Lucha Underground Season 2 Episode 3: The Hunt is On...

1. Bengala vs. Kobra Moon

ER: Wow, I'm so happy I managed to not get this spoiled as I had no clue Kobra Moon was Thunder Rosa! I've had the privilege of doing commentary on a few of her matches, as she works all over the Bay Area - including several shows for Phoenix Pro Wrestling. She's barely been wrestling a year, so it's a little crazy to see her get a TV gig. She's really nice, and clearly worked hard over this last year. So color me surprised when I recognized her through her mask and weird....snake tongue waggling? The snake stuff does not really work for me, but I'll give her credit for committing to things. If the producers told her to act like a snake, but a snake that is also a professional wrestler, I'd be hard-pressed to think of someone who did a better job of acting like a snake within a pro wrestling ring. Now, the match wasn't very good. I'm not excited for even more intergender stuff in this fed. I'm confident it won't be as bad as the Sexy Star stuff, but intergender matches have such a lower ceiling (and lower floor). As far as I know Rosa hasn't worked intergender matches up here, so it would be odd that they'd specifically bring in someone who has just a year under their belt, and then make them work a format they haven't worked before. She's very small, and I just can't see how that will work out. Match was fairly short, with Kobra hitting a rana to the floor, hitting a nice axe kick, doing a nice job of getting the knees up late on a Bengala splash. But Ricky Marvin isn't a very big guy and was much bigger than her here, already stretching the plausibility of things. So I'm left with a weird neutral feeling, as I could not be happier for her to be getting this opportunity, but I'm also unsure where she fits into the fed.

PAS: Ricky Marvin is also a bigger guy then he was last season, he is starting to get Super Astroish, but I am not sure if his agility has caught up to him yet. I liked the snake stuff in theory, although that choke sleeper looked barely applied. This didn't do much for me, and Kobra Moon looked a little too fragile to be a threat, Aja Kong I could buy kicking guys asses, not so sure about this girl who looked 105 pounds.

ER: I'll level with you, I didn't really understand that Aerostar vignette.

PAS: I think he is a time traveling space alien? Vignettes have gotten stupider and stupider this season, they feel like they are leaning into the Chikara which is not where I want to see this show go. Is there a dumber idea in wrestling history then Big Ryck getting murdered in the comic book? By the Disciples of Death who are Rough and Ready in the actual wrestling portion of the show, but apparently savage murder machines in the canon comic book. I like this show mostly but wrestling being taken over by Comic Con dorks is the fucking worst. I don't need a pro-wrestling extended universe.

2. Jack Evans vs. Drago

ER: So Jack Evans is probably a crazy person. I can't understand how his body lands the way it does sometimes. He finds a funny and dangerous tone here, doing silly stuff like bumping a slap with a 720, doing a funny cartwheel handspring eye gouge, hit little peekaboo through his legs on the top rope that leads to him getting superkicked...but then also just getting dumped on his head a couple times in a fast neck snapping way, or taking a rough DDT while draped over the top tope. I don't need him to go full Kenny Omega or anything, and some stuff eeks a little close, but he seems to know how to read the room. Drago had some fun moments and I really liked him in the opening minute bullying Evans into the ropes a bunch. But spotlight was kind of on Evans here.

PAS: I thought this was a little Shawn Michaels vs. Hoganish with Evans taking these outlandish over the top bumps for simple things. I like the idea of Jack calling himself the Dragonslayer but he is at his best taking big beatings, I wish they were setting up Jack vs. Muertes or Matanza where those spinning bumps would make more sense.

ER: Texano had kind of a misfire of a last season, but this package did a nice job of making his time here seem a bit more impactful. And just when I was rolling my eyes at yet another vignette of masked guys jumping a LU guy and getting beaten down, Texano starts breaking everything in sight with his bullrope and it gets awesome. Breaking beer bottles out of hands, breaking tables in half, busting chairs that get thrown at him. El Texano, The Whipmaster is infinitely more interesting than a feud with Daivari.

PAS: I did like the bullrope stuff, but man are the vignettes repetitive and lazy this year, does everyone live in some alternative universe where people in lucha masks are attacking people in the streets? Is this Frank Miller's Gotham?

3. Last Luchador Standing: Fenix vs. King Cuerno

ER: This fed knows how to doll up for their gimmick matches and this was no different. After a little early clumsiness with Cuerno balancing on the top rope while Fenix balanced on the opposing top rope things picked up big with Cuerno taking a big bump over the top, only to move out of the way as Fenix tope'd into nothing. Yes please. They use their sound sweetening for good as Fenix gets tossed into the ringpost and they do this great *ping* sound that sent shock waves down my hands thinking about fouling a pitch off in just the wrong way. Cuerno continues the beating by tossing Fenix through a row of chairs. Cuerno got to be a real badass throughout this, as Fenix got to hit some flashy dives (including his awesome springboard tornillo from the middle rope), but Cuerno would always cut him off, eventually knocking him to the floor and hitting the sick arrow tope past the ringpost. They shot the dive with the overhead camera and it was easily the best use of that camera angle yet. Everything builds to what we think is going to be a lunatic bump off of Dario's office, from a fed who loves doing lunatic bumps off of Dario's office. And unexpectedly, instead, Cuerno just takes a BRUTAL bump through a set up table, falling off the ladder. This may have been the nastiest bump in LU's history. And it's all because, for some reason, Cuerno HELD ONTO THE LADDER while falling!! So you just had this slow fallback as the physics of a man on a ladder shifted, and started to tilt back, and then he just kept hanging on tight to that ladder, all the way through the table and through the floor. You don't need sound sweetening to enhance the THUMP his body made. Cuerno was like Wile E. Coyote using an Acme drill to weaken a cliff side, and as he drills all the way through the cliff and begins falling to his sure death, he's still there in the sky, falling while drilling. That was Cuerno, just holding onto that ladder as he fell to his sure death. Insane.

PAS: This was a step below some of the absolute peak LU gimmick matches, but this was very good. Fenix is a guy I haven't loved outside of LU, but he is great in these kind of over the top brawls. He gets such great height on his dives and takes huge bumps. He also has a sense of dramatic timing which really comes in play in these kind of big main events. Cuerno was great too that final bump was truly nuts and truly unexpected.

ER: I'm predicting Phil will hate the cop show sketch to end things, and I definitely do think they need to pick a side, with Reyes playing things too serious (badly) and Ryan playing things too hammy (badly), but I foolishly like the angle of a vice squad put together specifically to take down madman Dario Cueto. Plus we got confirmation that B-Boy actually DID have his face eaten off.

PAS: This was super dumb, if you are going to do some convoluted crime story at least have it make internal sense. Reyes says "I should have brought him in when his brother killed Bael" and there is no answer and the whole story get exposed,  and then you have Joey Ryan playing a cop in a gay porn and that means we have to watch Joey Ryan. Cuerno was fun as a hammy evil promoter early in this feds run, but the more they have tried to build some sort of B movie horror film the dumber it has gotten. This is Hellraiser 6 level writing and completely divorced from what makes this fed good.


LUCHA UNDERGROUND EPISODE GUIDE

**And we liked the Last Luchador Standing match enough to include it on our 2015 MOTY List (You see, it was recorded in November 2015, even though it aired 3 months later)**