Found Footage Friday: WAR GAMES~! MISAWA~! KOSHINAKA~! PIRATA~! COLOSETTI~! BENETTO~!

Shiro Koshinaka vs. Mitsuharu Misawa AJPW 10/14/83

MD: As best as we can tell, these next two haven't been in easy circulation. Thankfully gus came through and figured out how to get them off of a tricky disc and upload them. This one started out as one thing and morphed into something entirely different. People should go out of their way for it.

Where it started, and where I figured it would end, was as Young Misawa putting Young Koshinaka through his paces. He controlled for basically the first two thirds of this as an undercard young boy cruiserweight bully. They both had red trunks and Misawa really did a number on Koshinaka, grinding down on the arm. A lot of shots of the back of Misawa's head and emotive selling from Shiro. Shiro would try to escape and Misawa would get him back in. There was a nice floatover arm twist and some rolling with the short arm scissors, etc. Eventually, Shiro turned things into a cross toe-hold and took over with that and later a Romero Special.

When things picked up, though, they really picked up. Shiro's butt butt, sure, but also Misawa doing a front flip into a kick off the top, followed by a huge dive to the floor, and then Shiro hitting a double stop off the top. It felt like whoever was agenting the match went on a smoke break and they just decided to do whatever they wanted for the last two minutes before Shiro finally dragged Misawa down with a bulldog. Misawa looked more like the guy who would become Tiger Mask II than the guy who would become Misawa here, but he looked like the best possible version of that guy.

Shiro Koshinaka/Mitsuharu Misawa/Halcon Ortiz vs. Coloso Colosetti/Pirata Morgan/Tony Benetto 3/16/84

MD: This is likely one of Misawa's first matches in Mexico. He was matched up with Colosetti here in the initial primera pairings and it went mostly ok. There were one or two times where he seemed just a little lost, like when it was time to tag Shiro in after Coloso left the ring, but in general, he did fine. Colosetti had great for-the-last-row body language, really working big, both when matched with Misawa and during the comeback in the tercera as he was batted around the ringside area. Shiro was matched with Benetto; basically a lot of Kato/Bruce Lee back fists but he did get his double stomp off the top in too. Ortiz and Morgan worked well together, as you'd expect, the best pairing of the three even if maybe that's not why we're here.

Morgan did get to match up a little with the Japanese contingent, most spectacularly for a spot towards the end of the primera where they basically hit a veg-o-matic (bearhug, lean back, kneedrop) on him. Most memorable, though, is the ending image of him as Misawa and Koshinaka were getting the win on his partners; Ortiz decided to just bodyslam him over the top, not touching the rope, so he could hit a dive. The heat during the segunda was effective and efficient though there could have been more of it maybe; possibly a small clip at the start of the tercera to give that feeling. The comeback was fun with plenty of Koshinaka backfists. Misawa was just finding his way here but it's a good way to spend twenty minutes.

War Games: Hotstuff Hernandez/Jeremy V/Jimmy Rave/Onyx vs. Iceberg/Jason Cross/Justice/Rainman NWA Wildside 06/28/03 - EPIC

MD: Are there just an infinite number of these matches hidden away somewhere? Is there some sort of alternate reality that we can just endlessly pull these from? Or are we coming to the end sometime soon? We've covered so many over the years and they're all great and this is no exception. Wildside was just amazing for the sheer diversity in the ring, every size, shape, temperament. And it all came together and it all worked. It was like the entirety of possibilities of what pro wrestling could and should be were in the ring together. Just wild stuff. 

They started with Jeremy and Rainman, maybe not the pairing I would have chosen myself even though they'd been feuding but Rainman was a pro in these and kept things moving. Right when Jeremy (who got color early) was gaining control, Bailey's team won the coinflip and Cross came in, absolutely crushing Jeremy with a dragon suplex and brainbuster and setting the tenor for the rest of the match. Jeremy, Jimmy, and Jason had a high hill to climb here since not only were they in there with monsters of various shapes and forms, but the monsters almost all did crazy stuff. There was a Superplex on Iceberg (I think by Onyx). Iceberg used the cage to steady him to hit a top rope elbow drop, etc. And Justice (being Abyss) came in as the mystery man and towered over everyone. Hernandez was like a missile when he came in to even the odds. They managed well enough by flying around though, Cross hitting a ton of offense, Jeremy showing heart (and getting the win in the end with his camel clutch/cobra clutch combo), and Rave maybe getting the spot of the match with a sunset flip powerbomb on Justice off the top.

Look, during the same year, Cage of Death was going on in Philly. I get that Blood and Guts take more from that than from classic War Games, but these Wildside and Anarchy attempts really show how you can bridge the gap between the two.

PAS: This didn't have pools of gore that some of the other all timer Landmark Arena War Games had, but it felt kind of on the level of them. This was like a version of the 1989 War Games, with a lot of huge dudes throwing each other with big power moves. This might have been the most I have ever enjoyed Abyss, and it felt like the slugfest between him and Hernandez felt like a huge big man showdown. Iceberg not being a huge star in the 2000s was a big mistake by the wrestling world, he was a monstrous force of nature, who would still bump big, Iceberg taking a superplex felt like felling a Redwood tree. His top rope Sudanese Meat Cleaver was truly disgusting looking I expected Jeremy V's head to pop off like a Pez dispenser. Finishing submission looked great although that kid did take a whole hell of a lot of punishment to end up winning. Classic stuff, in the upper tier of these matches which is a hell of an upper tier. 

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Eddie Kingston at the Hot Stove, Jelly Jar, Baking Soda, Hot Water, Mask, Gloves Can't Stand the Odor

Eddie Kingston vs. Hotstuff Hernandez IWA-MS 5/12/07 - GREAT

PAS: This was peak swoll Hotstuff, he looks like a Mexican Mafia enforcer who has been in Pelican Bay for 18 months lifting weights. He manhandles Eddie for most of the early part of the match, and Eddie is great as a guy being manhandled. He sells every shot like it is breaking him down,  and really conveys the frustration of chopping away a granite block. Eddie is able to find some cracks in the second half of the match, landing some big backfists and getting some near falls. I really liked the spot where Hotstuff skinned the cat to the top rope only to get jump kicked in the temple. Eddie's rally fell short when Hotstuff hit him with a heavy border toss for the win. Hotstuff was a bit unyielding for this to be a true epic, but it was a hell of fight and Eddie fighting against the odds only to succumb is a great story line for him.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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New Footage Friday: HOTSTUFF HERNANDEZ! RAGING FERNANDEZ! FUNK! WAHOO! ROCK N ROLLS! BADD CO!

Hotstuff Hernandez vs Terry Funk EWF 1/26/02

MD: I love the contrast here. Funk comes in trying to survive. Hernandez is bigger, stronger, younger. Funk's a man in his late 50s. The weapons are the equalizer. He comes right out of the gate by throwing a chair as Hernandez, young and brash, is preening. Then he follows up with one nasty shot after the next with chairs and tables, linking in his mastery of wrestling violence with a neckbreaker, and a pile driver and DDT on the chair. Hernandez has to get a foot on the rope, even so early into the match, after the pile driver, though he does manage to kick out of the DDT. Ultimately, Funk, really having no choice, leans too hard into it. The table he's used as a weapon, a lot like his own body, starts to break down and as it falls apart, he takes some collateral damage from a shot with it and Hernandez is able to come back. He doesn't go straight to weapon shots. He doesn't need to. Instead it's a clothesline and a toss into the corner. When he does go for a time, that gives Funk a chance to recover and toss another chair, taking back over. He's fighting against time, however, against youth and regeneration.

Funk throws everything he has at Hernandez, his own body, fists and head, but it takes a toll on him too. Hernandez is able to recover (and really all he has to do is throw himself at Funk to take back over), but his cockiness costs him once more as he misses a dive onto a table, something he absolutely did not need to do but very much wanted to. Funk comes back with a chair but leans into it too hard once more and eats a recoil shot. This time, however, instead of allowing to slow him down, he calls upon the very last thing he has left, the acceptance of his own mortality. Instead of pulling back, hesitating, recovering, he dives the rest of the way in, launching chairshots that bound off of Hernandez' head and onto his own, again and again and again, until both men collapse. Maybe it's the superior physical prowess and reflexes of youth or maybe it's the sad reality of an old man who'd used up all his luck decades before, but Hernandez falls upon Funk and takes the wholly Pyrrhic victory. Funk clears the ring after the match and basks in the crowd's respect for the effort they just witnessed and the memory of every effort that had come before.

ER: I'm not going to attempt to match the old horse poetry of Matt, but I loved this. If you were told there was a great Funk/Hernandez match out there, you would probably assume it was Funk/Gino, not Funk/Hotstuff. Funk is pushing 60 here and decides to take at least a dozen shots directly to the head, and this builds into one of the best matches of the last phase of Funk's career. This match was within the final 60 matches of his career (which I guess we can't officially call finished until the man is actually in the ground) and I think it ranks among the best of those 60. This was so much more of a big Funk performance than anyone could have reasonably expected in 2002, coming out throwing hard plastic chairs into the ring and starting the match proper with a chairshot exchange. Funk got his hands up on a couple of shots, but takes far more right on top of his head. Funk's offense looked strong, strong enough to believably put down a larger and younger man. His neckbreaker was tremendous, one of the more violent things in a match filled with chairshots and broken tables. He hits a nice piledriver and drops Hernandez with a DDT on a chair, and I loved that the placement of all of Funk's biggest pieces of offense were at the very beginning of the match, making it more believable that Hernandez was still fresh enough to kick out.

We get a great broken table spot in the corner off a Hernandez avalanche, Funk takes more shots to the head, and eventually Funk looks to only be standing by holding onto the ropes. Hernandez is just wailing on him with heavy chops, and I kept waiting for Funk to collapse in the ring. We get a huge moment of Hernandez missing a superfly splash through a table (with a perfect narrow escape from Funk, and the turning point where Funk just decides he's going to outcrazy Hernandez to psyche out the youngster is late career Funk brilliance. He misses a big chairshot that bounces off the top rope and recoils into his face, and it's one of the better versions of that spot out there. It's a spot that looks stupid at least 75% of the time, but with Funk it almost comes off as baked in. We're so used to seeing Funk hit by shrapnel and friendly fire that of course he's going to hit himself in the head occasionally. The finish is excellent, a bit of deranged theater that few could pull off, but naturally Funk is one of those few. He starts bashing Hernandez in the head with a chair, and then starts taking shots for himself, one for you, one to myself, over and over until it all catches up with him in an instant. Hernandez falls onto Funk like he's a vending machine that robbed Funk's quarters, pinning him under his dead weight. I loved this match.

PAS: Every Funk match we get is a total mitzvah. I don't think he has ever had a match that wasn't at a minimum worth watching. It's crazy the amount of punishment he was taking at this age, he certainly could have gone in there and played the hits, and everyone would have been happy. Instead he is taking multiple chair shots to the head, and getting speared into the ropes. The finish was a total joy, Funk chairshotting Hernandez and himself until they were both splayed out.  What a performer Funk was, and major props to Hernandez for putting him over so well.


Wahoo McDaniel vs. Manny Fernandez AWA 6/25/88

MD: This was pretty much what you expected it to be. Manny wasn't even 34 here (though he almost was) but he felt more like Wahoo who was 16 years older than him than Hennig who was just four younger. It felt like two old guys beating the crap out of each other. There was one fan who was heckling early on which got a rise out of Manny, and the match would have been more interesting if he had kept going. Also this is the only HH I've ever seen where the camera operator spent the first two minutes of the match trying to find someone else to film it. Premise was that Wahoo would get an advantage, Manny would go over the top/more vicious to get over on him and repeat, until Wahoo was fed up with it, scored a mule kick low blow, and they ended up outside for the countout. Nothing revelatory but one's going to complain about watching two great strikers beat on each other for 8 minutes. 

PAS: I loved this match up. One of my favorite things in wrestling is two fry cooks tossing spuds. Wahoo at one point just backhands Manny right in the face. This doesn't really go anywhere, but it is stiff as all get out, and Manny especially is a guy we don't have a ton of footage of and just watching him throw those backhand shots is nifty.

ER: This ruled, because it was Wahoo McDaniel vs. Manny Fernandez. I wanted to meaty dudes to welt each other up, and that's literally all the did. Some guy near the camera operator keeps trying to make fun of Manny's forehead. "Nice forehead! How's your forehead!?" As if Manny Fernandez has no idea that his gouged forehead looks like a topographical match of the Appalachians. Honestly I knew this match was getting high marks for me the moment Wahoo ran at Manny and threw one of his chops right across Manny's face. Wahoo knocks Manny straight onto his ass with a running backhand!! This is a high school gym crowd, and they got to witness a bigger backhand slap than I've seen in any Jack Hill movie. Manny drops to his butt and begs off, and this is a 5 star match. Wahoo is great and breaking Manny with knucklelocks, and Manny is great at being the guy brought to his knees by a knucklelock. And by the time this broke down into these two chopping each other as hard as humanly possible, I was in heaven. These are some of the hardest choppers in wrestling, and neither was holding back. They were throwing these chops HIGH too, aiming them no lower than the collarbones. We're talking the most painful sounding chops thrown right at the collarbones, neck, throat, and face. The guy stops recording while they're still kicking each other's ass on the floor, but this was a hearty meal of chops. Everyone needs these 10 minutes in their life.


Rock N Roll Express vs. Badd Company AWA 6/25/88

MD: Following the Wahoo vs Manny match is about half of a Lawler vs Hennig match. It's a shame we don't get more of it because Lawler had a lot of tools to work with there. The crowd's pretty goofy (more on that later) but it's intimate and full of some loudmouths. Hennig was super athletic and would bump like crazy for him. He had Madusa to play off of, etc. Just when it was starting to get good (missed fistdrop leading to Hennig limbwork) it cuts out. The tag match was good, if straightforward (short heat, single heat, quickly over after hot tag). Really, they were playing off the crowd and the homophobic loudmouths within it. That meant a lot of big bumping heel miscommunication spots early, a sense of Company really taking it out on Gibson when they took over, and Ricky never really taking things seriously which is why he launched a few low blows in the comeback just for the hell of it and to pop that one loud section of the crowd. That ultimately drew a DQ and a Dusty finish (I think that's what happened at least). It was, in a lot of ways, an expert performance of giving the crowd the sort of match they wanted, right down to Morton believably costing his team the match, and while that's important in examining all of these wrestlers across their career, what we end up with is me not wanting to go to 1988 Jersey City anytime soon (the whole thing was in front of a big banner stating pride in being JC students) and a match that probably wouldn't quite make the AWA set.

PAS: This is similar to Manny match, a pair of great teams kind of working their way through a formula match for a shitty crowd. Manny and Wahoo are going to stiff each other, and Pat Tanaka and Ricky Morton are going to pinball, and that is enough for me. I get the sense these teams have some stuff to have a really great match against each other, and I imagine it happened somewhere. This wasn't it, but it had enough professional shtick that I enjoyed it.

ER: Loud pre-match gay slurs aside (easily solved by a lowering of the volume for the match), this was a killer Pat Tanaka bumpathon. Badd Company don't really get much, as this is mostly the Rock n Rolls pinballing Tanaka around, but I'm cool with that. There are plenty of fun moments with teams this good, like Tanaka ducking away when he gets too close to Gibson on the apron only to turn around into a great Ricky clothesline (with big flipping Tanaka bump), just one instance of Tanaka treating this match like it wasn't at a Jersey City high school. I liked Badd Company's cheating, always love over the ropes chokes, and I loved Paul Diamond's ankle pick to prevent a tag. After the match Tanaka takes two of his bigger bumps, a nice backdrop (of course Tanaka had to get a backdrop bump in), and gets awesomely faceplanted on the ringside announce table. He and Ricky walked right onto the table, and Tanaka gets shoved down hard into it, belly flopping into that empty pool.

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 20: Seven to Survive

ER: So we came out the other side of the arguable worst episode of the season. We knew there would be roadblocks on the trip to Valhalla. It's just like Lucha Underground to try and make us quit when we're this close, but I'm not falling for it. We're finishing these last 3 episodes. Throw your worst at me!

TL: God, who is Immortan Joe in the realm of LU? I guess it's Matanza? Sammy Guevara actually kinda reminds me of Nux. Jake Strong is a perfect Rictus Erectus. It should be noted that while I do share Eric's feelings of wanting to close this one out, we are only returning to this on the day of a full-on statewide shelter in place due to Big Rona. Yes, the only thing truly driving us back to wanting to watch this show is semi-forced quarantine from a highly contagious pathogen. And the only cure is...wait, a SHOW-LONG SEVEN-WAY MATCH???

King Cuerno vs. Big Bad Steve vs. Hernandez vs. Aerostar vs. PJ Black vs. Jake Strong vs. Dante Fox

ER: And well, this might not have been the worst they could have thrown at me, but it was a show long match prominently featuring a couple guys I wish weren't prominently featured, and I don't think it had the meat to flesh out a show long match. The indisputable best part of the match was Big Bad Steve getting his longest opportunity yet to be Big Bad Steve, although PJ Black becoming a guy who just kicks everyone in the balls was a close second place. Has that been something Black has been doing? I sure don't remember it. Black goes on a run of kicking three guys straight in the balls, which is a smart strategy. PJ must have had some insider scoop to know that those guys had weak balls. Big Bad Steve is not only the best striker in the match, and the best fighter in the match (at one point he starts braining people with a monkeywrench, especially cracking Cuerno), and sadly he shows that he can sell a ball shot better than anyone. He takes a ball kick from PJ Black with as much force as I've ever seen anyone take a ball kick, really came off worthy of finishing a match.

But there was a ton of Jake Strong breaking ankles with his ankle lock, and they debuted one of the stupidest features yet, in the fed's history: Bone Crunching Action! We've sat through a dozen Pentagon arm breaks, never got splintering bone sound effect. But we're here now. Jake Strong's ankle lock has bone crunching action. He crunches Black's ankle, tries to crunch Aerostar's ankle but he is saved, just an ankle crunching machine. Hernandez does silly baby stuff to get eliminated well before anyone else, Fox hits a big springboard inverted 450 onto half a dozen guys who don't catch him, Aerostar hits a dive off a cherry picker that took an eternity to set up, and really the brawl through the crowd might have been the most engaging actual stretch of the match. But there were too few engaging stretches for a match that went the full show, and for what? Does this mean we get a title match of Marty the Moth vs. Jake Strong?? THAT'S what we built to? Who is the babyface in that scenario?

TL: Oh, the best part is that Striker doesn't even hide that it's gonna take the whole show. That seems more like a threat than anything else, because now I have to lock in for probably 45 minutes of a match where I like roughly 2 1/2 guys. And one of those guys is Big Bad Steve, so the other 1 1/2 can be spread out amongst the other six at some point. I don't get how Hernandez is out after like three minutes when you have 40 minutes to fill, but his elimination seemed like a booking decision that was like, "Let's just get this down to even numbers." PJ being all about the nut shots was admittedly amusing; the springboard into the nut shot was inspired shit. The WWECW reunion happens for all of 90 seconds before the campy sound effect ankle breaking sends PJ to ROH. I really can't get a handle on this match in the first 10 minutes. Like they're not sure when to just let it get wild and go hard, and then we get to the King Cuerno bodysuit strip knife-edge chop section and I long for the PJ Black nutshot brigade. The psychology of Aerostar using a forklift to leap onto Big Bad Steve (and Cuerno) is a great piece of business, even if it took too long to set up. At least you get Drago in the construction worker getup (complete with cutouts for the dragon horns). I like bodyslam variants, so Strong's delay and then side throwing slam got a nice reaction from me. Watching Strong base for Aerostar when Big Bad Steve was in the match earlier sure was a choice. 

I'm not completely checked out, but it's so obviously Strong winning this thing. They haven't done enough for me to think there's anything that could be done to stop it. Like, how in the world does Cuerno stand on the outside for two minutes while Fox and Strong lay on the mat? What is that? I almost feel like I should just turn this off. This seems like a pretty damn checked out layout for the last three spots. The ankle lock, the most dangerous sub in the fed, gets shaken off by weak limping from both Fox and Cuerno for big spots. Sure. Big dive off the roof of the entranceway from Fox to land on his ass. He hits a 450, and Strong pulls him off for the pin for some reason. Even Vampiro can't believe it. VAMPIRO. More military references for Fox being tortured while in a submission. Wait, there are ROPE BREAKS? This match is drunk. I don't think this match is worse than last week's show, but it's just 40 minutes of nothing leading to inevitability. But first a stupid three-way knockout spot. I've lost my patience with this match. It shouldn't be like this. They're still going! We finally get to Fox and Strong, Striker reminds us that this is Lucha Under-ground, and then Fox lasts a minute in the ankle lock before tapping. "This is bullshit!", the crowd chants. Yes, it is, but we are also now two episodes away. Ultima Lucha Cuatro awaits us. We're definitely playing out the string. Here's to playing the full schedule.


COMPLETE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 19: Savagery

TL: Gonna do a little something different while reviewing this: Watching the whole episode while my overly loud dishwasher is running in the background. When you live in a 450 sq. ft. granny unit, sometimes things like this are unavoidable, but also, I much prefer the constant whirr of the dishwasher to at least 95% of the dialogue on this show. And my point is immediately made by the opening segment featuring Cueto and Strong. Another time where AEW not letting Jake talk is a good thing; then again, seeing a known racist have to react positively to a perceived ancient piece of Mexican history is high comedy, as is his idea of manifest destiny with saying the phrase, "This isn't your temple. It's mine!" as he leaves. What a segment. Dishwasher, don't fail me now.


Aerostar vs. PJ Black vs. Hernandez vs. Big Bad Steve vs. King Cuerno vs. Jake Strong vs. Dante Fox

ER: Oh damn we get a battle royal in LU, AND the long overdue return of Big Bad Steve!? Okay Big Bad Steve got eliminated as I was typing that first sentence and I hate this now. This was a pretty bad battle royal. It goes only a few minutes, Steve and Hernandez get eliminated super early the exact same way, people keep showboating on the apron, Dante Fox returns after a year and gets a couple of slippery escapes, whatever. The show is named after Jake Strong, he mush mouthed his way through the opening video with Cueto, we knew who was winning, but that doesn't mean they had to go out and do a battle royal that took as much time as the entrances. Lame.

TL: BIG BAD STEVE BACK IN THE GODDAMN BUILDING. And I'm happy to see Dante back, too, as him going balls to the damn wall with Killshot was worth a return. It's a battle royal, which should make Eric happy. (Arrested Development Narrator: "It didn't.") He likes to do a yearly get together where we blind pick battle royals based on the participants. The last one we did, he chose the Slamboree '98 Cruiserweight Battle Royal to start and I ran away with the entire evening on points, blowing away the field. Can't believe he has me back for it, to be honest. In less than a minute, Big Bad Steve gets to show off why he's a goddamn base god for Aerostar and then throws a fantastic right hand only to get eliminated first. About right. This is obviously a vehicle to get Strong right into the main event. Sad that it has to come at the expense of guys like Fox, who showed out to such an amazing extent that him getting treated like an afterthought here is incredibly puzzling and incredibly sad. And then they make the battle royal pointless by just having a 7-way match for the belt next week. And it sets up a Mundo match later that night? Okay. I know I'm just getting over food poisoning but I still don't get what just happened. On the bright side, guaranteed more Big Bad Steve, baby!!! Dishwasher update: A low rumble, but still loud enough to drown out Striker. A good start.

Killshot vs. The Mack

ER: This was more angle than match, using a first time pairing that could have potentially been interesting, to instead set up an uninspiring Mil Muertes run in. The spear Muertes hits on Mack is arguably the weakest I've seen from him. The match didn't really have time to go anywhere interesting.

TL: This had a couple neat things going for it and then they ended it for the angle, which in itself seemed pointless, especially given how well Mack came off in browbeating Muertes before. This was very much in the vein of those old Attitude-era TV segments where a 2-3 minute match gets thrown away for an angle that didn't need to be expanded upon. Dishwasher update: A couple of louder whirrs every now and then, really digging in deep to get that good clean.

ER: I've gotten so into Sammy Guevara crushing it while playing the lowest man on the totem pole in The Inner Circle that it's now weird to see him as the plucky babyface joining XO and Ivelisse. The trios match should still be good.

TL: The Sammy reveal was fun as he's been one of the only people I've enjoyed since AEW has started up, but holy crap, the inside jokes about Famous B's 7-year contract for an LU talent write themselves. That's the only thing I enjoyed about this. This whole show has been just nothing but promos, really. Dishwasher update: Cleaner than Famous B after that trash can shot.

Jake Strong vs. Johnny Mundo

ER: This is that kind of 2011 pro wrestling vibe that I have absolutely no interest in revisiting, baby! There were some things I liked here, big individual moments, but I don't think it added up to a very good match. Mundo takes some big bumps, including this awful moment where he hit a kick from the apron and managed to fall on the buckles, apron, ring steps, and floor, winding up with his legs over his head. But seconds later he was totally fine. Mundo is such an athletic bumper that he often winds up making bumps absolutely meaningless in a Petey Williams kind of way. And this was certainly a match where no move mattered. Both guys took control at will, no matter what they had just taken. Strong took over after taking a sitout powerbomb on the floor, Mundo took back over after taking a big lariat to the back of the head, both guys just kept popping up whenever necessary. And by the time we get to ankle lock reversals I am praying for death's sweet release. Matanza runs out at the end, there's an obvious blood packet to really plant the flag in this shit sundae, and I am happy it's over.

TL: Johnny just got to walk out in front of 40k+ and work a minute in the Rumble for a big payday and you have to be happy for him to be able to go from a promotion on its last legs (and the husk of Impact!) to being an upper-midcarder for the world's biggest promotion at the drop of a hat. I kept waiting for something to jump out in this match given they know each other pretty well but nothing really made an impact for me outside of Johnny's nuts bumps to the outside. And then they start brawling into the crowd and the sweet, slow, rhythmic churn of my dishwasher soothes me as Morrison decides to turn a wrestling match into a literal parkour demonstration. There was no rhyme or reason to this match. A guy like Strong who has been put over like a world-beater didn't get to look like one here; 50/50 booking is such shit. If a guy is a world-beater, make him one. Have him show a weakness every now and then, but now he's just trading spots with a guy who, while presented as a top guy, is working this like any other match. Just mind boggling to me. It's amazing to me that I'm about to type this but here it is: The Nunchucks Match from earlier this season blows this match out of the water. Strong leaned into everything Mundo threw, so there's that, I guess. This is very much in the Adam Cole/Michael Elgin ROH Title mold and folks, that match style ain't it. It's wild they worked a 15 minute match that led to that ending considering how Strong has been booked but hey, what do I know? Matanza comes out, busts Johnny open, takes Taya on a tour of (Jake Strong's) temple, and then wails away on Mundo as if he was Ralphie finally giving Scott Farkus what for. And as the dishwasher starts to drain out the dirty water for the rinse cycle and steam starts to form, the sweet release of this show finally happens. 45 minutes of my life gone, never to be gotten back, but transcribed in all its hellish nature for you, the reader of this website.


ER: They went from the best episode of the season, to (I think) pretty easily the worst. The wrestling was not good, the angles were not interesting, and this whole thing felt like the ultimate wheel spinner of an episode. This was not the go home show to Ultima Lucha, but it made me much less interested in Ultima Lucha.

TL: Three. More. Episodes.

COMPLETE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Hotstuff Hernandez in WWF

Hotstuff Hernandez has always felt like one of the notable guys over the past couple decades to have never worked WWE, but he's also not a guy who gets talked about much as someone who could have been in WWE. He feels like a guy they would have wanted at some point, and a guy who could have been a pretty big name in certain WWE eras. He's worked nearly everywhere else in his 20+ year run, has been a visible TV presence, but has never worked for WWE. However, he worked two matches for WWF, in the year before they became WWE. How many guys work a couple matches early in their career, and then go on to make good paydays everywhere else for 20 years? It's an interesting case. Here are those two matches:


Shawn Hernandez vs. Crash WWF Jakked 11/11/2000

ER: Little did they know that they had the spitting image of future shaved head Kurt Angle right here, in a match where they talked several times about Kurt Angle, yet never made the connection. And part of that was our cursed announce team of Michael Hayes and Jonathan Coachman mentioned the name Shawn Hernandez early, but not again once the match was rolling. What Michael Hayes *does* do, is make several non-jokes about women he would like to have sex with. You now, the kind of non-jokes where suddenly any kind of verb is flipped around and made to sound dirty. "So, Molly Holly got a big win this week." "Ohhhhhh, I'll let Molly Holly get a big win over me heh heh." "Well we're still running those XFL cheerleader tryouts..." "Ohhhhh, I'd like to tryout for those XFL cheerleaders heh heh." It's great stuff and obviously they are great jokes that you cannot NOT tell. And Hernandez gets a lot of play here, most notably throwing a great high arc powerslam early. Crash makes up the size difference by hitting nice and hard, nice punches to Hernandez's eye, flies into him with a couple of nice short elbows (one of which slumps Hernandez back into the corner), knocks him down with a big bolo lariat, then hits a good enough missile dropkick. Now Crash probably needed a better, flashier comeback, as Hernandez was more in control the first couple minutes, and with the size difference Crash should have gone for some more explosives. But the bulldog finish plays with this crowd, and the match itself is good enough.

Shawn Hernandez vs. Haku WWF Jakked 4/7/01

ER: This was cool, as Hernandez gets to be a hulking Kurt Angle, bigger than Haku, and Haku is enough of a man that he basically lets Hernandez run this thing. Haku can let some hulk in a singlet look strong, because he's Haku and he knows he can always just rip his eyeball out at any point. The whole match is remarkably simple and effective, with few moves and none really needed. Haku is in his early 40s here and gets to show how spry he still was, working some face rope running/dropdown/leapfrog sequences with Hernandez in a way that Haku really wasn't doing with anyone else at the time, and the match peaked with something as easy as Hernandez chopping the hell out of Haku. Seriously, it's so great. These guys have gotten by this whole time by just running into each other and being two guys butting heads, and we finally get Hernandez whipping Haku into the turnbuckles...and then he just starts beating him down. Hernandez throws heavy clubbing forearm shots to Haku's chest, then starts throwing big hard chops. And not super fast Kobashi chops, he's laying them in Ric Flair style, and Haku just yells louder every time another one lands. Hernandez is standing and chopping Haku as hard as possible, and the fans are getting into it, and Hernandez keeps chopping, and the fans are into this big man slugfest. Hernandez tosses Haku into the opposite buckles, Haku angrily headbutts the buckle, Hernandez gives chase...and Haku catches him dead to rights in the Tongan Death Grip. I had no clue these two ever crossed paths, had no memory of this match (even though Metal/Jakked was my favorite show during this era), but this was what you would want from 3 minutes of two hosses.

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New Footage Friday: Funk, Droese, Necro, Jumbo, Rheingans, Hernandez

Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Brad Rheingans AJPW 8/30/83

MD: I'm actually surprised that Phil went for this one when I suggested it and said it was surprisingly good. I'm getting in on this one first so I'm curious if the others liked it. My best guess here is that Jumbo knew that Brad was legit and really wanted to go all out with him. This one had a tremendous sense of struggle from start to end, all the way to Brad's frustration at losing and Jumbo's insistance that they shake hands post-match. I loved how all of Brad's big offense was pure AWA (ok, the gutwrench suplex was a higher level but who else could accomplish so much with atomic drops?) all built to through the match itself. Jumbo had to fight for all of his big stuff, and then they went back around one more time for the finish which is always appreciated. This is the kind of performance which really justifies Brad's intermediary role in Japan years later.

PAS: I really dug this despite being a low voter on early 80s Jumbo. I loved how they started out going full Greco Roman with the grappling, and the first couple of minutes of this really felt like proto shootstyle. We got into more of a traditional 70/80s style heavyweight match after that, but Rheingans has great leverage and power on all of his throws, and those were some really great looking atomic drops. If this was the first you had heard of Rheingans you would think he would have been a huge star in the 80s, this feels like the apex of his interesting but ultimately underwhelming career.

Terry Funk vs. Marshall Duke CWA 10/18/97

ER: I'm a pretty recent convert to Duke Droese, as in I'm not even sure I'd seen an actual match of his before this year. I missed 2-3 years of WWF while in high school, before coming back to the pro wrestling fold. Droese was a guy I knew of only because of people making fun of his gimmick. He was a wrestling garbage man, and that was what I knew. But when I actually watched the footage I saw a guy with great size, great punches, hard offense, someone that the 1995 WWF crowd was genuinely excited to see. So when we unearthed a Duke/Funk match, I flipped. The match is slow paced but engaging, made up mostly of headlocks and punches, building to some bigger bumps and some nice nearfalls. It probably didn't need to go nearly 25 minutes, but I'm also glad it did. From what I've seen of 1995 WWF, Droese was the best non-Lawler puncher on the roster, so seeing he and Funk take turns teeing off on each other's foreheads is something I don't mind watching at length. This was Duke working a Funk match, and Funk took us to plenty of great places. 

We got weird hijinks like Funk's second opening up a canister of blue gas right in Duke's face, like he was Cesar Romero or something. We've all seen salt and powder, I'm not sure I've ever seen someone get Joker gassed. Funk starts taking all of his pratfalls and setting up Duke to interrupt his attacks with punches, coming in slow with axe handles so Duke can throw great body shots and uppercuts, teeter tottering on the ropes so Duke can line up punches, and Funk falling into the ropes and off the apron is one of the most entertaining things about Funk matches. Terry takes a couple nasty spills to the floor in that theatrical Terry way, eating a big lariat over the top to the floor, gets run into the ringpost from the apron and stumbles most of the way back across the apron before falling off, hangs by his feet in the ropes, and in one of my absolute favorite moments of the match he does a trademark Funk Stumble and falls backwards over an on-all-fours Duke right into a nearfall. Funk goes to Germany and starts taking his bumping cues from the Phillie Phanatic, and it's the best. Funk brings some nice weapon shots, smashing a set of rolling metal steps into Duke's leg, and violently throwing a table on him on the floor. And they come back to the ring to work some simple but effective nearfalls and escapes, with a nice sunset flip from the apron by Duke, a few torture rack escapes from Terry (including one where he just punches Duke right in the eye to escape), before Terry gets caught in a nice over the shoulder powerslam for the win. Mid 90s CWA is definitely an untapped source for hidden gems, and the timing on this unearthing was perfect for me.

MD: Here you have ECW era Funk playing a heel against and completely disrupting the orderly German round system with his antics. I had a professor who worked on European Integration that told a story about a resort on the border of France and Germany. On the resort there was a pool and in the pool, the Germans would swim about in an organized line around the edge. As they were doing that, the French jumped in splashed through the middle. I'm not going to say that the German round system is exactly like that, because we've seen too many pirate chain matches (3?) but it's what I thought of here as Duke calmly backed off at the bell and Funk, when he had the advantage, would just press it in the most outlandish fashion on the floor between rounds.

When they did make use of the round breaks, it made for some interesting stuff: the double clothesline to set up the finish and especially Funk's amazing crawling, head-down sell out of the ring. Funk was sufficiently wild (picking up a table on the outside completely uncaring if the legs took out members of the crowd) and Duke was properly indomitable, with solid punches and a sense that he deserved what was probably one of the biggest wins of his career. Huge novelty value and a pretty good match. I'm very glad this one turned up.


Necro Butcher vs. Hotstuff Hernandez TASW 2001

MD: So, this was something completely different. What I liked the most about this was the volume. They started at 7, with a chop exchange and the dismantling of the valet, stuff that you'd generally expect in the back third of a match. That let the things that followed like the (completely misguided but structurally sound) dueling chairshots and the barbed wire to feel like proper escalation. The crowd didn't deal well with Hernandez' mix of underhanded tactics, big bumping (the guy had great, charismatic range of motion at this point, working for a back row that didn't even exist), and huge spots. Necro felt like he was working from underneath, but after a Hernandez dive, the fans were more than happy to cheer for him. It worked out in the post-match but it made the journey a little bumpy. The finish was sick. Absolutely sick. But hey, at least it ended the match, right?

PAS: Really cool early look at both guys and you get a sense of what would make them both such compelling guys in a couple of years. I loved the simple stuff in this match, Necro has great looking punches and headbutts and Hernandez had these awesome looking underhanded thumping shots to the ribs. I honestly could have watched a minimalist fist fight between the two and been super happy. Instead we get sort of an indy version of a Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka match with crazy bumps into barbwire boards and tables and some gross head shots with chairs and stop signs. These are a pair of really fun guys to do Awesome vs. Tanaka. I love Hernandez's no hands tope and we get a crazy Necro flip plancha, it builds to the huge pair of bumps to end the match, Necro getting awesome bombed off the ring apron, and Hernandez eating a sheer drop powerbomb through a stop sign. Not everything was hit cleanly, but man this was a spectacle.

ER: This is definitely among the earliest Necro matches I've seen. This is when he was skinnier and wore facepaint, so he looked like Buffalo Bill if he were into Darkthrone instead of women's skin. I love seeing early career work from guys like this, it's a fun time to see totally different version of guys you liked. Both are still raw here, and what's hilarious is Hernandez is the one trying more stupid dangerous stuff, while Necro is the one who did stupider things the longer his career went. And this was a pretty awesome indy match. If I had plunked down $15 to see this on a Saturday night, I'd be talking about it years later. Fans get on Hernandez a bit when he hits a sloppy spear, chanting "You're not Goldberg", but he was pretty hard to root against by the end of this. He had Necro willing to take some wild offense, and he dished out some risky stuff. He hits a couple huge missile dropkicks, one of them with Necro crotched over the top rope, the other while Necro is stuffed into a garbage can. Phil is totally spot on calling this an Awesome/Tanaka match, because it was exactly that. We got unprotected chairshots, a couple big powerbombs through a table, big bumps on shoulders, and Hernandez breaking out his always crazy missile launch dive. That dive is one of the craziest moves in wrestling the past 20 years and deserves to be talked up more. This was great garbage from two guys who would go on to have real memorable careers, and it's cool to see how great their instincts were this early.

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 13: The Circle of Life

ER: I have thoughts on our opening cinematic. I went through a lot of shifting opinions on that thing. So, it was cheesy, but then I started to like it the longer it went on. It moved past typical Lucha Underground locker room fight cinematic and attempted to go full They Live. Obviously there was zero chance they would even approach They Live, and obviously there was very little chance they would even approach a direct to Redbox ripoff of They Live called Aliens Among Us. But they tried to do it and the digital video looked cheap in spots and it had bad early 2000s editing and coloring and they did a bunch of annoying shaky cam on certain impact...but I liked the fact that it took forever. They did something kinda bad but they committed a lot of time to it and that kind of committment means something. There were great moments, like Catrina throwing a freaking chain at Melissa, missing, leading to a great pause in the action as Melissa gives a bitchreally? reaction. You know their acting isn't usually there, but they're going for it and I kind of weirdly like the loving ways they film Melissa and Fenix. It's like when David Lynch makes young love super sunny and optimistic. This last scene felt like a fan made Morrissey video version of that.

TL: LU went from 40 to 22 episodes this season and I feel like the reason that happened was because they needed to budget out this intro sequence. Can’t get over how they use the same sound effects here that they do in the actual matches. It’s truly amazing that they took 11 minutes to tell this story. I do agree they were going for an ode to They Live, but even then, I don’t think I expected this, with Michael Bay-level jump cuts before we get what’s essentially a Power Rangers episode ending at the end with the return of Fenix. These last few weeks, Walk Hard has been prevalent in my meme-like responses to things I’ve been watching, so Fenix coming to and then telling Melissa, “Time travel has changed me” like he’s Dewey Cox coming out of rehab would have absolutely floored me. He had the same vacant look in his eyes, at least. Aerostar obviously repping the Purple Parrots, and he will now head on to the Temple looking for a full pendant. I don’t think there’s a person alive, even the world’s biggest LU fan, who could tell you why this intro happened in the first place. Even if I don’t think it’s good (and it isn’t), I love that it exists. This seems like something that would have been in Florida in the 80’s.

Joey Wrestling vs. Matanza

ER: Joey Mercury on my TV is a great thing in 2018, and he gets a fake Darkness theme song that brings me back to classic WCW straight faced rip off themes and I get a nostalgia kick. And this delivered what I wanted from a Matanza sacrifice match, and that is Joey actually getting a lot of offense and not getting steamrolled in a minute. Wrestling has nice punches and can hit hard on everything, and we get a cool moment were Joey shoulderblocks Matanza through the ropes to the floor. There's a silly spot where Joey no sells a pedigree, which seems a little too 1999 as a competing brand diss (maybe they hired the guy who edited the opening vignette from the same 1999 time machine hiring spree that netted them the guy who laid that spot into the match). Glad they didn't actually murder Joey since they do that now, means I might get to see him again this season and not as a ghost.

TL: Joey had a rough 2018, as he dies here and then fell asleep in his car the morning of All In and was taken to jail, which led to the infamous ending where they couldn’t convince Okada/Scurll to not go 86 minutes and they rushed to a black slate during the main event. I do love he got a good run against Matanza here. Doing the whole blind low blow, then a blatant low blow where there wasn’t a DQ was a hilarious lapse in psychology, but he bumped well enough and was fiery on offense. A no-selling of a Pedigree is fine by me. Best sacrifice match since Vinnie Mass went via death by pizza.

Killshot vs. Big Bad Steve

ER: Steve appears to be walking with a limp and I'm unsure if this dude is just working hurt or he's just got a cool walk, like he installs drywall and also plays on a softball team so has aches, and worries. And it's weird we get a match where Killshot takes more of a match than Matanza took in his match. I don't know what the deal is with Steve's knee or ankle, but I pointed out he was limping and then early in the match Killshot kicks his knee so Steve spends the match selling that leg. A lot of the match was worked around Killshot doing sick experiments on Steve's knee, stomping it and twisting it and doing stupid Killshot kicks to it. It works though, and even the (overly produced) strikes by Killshot work. The sound effects are absurd at this point, but the strikes looked good, even tossed in a nasty backhand. Steve had a big cutter and big powerbomb (yeah yeah the knee) and threw a fantastic overhand right in the corner. Brenda was terrible as Steve's second, even compared to other terrible Brenda performances. Is Steve supposed to be some 50s greaser caricature? He doesn't act like it, but Brenda keeps screeching at him to "Hit him with your hot rod" (which could also be a really confusing attempt at innuendo) and calling him Daddy-o. This got pretty good, though I'm still confused by Steve working a babyface injury from entrance to exit, but also like that we're getting Steve on TV sooo.

TL: THE RETURN OF BIG BAD STEVE, DADDY. The tire rotation tips from Striker during his entrance were terrific, and now I need vignettes of Steve taking care of beaters coming into the shop and grifting folks out of some extra bucks. Meanwhile, Killshot gets the announcers talking about contract kills like he’s gonna be the focus of Season 2 of Killing Eve or something. Finally, Striker uses the word “luchaness.” I dunno, man. Steve sells like hell to get over Killshot’s offense to the previously broken ankle, which I do admit looks better than normal here. Steve’s offense is really good, too, with the cool side suplex reversal off a punch and then a nutty double pumphandle facebuster. Killshot working more like Strickland isn’t bad, per se, but it doesn’t come off as something that looks hurty at all. He’s the guy who benefits most from LU’s overly produced show. Big Bad Steve impresses again, and honesty, him and Havoc as a big/little tag team would be awesome. Promos out by Havoc’s motorcycle with Steve checking his shocks? Sign me up. And sure enough, there’s the play for the apuestas match. Killshot will be Strickland soon enough, methinks.

ER: I had a mechanic a decade or so ago who would offer you a discount if you paid in cash, so he could hide he payments from his ex-wife. That feels like a good bit to have Big Bad Steve doing at his shop.

Pentagon Dark vs. Hernandez

ER: Hernandez is as good a choice as any guy to bring back as Pentagon cannon fodder, but considering we've now seen Pentagon handily dispatch Matanza, Cage (a couple times), the entire roster in Aztec Warfare, and even more than hold his own against Cage/Cuerno in a handicap match, I don't really need to see a competitive match against Hernandez. Pentagon gets the full Sexy Star treatment with sound effects, not taking chances that his light shots won't sound like they're breaking boards. Hernandez tries his greatest hits, hits the big no hands tope which is very much crazy at age 45, hits a nice over the shoulder backbreaker, and tries a cool brick wall spot that Pentagon doesn't help him with at all: Pentagon ran into Hernandez while Hernandez didn't budge, but Pentagon didn't fly off him like he ran into a wall, it made it look like more of a blown spot than a Hernandez power spot. A big part of HHH at peak HHH was getting slightly out of position for opponent's offense or otherwise sandbagging (think him going up slowly for suplexes in his big Eddie singles). Pentagon is truly fulfilling the prophecy. After the match Cuerno attacks Pentagon, and considering he had a tough time with Pentagon while teaming with Cage, and was getting tooled by Ivelisse a few weeks ago, I can't wait to see Cuerno definitely have a chance in this future match!

TL: Triple P out here cutting promos that are longer than they need to be given the guy whose title reign this is patterned off. Hernandez definitely has bigger balls now as he looks considerably smaller than his peak, which, you know, makes sense. He also comes out wearing purple velvet pants, which is definitely a choice. Penta’s off and on offense starts the match, then Hernandez hits his slingshot tackle and his still impressive no-hands plancha. Already losing me and we aren’t even five minutes in after that, though. Just an absolute snail’s pace here, and this is just after what happened in the Killshot match. This is also a perception thing; they’re going for “presence” here by trying to play to the crowd, and it’s just not grabbing me at all. It’s a lucha trope as old as time, but then the work after is important to what they’re playing towards with the crowd work. They don’t have me here with it. Hernandez being gassed here isn’t helping things (as Eric said, he’s 45, and while he’s in great shape, he’s not working nearly as much), as Penta plays really only to what his opponent can do. Eh, who am I kidding. Penta’s on cruise control here. Sudden finish, too. Sure. This was a Pentagon 2018 LU title match. No idea how Penta loses the belt realistically unless it’s to Paul himself, and Cuerno, for being presented as an actual threat? No chance.


COMPLETE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 1: El Jefe

ER: Yeah yeah, we're back. We're late because of me, but we're back. I am still doing this spoiler free, which is seeming like an exponentially stupid thing to do considering I've liked each season less than the one that preceded it. I'm hoping for a nice return to form this season. Saying that, I don't actually know who is still involved with the fed, which is part of the fun/horror of going into this thing blind.

TL: Hilariously, if we didn't avoid spoilers, we might cherry pick through things instead on here. There's a lot of horror in this one, though. A LOT of horror.

ER: I immediately regret falling behind at the very beginning of the season, since we get introduced to Papa Antonio Cueto, which I imagine caused quite the varied reactions. I both love it for its ridiculousness, and hate it for its everything else. This is clearly a show with some money behind it, surely we have some extra dough in the coffers for a better wig? Cueto's wig was a 0.8 on the Amanda Bynes Courtroom Appearance scale. The beardwork was okay. The voicework was sub-Christian Bale Batman growl voice. The framed photo was as good as any funeral portrait you've seen, but they lose major points for not having a Temple flower arrangement. Okay this was fucking awful.

TL: So, we get the saga of Dario, the feds, and the power glove, complete with Lorenzo Lamas’ removed eyeball and some dude in a Puma mask who may or may not look like someone who has a big match coming up at NXT: Takeover Brooklyn 4. But THEN we get Dario not only dying, but his father coming to his sparsely attended funeral.

AND IT’S THE SAME GUY THAT PLAYED DARIO WHO IS PLAYING HIS FATHER.

Imagine after the aborted Vince car bomb angle that got shelved because He Who Shall Not Be Named did That Which Shall Not Be Described, you get Vince coming back as the ghost of Vince Sr. haunting Raw on a regular basis. It would have been way better than the Twitter bot that played the Raw GM for months upon months. I understand LU is a pulp show on a pulp network and there is some goofiness going on, but this goes beyond the pale on the goofiness scale. Of course, Antonio berates his son, knocks down his memorial portrait in the ring because he finally has control of HIS promotion, and then announces Aztec Warfare for the LU title. That is definitely a way to start off the new season of this show.


Aztec Warfare 4!

ER: Okay, THIS was fucking awful. What a terrible, sluggish, boring, uninteresting match to start your 4th season off with a fart sound. This whole mess was designed to show the dominance of Pentagon, and for a lazy dude he turned in one of his absolutely laziest performances I've seen. Maybe because it was so long and one-note? It was bad. It started with him and Tommy Dreamer having a super slow mo kendo stick battle, and continued with him hitting his finisher on approximately 10 guys. The new entrants appear to be coming in every 30 seconds, and there's an elimination every 30-60 seconds. New guys come in, new guys take one move, new guys leave. It was fucking awful. Even Matt Striker wasn't trying, and brother they don't come more try hard than Matt Striker. In arguably the least inspired moment of a match filled with uninspired moments, Vinny Massaro comes out, gets a pepperoni pizza delivery, starts to eat a slice and in the flattest tone I've ever heard from him Striker weakly says "PizzaGate". That's it. That's the joke. The joke is that there is no joke. There's a reference, but no attempt at a joke. And the reference is already nearly 2 years past expiration. When Pentagon hooked Massaro's leg on the pin I expected him to flatly sputter out a Sandy Hook reference, but no. I rooted pretty hard for Chavo, just because he was infinitely more interesting in this match than Pentagon, and the crowd clearly hates him because he's...well, no LU fans were ever able to give any actual reason why they disliked Chavo. Striker points out how hot Catrina looks, and normally the golf with eyes bugging out and a tongue on the floor reaction from Striker is the lamest, but in an aggressively shitty match like this Catrina's hotness really was a genuine highlight. Fenix was easily the most interesting of the wrestlers involved, and it really wouldn't have taken much effort from him to earn that title. Awful, awful, boring, lazy match.

TL: I actually wrote out a play by play for this because I'm absolutely crazy and also thorough when it comes to pro wrestling things I feel like I have to watch. Good lord almighty was this a slog to get through. I mean absolutely terrible in most ways. The idea behind it was to absolutely make Pentagon The Guy in the promotion, but instead, it's like a Cliff's Notes version of the folks you might see on this program week to week, and it really doesn't do a good job of selling that here. Pentagon is in at 6, and it doesn't get actually entertaining until Fenix is in at 13, where he outshines his brother in like 1/25 the time. The biggest issue I had with this is that all the guys you'd be excited to see, especially someone like Muertes, are in the match for all of like...2 minutes? I mean, Chavo gets a producer's run? Marty gets a shot to try and score an upset on Pentagon as the final guy in the match? Especially after Marty lost to Fenix in the way he did last season? This isn't even a reset. It's like taking the neuralizer from Men In Black. And after this I need it. There isn't a single thing coming out of this that makes me excited for what's to come, and that's a terrible omen for a show that already blows so hot and cold.

ER: And we get more from Papa Cueto, which was a character that just could not have sounded good at any step of the writing process. I'm not as imaginative as I perhaps once was, but I cannot actually imagine a worse way to start a new season of LU. This honestly has to be the worst episode in the history of the series.

TL: Can we get Lorenzo Lamas back up in this thing again please? More Godfrey? Papa Cueto has worn out his welcome and it's only been one show. I started reviewing these with a Sexy Star match. This whole show was worse than that feeling.


COMPLETE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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Impact Wrestling Slammiverary 7/22/18 Cherry Picking

Heard good things about the top three on this show, so I was intrigued to check it out

Tessa Blanchard vs. Allie

ER: This was a letdown. Blanchard has been on fire since coming into Impact, really adding more of a spark to a good division, and even having my favorite Impact match of the year (against Kiera Hogan). But I think she gave Allie way too much here. I get there may be a seniority factor at play, but I don't know if Allie has enough material to be given this much of a match. There's a lot of disconnect or set up to Allie's offense here, a lot of played out modern moves like a backcracker and a code breaker, and she doesn't always seem totally able to pull of some of the moves very well. At least she dropped the high pitch squealing. But Blanchard is nuts and takes some sloppy offense anyway. We get a death valley driver on the floor that looked potentially dangerous, and she eats a huge crossbody from the top to the floor. Blanchard was a bit too generous with how much she gave Allie, but I thought Blanchard looked good, and she's got a lot of personality. She really comes off mean, misses moves big like a real heel (her missed senton looked spine rearranging) and looks explosive with forearms. Tessa hits a flat out brutal rana off the top, which Allie looked like she took it on the top of her head. They should have called an audible and had that be the finish. But this is where we get Tessa's big missed senton, and Allie hits a really great superkick for a good nearfall. Blanchard's trap arm DDT is a nasty finisher, and I like that they snuck in the extra nearfall, but that Frankensteiner was brutal and really should have ended. It's silly to have Josh Mathews screaming "THERE'S NO WAY ALLIE WILL BE KICKING OUT..." as she's kicking out and going back on offense seconds later.

39. LAX (Santana/Ortiz) vs. OGZ (Homicide/Hernandez)

PAS: So I need to check out this entire feud, Konan and Eddie Kingston spouting B-Movie gang nonsense it right up my alley, Konan is going off on how their business are legit now and how he taught Kingston the streets seem like rejected Belly script lines and I loved it. This was a totally fun JAPW style brawl with crazy table bumps, lots of trash can lid shots and everyone looking great. Homicide has really looked rejuvenated in the last year or so, and this was a classic Homicide performance, crazy somersault tope through a table, trying to burn Ortiz with Drano, cursing, selling nerve damage, all of the nutty Homicide shit I fell in love with nearly 20 years ago. Hernandez was a beast too, hitting all of his big spots and strutting around. Both LAX guys were clearly amped to work this match on this stage with these guys and were total superballs just flying all over the ring, I loved their Dead President's face makeup too. Kingston cleaning house post match with a sapper and spray painting the belts was great. I am an unabashed Doghouse mark and this felt like a total throwback to that kind of mania.

ER: I came away a little underwhelmed by this. It came off more like 0.7 JAPW brawl, with light trash can lids and too many instances of guys wobbling on their feet while peaking to see how close someone is to hitting their spot. It felt a little sluggish in spots and didn't have that same chaos that the best of the JAPW brawls have. But I came away really impressed with Santana (and the new LAX in general). Hernandez is older and slower but can still throw guys through tables and still hit that big no hands dive. Homicide brought a lot of selling to this and really stepped back to allow Santana to shine and took a lot of LAX's offense, and I thought Santana made the most of it. Homicide's big moment was that wild flipping tope into Ortiz and through a set up table, really the spot that felt like it finally woke the fans up. Santana was running all over the place during the match, hitting dives, punting Homicide in the face, trying not recommended stuff like leaping off Homicide's back into a crossbody, hitting a great rolling senton onto Hernandez (who was laid out on a ladder) and following that up with a sick Asai moonsault, hits a gorgeous high angle cannonball in the corner, just great energy all around. I wish we got more Kingston involvement, he was far too subdued at ringside. I know Konnan can't actually physically move, so you kind of have to match the energy, but Kingston should have been cheapshotting the hell out of LAX. The tacks finish was unexpected (though another overly long set up), but then Kingston comes in with a slapjack and again just makes me wonder why the hell Kingston wasn't slapping the sap out of these saps all match long.

43. Pentagon Jr. vs. Sami Callihan

PAS: Nifty 2000s indy style garbage brawl, which delivered the gore you want from an apuestas match, Callihan was really leaking and Pentagon had a great ripped mask blade job. I am a low voter on Pentagon, but he is compelling in these kind of gore fest brawls, he is mostly a cool look, but that face paint and mask looks cool as shit with blood dripping down. I really dug the Jimmy Jacobs railroad spike spots (have there been any great Jacobs brawls since he got fired from NXT?) Pentagon banging the spike into Callihan's head with a baseball bat was really violent, and the only good wrestling Frye vs. Takayama spot is Fryeakayaming with railroad spikes. The spot where Callihan throws his cocaine in Pentagon's eyes, and a blinded and high Pentagon breaks the ref's arm was some classic Memphis nonsense. I liked how the finish was decisive and Fenix taking out the Crists was a great set up for the head shaving.

ER: If you're gonna do a throwback indy death match, then sure, go on and do it. Pentagon has become a bigger star over the last few years, and while his popularity creeps steadily up the Y axis, his laziness creeps up there with it. But he's clearly willing to go big when necessary, and Callihan is someone who will not allow somebody to half ass a brawl. They go violent pretty early and TNA/Impact has never really shied away from having their guys basically do death matches. I always think of old Sting working death match spots with Abyss, and this is more in their history of two guys out to murder the other. There's some big stiff shots (Callihan never has a problem leaning into those) and Pentagon always lands nicely on superkicks (which Callihan also leans jaw first into). Their spike spots were fantastic, just super dangerous and disgusting. I loved Pentagon's drawn out spike torture of Callihan, hammering them into his head with Callihan's baseball bat and getting immediate flowing crimson. Pentagon clinking the spikes together before stabbing is like an awesome version of Luther clinking empty bottles in the Warriors. Also loved him tossing Callihan a spike and telling him to bring it. I am a person who is essentially in constant fear of having my eyeglasses broken, so seeing two nutmeats throw hard spike shots inches from their eyeballs just seems not worth it at all, but my god was it a visual. This match is partying like it's 1999 so of course both Crist brothers lean forehead first into Pentagon's chairshots. It's not like we've seen anything bad happen to any of those ECW guys from that era. Things drug on a bit long, but it's an apuestas match so you almost have to go over the top. I did think Callihan's piledriver was just too pretty to kick out of, and the set up was way too much for Pentagon's...and then they go full silly with Callihan kicking out of the package piledriver ON all those set up chairs. It was a crazy spot, but it probably would have been more unexpected to actually have it finish the match. And I appreciate Phil coming up with an entertaining reason for the powder spot, but I think assuming Pentagon went into a 5 second cocaine blackout might be giving them a bit too much credit. Still both guys busted ass and had a memorable mask/hair match filled with the violence you'd want from both guys. Booking a violent hair match when you're starting to thin on top is a smart business strategy, one oddly not capitalized on by WWE and Baron Corbin (they could have had a Viktor/Corbin match end in a double pinfall leading to both getting shaved). It reminds me that in the next year or two I'll have to challenge someone, because it will be a damn shame when I just start buzzing my head again, for no reason. Someone at least gotta cut my head open.

9. Austin Aries vs. Moose

PAS: Really great title match, up there with the best of Aries's ROH title defenses. Loved the early part of this with Aries working like Flair against Road Warrior Hawk. When it got into the big near fall section at the end, we got some absolutely huge near falls. Hadn't seen much Moose before, but he has some fun power moves and a willingness to take some big bumps, I really like his no hands headbutt. I liked how Aries kept using cheapshots to get an advantage, and we had some killer big spots, including Aries getting tossed into the crowd, Moose killing him with a forearm counter to the low tope, Moose missing his dive on the ramp, and Aries going for almost a stinger splash on the outside. The finish was decisive, but still left me wanting to see a rematch. Just great stuff all around, kudos to both guys.

ER: What a fantastic match and I think a legitimate contender for best TNA/Impact match ever. Low-Ki/Sonjay Dutt was fantastic but this felt like a classic, like an modern take on Flair/Luger. Earlier in the year Impact aired a tag match from NOAH featuring Moose, and I thought he looked like a total superstar in that match. And while I've liked his Impact work I've never been quite as impressed in the same way. Well, here I think he turned in one of the finest heavyweight performances of the year. And Aries is arguably the best wrestler in the world who we rarely write about. This will be only the 5th time we've written about Aries, and the first time in 5 years he's shown up on our MOTY List. But I loved this match so much, just a classic big title main event. This hit me in a similar way to the Gargano/Almas match, where things kept building perfectly and the execution from both men was impeccable. The match made Moose look like a guy who should be a big player in wrestling, and it made Aries look like a guy who shouldn't be stuck wrestling other guys around 205 pounds.

Aries' strikes (especially those quick and sharp back elbows) looked like something that would hurt any wrestler, and he never let any little attack slide. One of my favorite little moments of the match was when he and Moose were fighting on the floor and with Moose slumped in the railing Aries walks up and whips him with a nasty side kick to the stomach. It's a little thing, but you see guys throw away or space out on those kinds of exchanges all the time, enough that it really stands out when they're not. All of the big spots looked fantastic. I leapt out of my chair when Moose countered Aries' tope. We've seen that spot a lot over the last decade, and we've seen some nasty variations on it (Sasha falling out of the ring onto her head after Asuka kicked her out of the air comes to mind), but this might have been the best executed version of that spot. Aries looked like he flew into a brick wall, body horizontal practically in mid air when Moose countered that low angle tope, like Wile E. Coyote running into a tunnel painted onto a cliffside. When Aries eventually does hit that tope it looks great, really slamming fast into Moose. All of Moose's power offense looks even better against Aries, who is not only smaller but a guy who knows how to take offense. I love press slam spots so a press slam spot with a guy getting thrown into a crowd is just icing. But Moose shows Aries a thing or two about taking nasty spills, wiping out rows of chairs after flying into the crowd, and crashing like an air show disaster on a dive to the entrance ramp. That tumble was really nasty and sprawling, and Aries followed it up with a killer running double knee strike, running down the ramp way to plaster Moose against the ringpost. Moose threw a couple cool headbutt cut-offs, and Aries had great ideas about how to logically come back on offense. This match up went so well that I suddenly want to see much more from both, and they weren't exactly guys who were strangers to my eyes before now. Excellent title match, one of my very favorite matches of the year.

ER: This show definitely delivered, even the matches that we didn't write up were worth checking out. Any show with three matches landing on our MOTY List is notable, and this show really felt like a company worth spending time with. How often have you said that about TNA?

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Lucha Underground Episode 38: UltimaLucha - Part I Review

We get a return engagement from Tomk for this final pair of episodes

1. The Mack vs. Cage (Falls Count Anywhere)

ER: Well this was awesome and completely exceeded the high expectations I had for it. These guys laced into each other and it's as if every move they did was the exact move the crowd was hoping for. This would have been good in a vacuum but it was even better because they both clearly understood who they were working for. They worked in a little comedy and personality, but never lost the viciousness. The brawling through the crowd was some of the best of its kind, punching and throwing each other into spots instead of walking gingerly together. Fans scrambling out of the way added to the insanity. Cage getting speared through a door was totally unexpected and Cage took it like a lunatic, almost like he wasn't expecting it either. The way the camera shot it, and how fast he flew back through the door, it was like he was being sucked out of an airplane at 30,000 feet. All of the bumps and spills on the floor were nasty, and then Cage goes and does an inside out superplex over the guardrail onto the balcony. Jeez. I was hoping they wouldn't go the cinderblock route when I noticed them, since I thought Ambrose/Rollins already pulled off the best worked block spot. But they did and while it exploding was pretty silly, it made sense as a match finish. These two have been real standouts in multi mans and I was just really wanting a brutal singles match, and they totally delivered.

PAS: Yup this was pretty great, they have done a really nice job with the non-luchadores in this fed. I have enjoyed Mack or Cage way more in this context then any other. Mack especially comes off like a hugely charismatic star. It was smart of them to recognize that and move him quickly out of the Big Ryck and Killshot group (and to relegate Killshot to the jobber battle royal last week). I haven't seen any really great lucha matches from Lucha Underground but they really know how to do insane brawls. I also liked how this didn't even bother to go into the ring, most of these brawls have a section where they go into the ring for the finish, the advantage of LU being a television product, is that they could do away with that trope.

TKG: I really like that at this point I feel like I know where stuff is in the Temple. The way I knew various JAPW buildings so during this kind of crowd touring match you know where guys are going to end up. 

The Miller sponsorship continues to amuse me. There was a point where Steve Austin was one of the biggest figures in popular culture and the WWF with Austin was drawing huge attendance and ratings. The WWF wasn't able to negotiate for a beer sponsorship then, while these guys can pull that off? Or did the WWF not want a beer sponsorship because they somehow thought Miller wasn't as prestigious as Lugz boots? Can't be that, it's the WWE, if Bill Saluga wanted to host RAW, they would be thrilled and treat Saluga as a giant star. Gawd, the Saluga/Kane skits... You can call me Glen or you can call me Isaac...

2. Disciples of Death vs. Angelico, Son of Havoc & Ivelisse

ER: Is one of the DoD really named Barrio Negro? This whole thing threatened to get good at a couple points, but there were too many little problems all throughout for them to overcome. First, Ivelisse has a leg injury. That is fine. We've worked around it well enough to this point, gives their team some character depth. But here we had evil beings named the Disciples of DEATH...who had to noticeably work around her injured leg. When one of the DoD goes for a sub on her he has to go out of his way to grab her healthy leg. If I was a Death Disciple, I would probably be a cruel evil being who would take advantage of every single one of my opponent's weaknesses. I'm not saying I want her hurt leg further injured, but I would take a weak, super fake looking submission on the hurt leg over the already flimsy submission we ended up with. These men are created out of lightning! But then we get moments of "Oh we can't work over that leg, that's her leg that's actually hurt". Their characters are manufactured out of lightning for the sole purpose of murder! Second, the promotion still does no replays. This is a multi-camera shoot. They have at minimum three different recorded angles of Angelico's dive. But I guess this show is a "movie", not a sport event. Movies wouldn't show replays of significant moments. But that is also a fucking stupid approach to pro wrestling. I don't need the WWE overkill of constant "earlier tonight" reports all throughout Raw, but you have a skinny human being hurling himself off of a balcony, and you should be showing that more fucking times than Brian Lee going off a scaffold through tables. Whatever. I liked Havoc's consecutive dives, loved the Angelico dive (duh), but the DoD are pretty boring and I'm not looking forward to more of them. Any idea on who they are? I'm curious if it's good workers working poorly in a gimmick, or just poor workers.

PAS: This was the least of the trios title matches they have run, you could see the seams a little bit in this match formula. Angelico's big dive is crazy as usual, but at this point you are just waiting around for him to do it, it isn't the shock that it was the first time, it is turning a bit into a New Jack thing where the whole match is the song and the dive, and these Angelico matches don't even have a cool song. DoD are kind of cool looking, but otherwise pretty lame and sticking random jobbers under the mask (I think its Ricky Landell, Argenis and Marachi Loco) really hurts, I feel like better performers would have been able to do something with the gimmick.

TKG: Back around 2003 or so there was an amusing editorial written to the observer website complaining about Gabe Sapolsky winning booker of the year. The guy complained that all Gabe did was hire cream of the indy scene and the put them in dream match ups, that wasn't what booking was about. Booking was about having to put together a card with an ex wwf midcarder past his prime, the cousin of his favorite ring rat, a steroided guy afraid of muscle tears, the money mark's son, a regional star who can't bump any more and two green kids who can't run the ropes. Not about having a super talented roster but rather hiding the roster's weaknesses. One thing that can be said about Lucha Underground is they were fucking great at hiding guys weaknesses. It's a fed with 4 tough enough wash outs that found ways to make all of them semi compelling. They created a pretty entertaining face tag team here where you essentially knew everyone's story and their relationship to other members of team and found way to book them to work a midcard version of what are essentially  Public Enemy v Gangstas v Eliminators formula send crowd home happy ECW main events. Nicely put together crowd popping spots where no one gets exposed.

ER: I enjoyed the Miller Lite plug within the context of Cage/Mack. Thought they integrated it as well as possible. But damn Striker's Miller toast followed up with "Mmmmmmm that's so refreshing! So good!" is just about the opposite of the spectrum. Nice read, Velma. Not as good as Vampiro drinking out of a clearly empty can and saying "That's good beer, brother."

3. Hernandez vs. Drago (Believers Backlash Match)

ER: Fun match with a totally absurd stipulation that totally worked as a unique stip. It's not something we need to see regularly, but I loved that we got to see it. On paper it seems like a stip that is almost inviting something to go terribly wrong. What if somebody is throwing a blow and Hernandez turns around and takes a strap right to the eyeball!? My friend Sean went to an indy show in a bar years ago, and there was a weapons brawl. There was a boombox getting used, and at one point the boom box was on the floor and Sean moved it so nobody would trip over it...followed almost immediately by somebody getting power bombed onto it, because they hadn't realized it had been moved. So now you give belts to 20 fans...that's some guts on Hernandez to take numerous runs through that gauntlet. What if you get some guy being a loose cannon all excited because he's gonna be on TV?? You can argue that it got in the way of a good singles match at times, but I think it's a testament to how underrated Hernandez is that he put it over as well as he did. And also, that fucking tope into mist-and-then-floor was insane. People will be talking about the Angelico dive but this was just as crazy but in a different way. Striker had some nice moments during this, and I especially like him explaining why Hernandez was able to get out of his Drago Clutch.

PAS: This was also a pretty great gimmick match, it is too bad Hernandez may have burned his LU bridges, because he really hit his groove here as an asshole heel. You don't usually see a guy work as both monster and comedy stooge and he does both well. Also damn does he take a beating, not only does he get the skin strapped off his back by random fans, but that missed tope was one of the crazier bumps in a fed full of crazy bumpers. 

TKG: I've seen a ton of fans with straps as lumberjack matches over the years. It's not a match that always translates well outside of live audience, Seen some good ones. Seen some bad ones. They're matches that I've seen guys who do workrate sprints struggle with. You kind of need a heel who knows how to work like kneepadless Budro or Austin Idol to really pull them off. As ideally they're about the heel and the fans, and need a heel who knows lots of ways to mime taunts at fans and lots of ways to do googly eyed stooging when getting whipped by fans. I realize that I've been watching Hernandez' career disinterestedly since 1999. Saw him working like Rod Price in FMW on Texas indies, watched him working as part of a fake Sheik tag team in AJPW, watched him blow up trying to be a roided workrate wrestler in ROH, watched him work as workrate fake Angle in AJPW when Red was working fake Rey, watched him work as fake JAW Heavyweight tagged with Homicide in TNA, am watching him here. Somewhere between TNA and Lucha Underground he picked up some mid 90s Austin Idol tapes and instead of studying the mic work, studied the in ring stuff. and he's been all about the Fargo strutting and miming since he showed up in Lucha Underground. He was the perfect guy for this match. As pretty much everything in ring was a mess but all the fan Hernandez interactions were great.

This if course wasn't a one man Hernandez show and a ton of credit needs to be given to the ponytailed plant among the fans. According to Fredo he's a local worker who he has seen work as Fidel and he was amazing here. Always in the right place, snoring big, setting up the big spots, set up the fans refuse to hit the face spot (which is really key to match working), kept on feeding himself to Hernandez, bumped big, ate dives, and just directed traffic. A star making performance. I know nothing about him but his sense of ring awareness makes me want to seek out his work.

So I was looking up to try to figure out who was the other guy in the Double Iron Sheiks with Hernandez and according to multiple internet listings it was Beau James' cousin KC Thunder which is ridiculous. I refused to believe it at first but Zellner claims that accurate. Hillarious as KC Thunder is guy who works as spectacularly great superheavy Austin Idol in U.S.A. but worked nothing like that in AJPW where he was doing gaijin w suplexes. Amusing that Hernandez spent majority of career trying to work like K C Thunder in Japan , while it looks like Hernandez's real strengths maybe in emulating KC Thunder in the US.

ER: This was an excellent start to UltimaLucha and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for the finale. Everybody is clearly busting ass and if this is it for them, I have a feeling they're going to go out with a bang.

PAS: Yeah career matches for Hernandez, Cage and Willie Mack make this a hell of a show, although they really could use some more actual lucha in this fed to mix up the brawls, three variations of street fights in one show is getting a little ECWish, they should have had something like Aerostar v. Jack Evans or Aerostar v. Drago in the middle.


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Lucha Underground Episode 35: Fuel to the Fire Review

ER: Loved Pentagon meeting with his Master in the dojo, but really this Master sounds like a tough customer. You think he would be more unhappy with his slave looking like such a weenie against Sexy Star and a tubby commentator.

1. The Mack vs. Cage

ER: Oh man Striker calls Mack "lucha Ron Funches". That's awesome. Funches is a huge wrestling fan so I bet that tickled him. And this match was awesome. Two big guys who can move, simultaneously working a fast spot match and a power offense match. Right out the gate they slam into each other with double clotheslines and it makes this crazy sound, just two slabs of meat slamming into each other (oh man picture Kal Rudman saying a sentence like that...). All their power moves looked great, Cage holding a long vertical suplex, Mack doing a running vertical suplex, Mack hitting a nasty shin kick to Cage's jaw, Cage laying Mack the fuck out with his awesome discus clothesline (I've been critical of Cage in the past, but his discus clothesline ALWAYS looks great). These guys have been perfect foils for each other in LU, and they left me wishing the match was twice as long. This was about as much fun as you can cram into 5 minutes.

PAS: Yeah this was an awesome short Nitro match, I loved them coming out and slamming each other with clobbering lariats early. I have no problem with this going short as it was clearly setting up a big Ultimo Lucha match, the show is much more like a pre-PPV Raw then it ever was before, although it is a fine pre-PPV Raw.

ER: Vampiro was a bit too scripted in the Pentagon interview, but overall I liked it. I liked the humble approach Vampiro attempted to take, and liked the subtle reveal that Pentagon has the psychic power to magically place his chair back in a seated position.

2. Mil Muertes vs. Son of Havoc

ER: Damn, Muertes waiting in the ring and freaking Son of Havoc gets his entrance shown?? That shouldn't be. And I have no godly reason why they felt the need to make Havoc look so strong against Muertes. They needed to give Havoc a knee injury, and then have him distracted by taking out the Disciples of Death, and THEN Muertes was able to gain an advantage over him. It's structured really poorly as Havoc goes on his big offensive run after getting powerbombed meanly on the announce table and thrown through dozens of ringside chairs. I don't dislike Havoc, and I like him as part of their trios. But Muertes needed to just steamroll him here. What's even more odd is it was never pushed as Havoc having a chance. Striker said once that it would be maybe the biggest upset in LU, but even when Havoc was controlling things they were talking about how Muertes was going on to face Puma at Ultima Lucha. So we have Havoc looking really strong against Muertes but not really getting credit for it, and your big monster working underneath in a match against him. It just did not make sense to me.

PAS: It does seem weird that Havoc has gone from a jobber to a guy getting so much offense against the biggest killer in the fed. Muertes is really good at working in these type of matches killing flyers and I though this had some cool moments, but this did need to be closer to the second Fenix v. Muertes match.

ER: Didn't see the Blue Demon heel turn coming but that makes me infinitely more interested in Demon than I've ever been. So that counts for something.

3. Albert El Patron, Aerostar, Drago & Sexy Star vs. Johnny Mundo, Jack Evans, Super Fly & Hernandez

ER: Man this fed is good at multi mans. This had everything you could possibly want, with Alberto looking like a big deal, Aerostar hitting this loony springboard reverse frog splash type thing to the floor....I mean good lord it looked weird and awesome. Drago brains himself on a tornillo, Sexy Star hits her own tornillo after setting it up for what I can only guess was several minutes edited down to still feel too long. Evans bumped all over the place in equally humorous and awesome fashion, and then was outbumped by Super Fly who took a big hiptoss over the top to the floor. Splat. Finish got a little silly with Evans having to move himself away from the ropes on the Patron armbar to stay in it longer, and then Mundo beating Sexy Star by holding the tights. The level of protection SS gets in this fed is flat out absurd.

PAS: This is the perfect kind of match to set up a big show, throw everyone in the ring and let them go after each other. I did think parts of this looked bad, especially the Sexy Star parts. Jack Evans is a loon and just takes everything in the worst way. Aerostar is a guy with a bunch of really pretty dives, although I did wish we got to see him and Super Fly go at it a bit, I know their feud isn't LU canon or anything, but I did love stuff like Piper and Valentine going after each other in Royal Rumbles.

ER: I think the Pentagon beatdown crossed a line for me. Not a moral line, but more just taking something so far that it gets eyeroll-y. Him ambushing Vampiro was awesome, kicking him hard in the back of the head, kicking him around at ringside. But then he gets a can that actually says "GASOLINE" all around it (I imagine he also keeps his money in burlap sacks with $$$ printed on the side) and douses Vampiro with it, threatening to light him on fire. Can you imagine if somebody did this in Vince Russo WCW? It would be getting mocked to this day. I really don't see how this is any less stupid than Tank Abbott holding a knife to Big Al's throat and threatening to kill him. The beatdown on Vampiro looked SOOOO good. But threatening to light a man on fire? My god that is just so stupid. Several weeks ago Pentagon went after Melissa Santos and it was shocking, over the line and within the realm of believability. It made Pentagon come off like not only a loose cannon, but a real scumbag, and a man with no code who is completely unpredictable. Now I know this promotion is clearly not going for believability. They have ghosts and the living dead and a dragon, and - maybe the most unbelievable thing possible - they attempt to make Sexy Star appear like a credible pro wrestler. But to expect anybody to get emotionally invested in a real person getting lit on fire in front of an audience...that's just so silly. At this point why didn't Pentagon just drop an anvil on Vampiro's head?

PAS: This fed does a bunch of goofy shit which irritates me, but honestly lighting a guy on fire is part of the narrative world of pro wrestling. This wasn't that far off from the Sheik, Lawler and virtually the same as the kind of stuff that they do in Big Japan. As a crazy threat it was fine, and I did like the out of nowhere attack. I have way more problems with all the goofy Black Lotus stuff then I did with this.


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Lucha Underground Episode 34: Gold and Guerreros Review

1. Delavar Daivari vs. Texano

ER: These two always manage to do some of the absolute worst phone booth fighting that I've seen. Daivari especially just throws the most mournful strikes. Things get a little better with the knee work portions, as I liked Daivari's repeated dropkicks with Texano tied up in the ropes. But it's all a fairly big waste of time as Texano just brushes it off to do a bunch of moves that involve lifting with the legs. Daivari is dead in the water as a character and even worse as a worker, and Texano going over even with Ryck's interference should hopefully spell the end of him in LU.

PAS: I liked some of the chops and Texano's powerbomb but otherwise this was a big batch of nothing. This feud started out with some real promise and ended like a wet fart.

2. Hernandez vs. Drago

ER: Weird running this the week immediately following Drago's brutal beatdown from Muertes. I mean he really got the piss kicked out of him, and then he's just back to normal and getting revenge on Hernandez the next week? They tape this shit months in advance, just bump the match back a week. He certainly didn't work the match any differently than he would normally work. I'm not expecting him to do Kikuchi levels of selling long term damage, but Hernandez jumped him last week, causing him to take a nasty beating from Muertes, and here he is like nothing happened. Pretty poor. He looked really good, his tornillo was incredible, but within context this was all just dumb. Hernandez really does not hold back on him here though, with the apron powerbomb really smarting and then then cool spot with him stealing a belt from a ringside fan and whipping/choking Drago to DQ. I really dug the match in a vacuum, but within story it was foolish.

PAS: I don't have a huge problem with Drago not selling for a week like Eric, it's wrestling, you usually don't see long term weekly selling. Match itself is clearly just setting up the fans strap match, and I think they did a nice job making me want to see that. Hernandez does a nice job as a smarmy prick, and I want to see a bunch of fans strap the shit out of him

3. Marty The Moth Martinez vs. Alberto El Patron

ER: This was exactly what it should have been. Moth has got kind of a surprising amount of offense in his other matches, but really AeP needed to steamroll him here and I'm glad they let it happen. And then he follows it up with arguably his best ever promo (his promo work in LU has really been high end). I mean this was really one of the best wrestling promos you will hear. It was simple, well worded, got over his motivations perfectly, had nice little touches ("Juanito Mundo"), really just all you would want out of a pro wrestling promo. Awesome stuff.

PAS: Yeah this was an asswhooping. I am surprised they used Martinez who they seem to be pushing as the squashee rather then Vinny Massaro or Famous B, but it does make Alberto looking like a bad motherfucker that he cleaned a semi-pushed guy out that quick.

4. No DQ: Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Prince Puma

ER: Well this wasn't much. Chavo looked like he hyperextended his knee pretty early in the match, then we had The Crew and Texano coming in to essentially work their own match for the next couple minutes, leading to the 630. Seemed like this could have been edited down, not sure. If the knee injury was not planned it certainly looked legit.

PAS: It was a bummer Chavo got hurt as this was building to kind of cool match, and Chavo hurting himself kind of blew any future angle with Texano. Mess of a match, and kind of weak sauce show.

ER: The closing segment with Chavo and Blue Demon was bittersweet, as I actually really really loved it. Demon actually came off like a badass, had some nice lines ("I don't attack people who are hurt...I'm not like you"), Chavo got to laugh him off and call him a has been, Demon lifted him up in the air with a choke like he was fucking Darth Vader. Loved all of this. Buuuuuuuuuuut it means that there is still a Chavo vs. Demon feud. It means Demon is still here. It means we have to see more Demon in the ring, still vs. Chavo. This promotion does a good job of getting me psyched to see things that are certainly going to be horrible.

PAS: I dug it too, it isn't setting up a Chavo v. Demon feud, it is clearly setting up Demon v. Texano as Chavo was using mind games with Demon to get him riled up, which is why Chavo was smiling. I liked Demon saying "I am a good man" like every shades of grey protagonist in a cable drama. Low Winter Sun would have been a lot more watchable if all the cops were wearing lucha masks.



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