Lucha Underground Episode 36: The Beginning of the End Review

ER: So Pentagon's Master will reveal himself when he "proves that he is ready", which I assume is going to be a loooooong time from now as he's presently getting handled by tiny women and tubby announcers.

1. Bengala vs. Delavar Daivari

ER: I'm torn on whether to give Striker credit or not for "Bengala trying to earn his stripes". I groaned, but also appreciated how he said it in a real understated way instead of trying to yuk it up. Not a big fan of more Daivari wrestling on TV, but they kept this short at least. Bengala hit a great dive past the turnbuckles, and I liked his rolling German finish, but this really wasn't much.

PAS: I thought this was pretty good, Daviari is one of my least favorite people in this fed (and they all wrestled tonight!!) but he was inoffensive, and I thought Bengala was pretty cool, I loved all of the backfire interference spots by Big Ryck, and Bengalas tope taking him out was pretty cool. Perfectly acceptable stuff.

ER: I don't think I've ever seen anybody get more laid out by a chokeslam than Pentagon was here. Dude looked like he died after taking a 4 foot back bump. I'm just really not sure what to make of this whole feud. Pentagon is likely going to win, but I imagine Vampiro is going to come out looking like the real winner. The crowd seemed amped to see an out-of-shape-Vic-Mackey-stuck-behind-a-desk cosplayer take out one of the bigger badasses in the fed, and it's likely not going to be as infuriating as the wretched and embarrassing Sexy Star feud, but there's just no amount of smoke and mirrors that can make this good, right? This whole promo segment was pretty bad. Last week Vampiro got jumped and got gasoline dumped all over him. This week he and Pentagon stand in the ring NOT tearing each other apart, Pentagon making Ian Hodgkinson jokes, Vampiro casually walking around the ring with his back turned to Pentagon (the man who just attacked him from behind last week), just a bad bad segment.

PAS: I think Vampiro has been OK in this role, I agree about the craziness of that chokeslam being sold like that and I would rather see Pentagon do something else, but this is worlds better than the Sexy Star feud, and if you are going to build to a Vampiro match in 2015 you could certainly do worse then this.

2. King Cuerno vs. Killshot

ER: Cuerno hasn't been on in over a month, and now he's waiting in the ring after a commercial break while fucking KILLSHOT gets his entrance!? That's some absurd bullshit right there. And Vampiro is now just like that my new hero, as Killshot does an embarrassing running back elbow and Vampiro goes "what was THAT?" Nobody knows, Vamp. It certainly doesn't look like something meant to do harm to another human. Killshot may have the most thigh slap based offense I've ever seen. And none of his strikes ever look like they land. They're timed properly with the slap, the strikes just look horrible. And my god all of his moves start with a long looping somersault. Can't just do a diamond cutter, gotta handspring over the ropes and do a slooooow somersault before bunnyhopping up into one! It's all so hideous. Cuerno having to sell for this goof is a travesty. I'm reluctant to give him credit, but at least Killshot dies on a nasty apron sideslam, and holds his ground to take the Cuerno tope, and spikes himself on a nutty reverse rana. It should be noted, though, that every single move Cuerno did to Killshot did less harm than Vampiro's little chokeslam did to Pentagon. So much hate flowing through me right now.

PAS: Killshot did die nastily on the bumps he took, he might be fine as a Joel Goodhart style jobber who just gets murdered by guys who want to put over. Just never let him get any offense. He has to have the worst thigh slaps I have ever seen, just so obvious, it is like 60's Batman cartoon exclamations.

3. Super Fly vs. Sexy Star

ER: Just make it stop. I don't know why it's happening, I don't want to know why. Just take her off my TV. Please. It's awful.

4. Marty the Moth Martinez vs. Sexy Star

ER: It's so fucking terrible. It's pointless to even waste time watching it at this point. She's going to be on TV every week, she's never going to look good, she has the magic powers to make every opponent  suddenly not able to hit his moves at full strength. It's getting so damn tiring watching everybody have to noticeably hold back on their power moves. We get it, she is so tough and her story is truly inspirational to us ALL. Except I don't get what's inspiring, and she can't be that tough if guys have to set her down on the mat afraid that she'll snap in half. Is this some sort of elaborate Make A Wish campaign? Is Sexy Star dying? Did she win a sweepstakes?

PAS: I imagine both matches went about 20 minutes live and they had to edit them down to 90 seconds each to make them look semi professional.

ER: Well this has to be the worst episode in the show's history, right? Every match featured my least favorite people in the fed, with Daivari, Sexy Star and Killshot all getting WAY TOO MUCH screen time, and all looking like people who do not deserve any sort of screen time.

PAS: This show felt like a rib.



COMPLETE LUCHA UNDERGROUND LIST

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Paragon Pro Wrestling 8/1/15 Review

Looks like they're finally selling some ad time for this program. Every episode up until now had zero commercials. This one was filled with hair restoration products and "Rainbow Logs" which are yule logs that make your campfire various shades of green, blue, and purple. They even said "Build a lifetime of memories with Rainbow Logs". That would be the weirdest thing to have a memory about.

1. Darin Corbin vs. Mercurio Jr.

This match is for the "American Title" which....I have honestly no idea what that means. This is the inaugural match for the American Title, and it's between a guy who has only had one televised match so far (a loss to Gangrel) and another guy who is Mexican (or at least billed as a Mexican). There was no explanation of what the American Title is, or what being the American Champion will bring you. The announcers don't even really talk about the title during the match, just talk about how excited they are for the debut of Wes Brisco, and what an incredible athlete Mercurio is. Now, two things: 1. Nobody should be excited for the debut of Wes Brisco, and 2. Nothing Mercurio does in the ring will make you think he's a tremendous athlete. They are regularly putting over his speed, and his agility, but he always seems tentative and rarely moves quickly. No quicker than Darin Corbin, at least. Corbin fits into this fed nicely. He's good at showing personality to the crowd which counts a lot more than doing neat moves in front of a tiny crowd like this. He knows how to clown for Mercurio in a satisfying way, taking some goofy bumps that make Mercurio look pretty dangerous (loved his bump off a mule kick), and knows when to kill momentum by stooging on the floor. Mercurio throws a nice corner dropkick but that's about it. Still surprised to see Corbin go over clean here, since he's not been featured at all and Mercurio is a guy they always praise. I look forward to GREAT things during the ongoing battles of the illustrious AMERICAN TITLE.

2. Kevin Kross & The Challenger vs. The Whirlwind Gentlemen

Challenger is a short chubby generic masked guy who appears to be doing a throwback to how Ray Traylor looked as War Machine (except he's only 5'9"). He looks like a classic Memphis worker doing a double shot on a TV taping. They push him as a man with size and strength who's an accomplished mat wrestler. I just hope they make Challenger disaster puns when he crashes and burns. Kross is awesome and maybe the best guy in the fed. He has a bunch of cool throws and knows how to land a kick, and does a bunch of stuff I dig like shake his fist out after big punches. This is three WG matches now where they get dominated the whole time, only to suddenly turn it on and win during their 30 seconds of offense. It's a weird strategy for the guys being booked as the faces of the tag division, to regularly get shown up by thrown together tag teams. Manley is an okays FIP, but we rarely get to see them on offense so I'm having a real hard time judging them. I want Kross to keep showing up on TV though.

Yuck. We get a horrible super rehearsed Wes Brisco sit down promo, where he describes his style of wrestling as "extreme sports style, laid back, bungee jumping, shark cage diving". I have zero fucking clue what that means. That reads WAY more like he set his Tinder profile to "generic surf douche". A blind person would have been able to guess that his hair was tied up in a bun.

3. Espiritu vs. Wes Brisco

Oh GOD the tattoos! Oh my lord those are horrible! Wes Brisco has so so so much of his body covered in horrible same-blue-color tattoos. I have no idea what any of this was supposed to be. Brisco blows up super early, he appears to be working heel even though Espiritu has always worked heel, Brisco seems to be out of position for every move he does, and then at the end he throws in a worked knee injury for no reason whatsoever. Brisco just looks like rape. During a post match promo he now starts selling his other knee. God these leg tattoos are one of the more horrifying things I've ever seen. They look just impossibly gross. He looks like an extra from the beach football scene in Point Break, whose scenes had to be removed because he icked out preview audiences.

4. Caleb Konley vs. Wes Brisco

Oh god we get to double down on our Brisco matches. Brisco looks like Ray Wise's rapist alter ego from Twin Peaks, but like an early rough draft, before Lynch decided to scale back and not make Bob so blatantly rapey. "Bob's a horrible person, but if we make him look like this it's just too on the nose." We get 10 full minutes of Konley working over Brisco's knee, while Brisco is just the least sympathetic babyface in wrestling history. He's a sympathetic babyface the same way that a guy who doesn't show up to his child custody trial is a sympathetic babyface. So 10 minutes of leg work, then Brisco turns the tables with a flapjack miscommunication. Konley bumped it like a backdrop, so he must have been surprised midway through when Brisco slammed him to the mat in mid air. So Konley gets dumped on his head and folded in half. And then moments later Konley wins by holding the tights.

I cannot think of a less likable face than Brisco. And I mean that as both "not a likable babyface" and "his actual fucking face is horrible".

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