Lucha Underground Season 3 Episode 4: Brothers in Broken Arms

MD: I am ahead of Eric now, which is frustrating because I can't just crib off of his notes. That's not to say that Lucha Underground is work, but you definitely have to be in the right mindset. This started with Sexy Star and Dario talking. I love that they call atomicos matches atomicos matches. Why doesn't CMLL ever run them? Why didn't they run Ultimo Guerrero, Gran Guerrero, Euforia, and Niebla Roja vs Rush, Sombra, Mascara, and Marco (or Naito) when they could have? I'm really not looking forward to Mundo vs Star one-on-one when that happens, but at least they're building to it.

ER: FYI you guys, Sexy Star was really bad in that opening segment. Just thought you'd be interested in knowing that. Her line reading always sounds like she's phonetically screaming English, as if she's not actually saying real words, just jaggedly combining sounds together to form objects similar to words. Her kick to the locker door didn't even convince the locker that it had been kicked.

1. Sinestro de la Muerte vs. Prince Puma

MD: Way, way, way too competitive. Apparently Dr. Wagner, Jr. is the only one who can properly squash anyone anymore. This match was supposed to be Puma looking strong against Muertes' crony, to the point that Catrina was going to kill him. I'm not saying it should have been a total squash and it did get across the idea that Puma was more intense now, but Sinestro took way too much of this. Striker's commentary was too staged too, as if he was expecting Mil to run in and was just waiting for the cue. Puma doing the flatliner was cute and I hope it leads to Mil doing the 630.

ER: Decent enough WorldWide squash to pace us until Puma's match with Muertes, until it suddenly didn't turn into a squash and Sinestro got a lot of offense. I thought the opening punch exchange was awful, looked like two guys having a hoedown. Once we got into move trading I dug it, both guys worked fast sequences well and Sinestro was adept at taking Puma's offense. I liked this missed interference spot by Muertes, leading to Puma finishing off Sinestro while glaring Muertes down. The wild dive after the match was great.

MD: Dario's "I'm kind of a big deal" nameplate is awesome. I wonder what the story behind it is. I bet that it's Mascarita Sagrada's secret santa present for him. Passive aggressive Castro is better than scared Mr. Cisco acting. Dario using Pentagon Dark like Teddy Long would use the Undertaker was good too.

2. Cortez Castro vs. Pentagon Dark

MD: So Puma can't get a squash against the guy that they're killing off (literally), but Castro gets completely squashed by Pentagon despite needing to be a quasi-protagonist in all of this police drama stuff. Beats me, though I'll admit Pentagon needed to look strong. I would have flipped the layout of those first two matches.

ER: See, they CAN do squash matches correctly! Here's the obligatory Phil throwback spot where he points out them running the same angle and same match on the same show. I have no idea how I'm supposed to feel about Castro at this point. Am I supposed to be rooting for him? They're not giving me a whole lot to root for. Also noticed JR Kratos just sitting in the crowd, not really reacting to Pentagon's promo. But I loved one guy's reaction to Pentagon saying that in the ring, he doesn't even respect his own mother. Some guy just had total disbelief on his face.

3. Aerostar, Fenix, Drago & Sexy Star vs. Johnny Mundo, Jack Evans, PJ Black & Taya

MD: The best multi-man lucha tags all have a central storyline running through them. Here, it should be to set up Sexy Star and Mundo? That's not promising and frankly, it barely matters because they don't focus on it anyway. They started with Taya and Star instead, with Taya having her share of chants. That's not too surprising given how thoroughly into her character she is. All of the beginning of this was goofy. At one point PJ Black was fighting against superior tecnico odds which is generally not something your heel should be doing? Then they had some heat on Sexy Star, her getting the hot tag to show up Mundo, a fun comeback with Aerostar looking awesome on dives (again), and Mundo making sure Sexy Star lost in the end, continuing their program. I'm not sure where Eric is going to fall on this, but it felt like a mess to me. The destination forwarded the program but the journey was all over the place.

ER: I thought this was fine. The guys I expected to look good looked good, and the people I expected to stink, stunk. Sexy Star looked terrible throughout. This was not unexpected. I was hoping her interactions would be limited to one or two opponents, because she has a knack of making everybody else look stupid by waiting around for her. So, we had a lot of guys waiting for her to get in the right position, or wait far too long in one place for her to finally do a move. The match needed more Fenix, my personal favorite in the group. And when he was in I thought he looked awesome. Evans made me laugh with his neverending string of handsprings leading to a tag out. Even Striker made me laugh right after when he said "Some of Jack's best ring work". Mundo and Black rotated between throwing out something real good, and something overly rehearsed. At one point Black threw a kick about 2 feet to the right of Drago, clearly because it was just meant to be swept aside. I hate when those kind of cracks show. Drago had some nice glue moments, coming in low and fast on dropdowns and keeping a real snug and fast headscissors on Black. Aerostar always seems like he makes up flying moves as he goes and I love him for that. Sometimes they look a little dodgy, but it's worth it for the spectacular moments. So yeah, this was kind of a mess, but the mess all came from expected sources.

MD: I'll let Eric talk about soul stealing and broken necks (or let him not talk about it).

ER: I mean, this match was one of Sinestro's more dominant performances, so it's weird for them to so casually be done with him now. There have probably been 10 lousy Sinestro performances that lead to him not getting his neck broken, so it's weird they just now realized the last of their lightning babies was a dud. I'm unsure how much strength you can gain by stealing the soul of losers, but at least they had the decency to break his neck so he doesn't have to go through life not having convenience store doors open for him. It's possible Muertes will just trade it for some pogs anyway.

4. Dragon Azteca Jr. vs. Chavo Guerrero

MD: Azteca gets credit for selling the arms early on. People sure recover from Pentagons' broken arm treatment quickly so it was nice to see some lingering aftereffects. I'm always irrationally glad that Rey has his "Jr." back. Look, this was all fine and everyone played their respective roles well, but when the most memorable part of a match is Vampiro, on commentary, babbling on about haunted houses and Aztec warriors, then maybe there's something lacking in the match.

ER: I liked this more than Matt, mainly because I thought Chavo looked great. He's probably the most undeserving guy who gets dumped on by fans of the show, and I think he's mostly delivered throughout his LU run. This match may have failed if the goal was to make Azteca look like he actually deserves and has a shot against Pentagon, but at least it continued to confirm how good Chavo can be. All his mat stuff looked good, his clothesline out of the corner was great, really he was awesome at steamrolling Azteca. Again, not sure it's in their best interest to have Azteca steamrolled, but I didn't mind.

(neither of us mention Black Lotus and her ninjas)


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