buy up a bunch of LU guys and then never use them. I mean, it would be amusing to see Vince buy Son of Havoc or other guys that have gone through developmental that they didn't originally want.

PAS: Promo was really good, Alberto really felt almost Eddieish, although if Russo is really coming in, he better get used to neckbeards making unfunny Mexican jokes behind his back, maybe Alberto will slap the shit out of him too. Think they hotshotted the Texano Jr. arrival, feels like that could have waited a week. Nothing great in the ring this week, but a lot of the booking issues I had a couple of weeks ago seem to be solved.


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