Mae Young Classic Episode 4

1. Candice LeRae vs. Renee Michelle

ER: I thought this was fine, but it also felt like an indy touring match. I liked Michelle when she was setting up LeRae's offense, but thought there was too much hesitation when she would go for strikes. But LeRae has a lot of offense so you need someone capable to set it up. A lot of LeRae's offense requires someone to be missing something, so you need to plausibly miss a lot of things or run at her a bunch. So Michelle was always good at running into a legsweep, missing a shoulderblock to take a knee on the apron, missing on a spin kick to set up a roll up, missing a big moonsault, that kind of thing. She would also toss out little things like kicking out of a pin while also jamming her forearm into LeRae's jaw. I wish Michelle would have responded a bit more as a heel, since the crowd was naturally behind LeRae and was trying to suck up to Gargano. I liked LeRae's jawbreaker and her ramped up forearms in the corner, and the neckbreaker off the top looked like a finish. This whole thing ran smoothly, but maybe a bit too smooth. It all felt really mapped out.

PAS: I liked the forearm's in the corner by LeRae and her neckbreaker finish was nasty, but this felt in parts like a swing dance routine instead of a fight (the Garganos must rule on wedding dance floors). Lots of miss this, flip that, kip up kind of stuff which was a little too stilted to transcend the silliness of it, Rey and Juvi could do it, these two couldn't pull it off.

2. Taynara Conti vs. Lacey Evans

ER: I've not seen either gal before, but Conti looks like Grace Helbig and I've always disliked that USO show pin-up gal look, the whole Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy thing comes off too Halloween. I think both these two are pretty new, so parts of this were somewhat disjointed, but I kind of appreciated the disjointed parts after the cleanness of the prior match. But I liked how Conti stepped up as a heel, and thought some of her throws were really cool. I mean, if you're a Brazilian judoka you better have a couple cool throws. I'm not really excited for the Evans/Storm match up. It feels like a battle between two Spirit Store advertisements.

PAS: There is something kind of gross about having a combat marine and turning her into some weird burlesque fetish object. The whole thing felt like a GLOW gimmick. Probably a mistake to have a rookie v. rookie match, as both ladies had cool moments but lots looked awkward. Conti is way more interesting to me, and would have rather seen her try to throw Piper Niven or Shayna in the next round..

3. Nicole Savoy vs. Reina Gonzalez

ER: I gotta go hard for Savoy in this tourney. She's definitely the one I've seen live the most since she's a Bay Area gal, and she definitely deserves to be here. It was weird they kept referring to Savoy as the queen of the suplexes and then put her against someone who she doesn't try to suplex. That said, I liked this. Reina seems like kind of a lug, but they worked that in well. Savoy's standing rana looked great, and I liked Gonzalez catching her by the hair and hitting a monster lariat. The finish was a really cool slow burn, my favorite finish of the 1st round: Gonzalez grabs Savoy in a torture rack attempt and slowly realizes she's in a spider web. You can see Savoy with a double wristlock on as Gonzalez tries to maneuver her, but Savoy keeps making herself heavier and Gonzalez drops to a knee, and before long Savoy has adjusted weight into an armbar. I love the time they spent on the finish, thought the slow build was totally worth it.

PAS: They really booked a lot of big girls in this tourney and it has been fun to watch the different ways that they work as powerhouses. Reina works this match like a brick wall, she won't get tossed by arm drags, the queen of suplexes can't lift her, and she smashes her with clotheslines and forearms. Finish was completely awesome, felt like a hidden Fujiwara finish, with Gonzalez not realizing she was in trouble until it was way too late, I loved how we got to see every part of the move up until the finish, so cool and maybe my favorite finish of 2017.

4. Kairi Sane vs. Tessa Blanchard

ER: Killer little match, and while Kairi being in the tournament was one of the things that piqued my interest in the MYC, I came away way more impressed with Blanchard. Both impressed, but Blanchard would probably be the one eliminated woman I most wanted to see advance. She held headlocks tight (and threw nice punches in the headlock), drilled Sane with her elbows, brought an intensity that a lot of them didn't. But both gals impressed. There were a lot of roll ups in the match, and there were no cheapies; both of them fully committed to them and it was cool to see roll ups with somebody actually using their full weight. Both were really good at applying and selling submissions: I though Tessa was really nasty locking in that abdominal stretch, yanking on Sane's head the entire time to twist. And Sane had a nice escape with some elbow points right to the thigh. Later, Kairi locks on a nasty octopus and I outright loved Tessa getting in a painful crouch and walking step by step to the ropes. Blanchard was aces at throwing in callbacks to her hurt back, holding it after that octopus, really screaming in pain after hitting her big senton, all nicely setting up a nice Kairi axe kick that puts her down. There was too much cool stuff in this, like Blanchard's headbutt, her sliding elbow strike to Sane's back, Blanchard's short clotheslines building to a deadlift back suplex; but even with Blanchard's convincing attacks, her selling was excellent enough throughout that I totally bought her staying down long enough for Kairi to hit her massive elbow. Really bummed Blanchard won't be advancing, she was arguably my favorite of Round 1.

PAS: Totally agree about Blanchard, she really wrestled like her dad, tight violent and simple. The moment where she cracks Sane in the throat with the forearm was killer, it really woke Jim Ross up. I also loved her catching the Sliding D into a roll up, great bit of scouting and that would have made a killer finish. Kairi is obviously a pro and a star, although she comes more from the Manami Toyota school of Joshi and I am more of an Aja Kong guy. The elbow looks as great as advertised, although I do wish she hadn't made Tessa sit there while Kairi ran through all of her video game taunts. Sane kind of comes off like Ibushi in the CWC, the most polished, biggest star, but I am more interested in the quirkier folks.

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Lucha Underground Season 3 Episode 13: Breaker of Bones

ER: I am so ready to not have any more Pentagon/Vampiro storyline.

MD: I see this whole episode as Lotus being a screw-up and her people sending the Triad to fix things.

1. Pentagon Dark vs. Doku

ER: One of the ninjas is Kairi Hojo?? That's awesome! Her style should make a great fit for LU. And I thought this whole thing was really good. Hojo is crazy and looked far better than any other female they've brought in. She runs into some stiff kicks from Pentagon and bumps halfway across the ring for a running dropkick. She really throws her body recklessly into offense and even though she's rather small, the fact that she doesn't act like she's small makes up for a lot. She doesn't act vulnerable, so it never crosses my mind to view her as such. She gets impressive height on her elbow drop, and I loved her going for a second one and getting caught in the arm break. This is the most I've enjoyed Pentagon in a match in some time. He actually came off vicious like he used to, and dropped all of the awful hamminess he's picked up.

MD: Writing in retrospect, I love the cumulative damage that Pentagon took as the matches went on. Here, he was able to take over after one cocky mistake from Hojo and he never really looked back. I wish that she'd been able to get more, but she took all of his offense exactly as she had to and they set up a brutal mood for the night. The finish was perfect.

MD: The Sami Callihan/Catrina stuff felt kind of contrived given the broader arc of the season, but if we're getting a Sami/Muertes match at some point, it sure works for me.

2. Pentagon Dark vs. Yurei

ER: I have not seen Maya Iwatani before (joshi is a perpetual blindspot for me) so I'm happy they've brought all these gals in. But this match mostly sucked. Yurei is even lankier than Doku, and there were so many moments where she had to muscle Pentagon around, and every single one of those moments looked horrible. Every time she dragged him while brawling, whipped him into something, shoved him into the turnbuckles, whatever the case, it happened throughout the whole match and looked so so bad. The seemingly random sound sweetening didn't help things either, as for whatever reason Yurei seemed like she was pulling her strikes (maybe her strikes always look this bad, I don't know), so she'd throw a few weak slaps, and the second one would get the gunshot sound effect for some reason, and all the others were just left to die a quiet painless death by the sound crew. This wasn't good, and went too long.

MD: Mayu Iwantani is new to me too. A lot of this was a one sided mauling of Pentagon around the ringside area and in that regard I like that they changed things up from the last match. I also thought she showed some contrast by portraying sheer joy about everything she was doing. I just wish what she was doing had been a little better. That said, there were some specific spots I liked, like when she used the bell, how Pentagon caught the knee and moved it into the crab, and the flip catch into the package piledriver. At least this progressed the story.

MD: Matanza's ghastly arts and crafts project drawing the bloody question mark was about as Lucha Underground as anything, but in a mostly good way.

3. Pentagon Dark vs. Hitokiri

ER: This was pretty wild as Shirai is also nuts, and this required her to be at her most insane. Pentagon had already tired himself working two other matches, so was using the last of his strength to try and put away his final opponent. Shirai just needed to withstand his last, strongest attacks, and come through the other side. She started with a couple wild dives, and kicks Pentagon around the Temple. I liked her mocking kicks, and how she kept ramping them up. But when Pentagon got vicious, he got vicious, and Hitokiri took some absolutely lunatic bumps into chairs. I mean she flew into these things in the most painful ways, some of the sickest bumps in LU history. Pentagon also starts choking her with a cord in nasty ways. I'm sure this made a lot of people uncomfortable, and I think a lot of credit goes to Hitokiri's selling for making this look even more violent than we all know it was. It was very effective. Sadly, Vampiro was making horrific sweaty fat guy fuck noises the whole time, they really overshadowed her awesome performance. I honestly have no idea what Vampiro was going for in this match, but it was as bad as anything Striker has ever done. What made it worse was that this was probably the most Striker has ever shut up during a match, so you just had Vampiro making gorilla sex noises for 10 minutes. I didn't love how they set up the drop toe hold into the chair, as we had already seen Hitokiri go through literally dozens of chairs, so it seems silly to set up one single chair on the floor, walk halfway around the building to grab her, just to try to throw her through one chair. It's a lazy, contrived and poorly thought through set up. But I can't argue with how nutso that dive was, so even though the set up was weak, that spot was awesome, and hats off to the camera work as the angle they chose made her crazy leap look that much crazier. Unique layout and nicely executed match from both, and this episode needed this performance. The whole concept could have easily flopped, but they made it work.

MD: Shirai was a force of nature here, and the fact that Pentagon was so beat down made this all work. Hell, she was so good in her role that it might have worked anyway. You had the impression that Yurei was gingerly toying with him to some extent. Hitokiri is just there to do damage and finish the job. Pentagon deserves credit too for showing such vulnerability and really having to fight his way back. It made all the revenge spots he hit in the back match mean all the more. There's a fine line between proper foreshadowing/payoff and something being contrived and overthought. The drop toe-hold straddled it but it ultimately worked for me in the grand scheme of things, especially punctuated by what followed.

ER: I still don't totally understand the idea of a Triad of ninjas all agreeing to work singles matches with no interference, and the episode seemed rushed as all we've seen of the Triad is their interference in Aztec Warfare, and they haven't gotten any vignettes setting this up. So that's weird, and you wouldn't think ninjas would operate that way, but whatever, I thought the episode worked.

MD: I wish they'd do more theme episodes like this. It's wholly unique, something you can only get from a TV show that's about wrestling as opposed to pro wrestling on TV. I do think they could have spent a few more weeks building to it. If this is all we're getting out of these three that's a shame. I have no idea what they do with Lotus next, but they managed to piggyback some more momentum for Azteca too. Fun show.


COMPLETE LUCHA UNDERGROUND EPISODE GUIDE

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