Lucha Underground Season 3 Episode 28: Booyaka! Booyaka!

TL: Sooooooo, the house band has a wrestling song that chants “THIS IS AWESOME!” throughout it and, well, I’m really at a loss for words.

1. The Mack vs. Texano

ER: My god the Texano experiment will never end. I think he might be my least favorite non-Sexy Star featured player in LU. He has so many featured matches! And he's really bad now! Also, according to Vampiro, he's gotta be at least 290. Which means I guess Willie Mack is around 375? Vampiro is using his magic scale again, probably the one given to him personally by Misawa after another one of their successful tours together. I really liked Mack here, but hated their mirror sequence stuff just because Texano is so slow. Texano hits a feather light crossbody that looked like he was trying to avoid making contact with Mack. I'm sure somebody has been actually keeping track of this, but it feels like Texano has had as many matches in LU as anyone. That's crazy.

TL: Hey! A standoff at the beginning the of the match! Never seen that before. That needs to be absolutely shelved, along with tower of doom spots and Malenko/Guerrero rollup spots. I would add fighting spirit spots, but that would put probably 90% of pro wrestlers out of work today. Vampiro having trouble saying “Quebradora” is something else, too. My favorite thing five minutes into this match is, without a doubt, The Mack’s swinging body slam. Texano advancing after what the Mack did with Mundo is really a puzzling decision considering how over he got, but hey, what do I know? Texano has obviously not been that motivated since the Alberto El Patron stuff now that he’s being lost in the shuffle in AAA, so him dogging it on LU is not a surprise. Really a blah match.

TL: Good lord, we have a Havoc/Madness standoff that’s not nearly as good as any Sons of Anarchy standoff, and that was the trashiest of Golden Age TV shows outside of maybe Season 2? Ireland is Season 3 right? Yeah. Season 2.

I also just watched a bunch of crazy Paul London PWG promos that came up on my YouTube recommended (HYBRID DOLPHINS, BABY!), so him opening up a giant box only to find a rabbit’s foot is pretty good, as is playing checkers on Saltador.

2. Drago vs. Pentagon Dark

ER: Plenty of fun, even though I really can't begin to fathom a millennia old lizard man trading flippy reversals with a purveyor of the dark arts. Shouldn't they be doing more world bending things than steadying each other on the ropes so one of them can do a kewl move? But, at least the moves were cool. Drago flies nuttily to the floor, and Pentagon brings his vicious side back with a nasty dropkick in the ropes, his far more plausible take on the one winged angel (dropping the electric chair start point makes it so much better), and planting him with a package piledriver for the win. Pentagon also dumped himself on his head at one point while Drago sort of did a blockbuster. Drago has been diminishing returns for awhile now, but Pentagon can still be interesting with the right guy. And I liked the post match feelings, with Pentagon attempting to break Drago's arm, Aerostar saving his friend, Drago laying him out and Aerostar getting his arm broke. Relationships are complicated. Sometimes it's difficult to tell why a friend or loved one is upset with you, or why they seemingly joined a lizard gang against their will. Closure is important for all parties.

TL: ANOTHER STANDOFF! You have to be kidding me. Who’s laying this show out? I do like Pentagon being more of a jerk to Drago here, making Drago do too much and making mistakes because of it. This is fine, but Pentagon was definitely breezing through this one. I didn’t feel too much with this match, mainly because there wasn’t much of a story being told outside of Drago not really being in Pentagon’s league. Poor Aerostar. You’d think him being able to travel through time and space would have made him see that one coming.

3. PJ Black vs. Rey Mysterio

ER: I thought this was really great, Mysterio's best showing since the loser leaves lucha match, and maybe PJ's best showing ever. Black worked as a kind of 80% AJ Styles and Mysterio is somehow ageless despite having no knees a decade ago. Rey has no problem flying to the floor early, and I thought Black's timing was really good throughout, loved the superkick to counter the 619, and I love that torture rack type drop he gave Rey. They manage to make some typically dance-y spots look real smooth, including one of the only examples I can think of rolling through a top rope rana actually making sense. I've seen that used many times, and it's always terrible, always a guy taking a full back bump and then just rolling through the move anyway. It always looks stupid. And then, these two go and Black smoothly rolls through it, timing it perfectly and not absorbing any impact of the rana, actually doing the reversal properly where everybody else has failed. The ref bump even worked from a logic standpoint, as Black went for a powerbomb and Rey quickly reversed it into a wild tornado DDT, clonking the ref during the tornado portion. It worked because it was done so quickly that the reversal actually seemed like a surprise, so it makes sense that the ref wouldn't be expected to suddenly have legs being swung into the side of his head. The interference was over the top, but at least Mundo made it count and booted Rey right between the eyes to break up the pin. Eventually though, Black reveals that he's never watched a Rey Mysterio match before in his life, as he tries to give him a crucifix bomb. He does not successfully hit that crucifix bomb. I thought this whole thing was really good.

TL: You’ll never guess what this match starts off with. Unreal. I always love La Atlantida, and PJ doing the Atlantida drop was fine even if he couldn’t get it locked in the first time. Rey Mysterio, 30 or so years in, is still such a ridiculous bumper it makes me laugh. Eats a great Black superkick as Eric mentioned, as Rey is the best wrestlers ever at picking his spots in a match, and it always makes his opponents look good because of it, giving credence to their offense. I have nothing to add about the finish. Easily thought it was best match of the episode, and even Rey playing through his greatest hits works well, as it definitely did here. Like Rey more as a phoenix allegory than a Jesus allegory but they already have Fenix, so I’ll believe Rey as Jesus.