LUCHA UNDERGROUND ~FINAL~ EPISODE: Ultima Lucha Cuatro - Part 2

ER: When I started Lucha Underground season 4 TWO YEARS AGO, who could have possibly predicted it would take two years to complete? It was that magical combination of near total disinterest in the product after seeing the show's quality decline each season to the next, with a stupid completionist attitude of "you've already written up the rest of the show, might as well finish this race". I loved the first and second season, found some bright spots in the third season, and have just not really enjoyed a lot of this final season. Replacing Dario with Antonio was a brutal decision, most storyline payoffs were weak or poorly constructed, and the roster wasn't anywhere close to as interesting as it was in the first couple seasons. But I like finishing projects, and this one was more of an attainable goal just because it was actually finite. And so, six years after the show began and just over two years after the show's finale aired, we come to the conclusion of Lucha Underground on Segunda Caida.

TL: LU is one of the weirdest entities in recent wrestling history: A pro wrestling outlet with genuine backing and a fresh take that became this supernova of a favorite within not only the wrestling community, but with actual, honest-to-God mainstream buzz. We're talking about a show that was featured at SXSW after its first season, for crying out loud! And then they predictably gave it all away, going away from what made it so appealing in the first place and making some questionable decisions both with personnel and booking that it could never really recover from. What was found out by the time Season 4 came around was that, just as a show can earn tons of goodwill basically overnight, it can lose it just as fast, if not faster. Talent predictably lost faith in the direction of the company when predatory contracts were handed out like a death sentence, and on top of that, outsiders brought in never really elevated the organically grown original roster member to the heights necessary to thrive. That may have been the most crucial aspect of the company: It was COMPLETELY organic and self-sustaining, and the pro wrestling trope of guys with name value on the outside looking in at the hot new show on the block trying to get involved because they're "veterans" essentially killed a lot of what made it work. So here we are, seeing how high the dead cat can bounce.

ER: I liked our opening Mundo/Taya segment. Mundo has good Meathead Han Solo energy, and Taya's braid shaking sell of the doll possessing her was hilarious. They seem like fun.


2/3 Falls: Dragon Azteca Jr. vs. Fenix

ER: This match was good enough, and they tried some big things, but I cannot get interested in the Melissa Santos/Fenix angle. She doesn't have the acting chops to pull it off, and it was far more interesting when they were just fawning over each other like they were in a 2000s Morrissey video. Her having to act through ring announcements is ruffff. The first two falls are a little dry, felt like they were holding back for the third fall, which makes sense. Rudo Fenix isn't really any different than Tecnico Fenix, other than occasionally glowering at Melissa, and a lot of his offense looks like it's focusing more on a soft landing, which makes some of their exchanges look tentative. The tercera gets changed to Falls Count Anywhere by Antonio, and we get some violent callbacks to the earlier falls, but they also don't make a ton of sense. Fenix hit a nice German in the ring on Azteca early in the match, and it's weird when he hits one on the floor that is sold basically the same as the one in the ring. Similarly, Azteca won the segunda with his big tornado DDT, yet when he does the same on the floor Fenix is up wandering into place seconds later. It's weird to do callback spots when you're only calling attention to the newer painful versions being somehow less effective. We get some nice big spots around a table that refuses to break (nice rana off the upper level seating, big Fenix senton off the top to the floor), before it finally gets pulverized by an Azteca cradle driver off the top. The big spots didn't really lead to any big pinfall moments though, and it all felt like it was just building up to be the background to Melissa's involvement, which leads to no justice or interesting storyline wrap. It does lead to Shaul Guerrero as our guest ring announcer for the final hour of the promotion's history, so that's a weird footnote.

TL: A bit too cooperative at the start for this one, and the rapid cuts on the strike exchanges make me beg for a wide shot to see how bad it looked in full. Azteca had a nice dive, and the Fenix Driver to finish the first fall was definitely nasty. Azteca's crispness on offense is always fun, shows out a bit in fall two with the absolutely wild swinging DDT to even it up. The restart to make the final fall Falls Count Anywhere was a bit on the nose, but at the same time, it'll give Fenix an excuse to do something mighty dumb. I liked the German basically out of nowhere on the floor, as suddenness in a stip match based on the ruleset always pops me. The swinging DDT on the floor was even more wild than the one that evened up the match, but I wish there was at least a pin opportunity off it. And then Fenix kicks out at two off the rana through the table, rendering that point moot, I guess. The Fenix Swanton to the floor where he basically wipes out on the table is some Great Sasuke shit, and then Fenix takes the Cassadora through the table for a near fall and I guess you have to actually kill him? And then one time through the table and another Fenix Driver finishes? So Azteca never really had a shot? Just a strange layout for the match, doesn't really give Azteca a rub as the Azteca/Melissa stuff made him look dumb, and then Antonio says, "Love makes you do strange things," which is the cherry on top of this. Shaul Guerrero is fine? This company mystifies to the very end.

The Mack vs. Mil Muertes

ER: This had the same kind of unhinged first season cartoon violence that made that season so damn enjoyable. Two heavyweights work a fast sprint that has hard punches and kicks, big dives, hard bumps, big nearfalls, and an axe getting swung at Mack's head. It is a death match, after all. This felt like the entire match was really made for absolute Temple Fan Enjoyment, as each section was worked the way the Temple seems to respond to. Muertes is my favorite brawler in the fed and I could watch him knock Mack in the head with those big right hands all day. Both guys hit crazy topes, and Muertes has an awesome one that knocks Mack backwards into the ringside casket. But I also really liked the big nearfalls section where both guys had titanic finishers spammed to death, like a sick Mack powerslam and an even sicker flatliner that Mack takes crooked on his head. The finish stretch is classic LU, with Mack hitting a few stunners and then breaking a damn brick over Mil's head, putting him down with one last big stunner. Great all action match that felt like them getting an opportunity to work the match I knew they could work together. They had a singles match earlier this season that was incredibly dumb, a Haunted House match that included a "serious" section where Muertes got out a knife. This showed they had much better ways of integrating weapons into a match that was actually interesting. I'm happy they got a second singles match on the books as it's a singles pairing I always wanted from LU. It took until the literal final episode to deliver, but we made it.

TL: The pre-match was cute, Shaul not finding her footing yet is a bit odd given she's only 30, only an AEW ring announcing credit to her name? I'm extremely happy this matchup is happening, as Mil and Mack were two of the bright spots in the promotion's history, and the casket to start has me stoked. Mack is nuts, hitting his fat guy tope con giro and braining himself on a DDT on the apron. And then things pick up from there and these are two guys that know how to turn it up a few notches. The weapons in the casket is an awesome touch, and then the Muertes tope sending both into the casket was gnarly. We have an axe and a sickle involved, so I guess someone's been watching Mr. Pogo matches. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, someone actually got shot during a wedding angle on IMPACT so an axe doesn't surprise me. An ICE PICK, goddamn. I just rewatched Basic Instinct a couple weeks ago and yeah, the ice pick shots led to grimacing. A spinning heel kick that looked nasty AND Mack saying "KUNTA KINTE 3000" before laying in a shot, Mack rules, man. Muertes also hits his nasty chokeslam, so I feel like I'm getting everything I wanted out of this match and then some. Mack getting to kick out of the Flatliner is a great sign of respect considering how protected that finish is, AND THEN MACK HITS HIM WITH A BRICK AND A THIRD STUNNER FOR THE WIN. Mack's run in LU was an absolute blast, and Muertes was without a doubt the most consistent person in the entire run; to see them go out with one last banger against each other is incredibly satisfying. Highly doubt anything will touch this for me the rest of the night.

PAS: This was good stuff, a classic Mil Muertes garbage brawl with blood, dumb bumps and stupid weapons. Nothing in this felt space alieny or spooky ghosts, just two big dudes escalating violently until the ending. The spin out of the chokeslam into a stunner was really cool, I wonder if Austin and the Undertaker ever did that spot? I liked the Icepick as Kevin Sullivan's spike and the blood looked really cool in Mack Afro's like red soul glow activator.  LU eventually killed me, and I stopped caring about any of this stuff, but this match is the kind of thing that initially drew me to the fed. 

Johnny Mundo vs. Matanza

ER: I am genuinely excited for this one. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic or nostalgic to say that this episode has captured a real Season 1 vibe so far, the obvious best season of the series run. Is this like how March 2001 WCW was actually feeling like things were changing for the better, just a few episodes before it was all over? The power glove thing is soooo stupid but also soooo perfectly Lucha Underground. Mundo has a super power glove and it gives us a sign of Matanza we've never seen before, because now Matanza actually fears something. So we get a fun mixture of invincible Matanza as he kicks out of an early Moonlight Drive and other Mundo attacks, and tosses him with a few hard landing suplexes. The Gift to the Gods looks great, and Matanza really chucks him off the top with an overhead belly to belly. They brawl up to the top of some Temple structures, and we get fun Mundo parkour leap into a far wall, but he still gets caught by Matanza and tossed into a different wall. We get a big stunt fall where Mundo gets tossed through a roof ("You can see the asbestos falling from the walls," says Striker, a poor thing to have on tape when it comes to future class action lawsuits) and we get the big LU moment of power glove Mundo emerging through a door in the wreckage. Scared Matanza is a fun sight and something we might as well get to see in the final episode, love how weird begging off Matanza felt. We still got a couple of Matanza last gasps and this never felt like Mundo was going to dominantly come back, and it still felt like a big deal when Mundo put the monster away.

TL: Matanza's entrance gear is absolutely outrageous, some shit that he should have worn every week. Big time Vader mastodon helmet vibes with it. And yeah, I'm with Eric, the Power Glove is one of the great kitschy pro wrestling gimmicks of our time, and Mundo has the range to do fun stuff with it. And that happens in the start where he shows it could actually take down Matanza, a great bit of psychology to start, and then Matanza catches him and starts absolutely mauling him with sick power moves, including an impressive vaulting belly-to-belly. Mundo had a nice little comeback, too, and then just an insane Super German Suplex from Matanza with Mundo vaulting off the top of the post for maximum height. If you're gonna have a bombfest and aren't going to crush each other like Mack and Muertes, at least go big and with style, you know? The parkour stuff was great, too, which is a rarity in a Mundo match for me, so these guys are doing a great job with this match style, something that has genuinely impressed me. It's wild that LU missed so much in Season 4 only to have a match that encapsulates everything about it in basically one match, and the Johnny rising from the dead to use the gauntlet's power to kick out of the Wrath of the Gods and BIG PUNCH his way to victory, just a boatload of entertaining pro wrestling bullshit. Eric and I have watched a ton of cheesy horror movies lately so all those tropes rang true here, and both guys played the roles to perfection. Wild that he'd give up the glove like that, though, better man than me.

ER: I disagree with Tim's statement that there are such a thing as "cheesy horror movies". 

Pentagon Dark vs. Marty The Moth Martinez

ER: The Moth has basically retired from wrestling post LU (he has had less than 10 matches since this one, and this one aired two years ago), and he goes out with an all time LU performance. This whole match is the Moth show. He hits a true gusher, no blood packets for the Moth, just that thick kind of blood that soaks your entire head and thins your hair. Marty throws himself around ringside with abandon, going through several sets of chairs and hard into the ringpost (which is when the blood starts flowing). LU is a fed where basically everyone (especially heels) was required to take sprawling bumps through ringside chairs, in the same way everyone in NOAH had to learn how to get thrown into a guardrail. Guys getting tossed into chairs is always something that lands with me, with so many moving parts that it always looks painful and chaotic. Now considering guys go through chairs at least once per LU episode, it's pretty awesome that Moth's chair bumps actually stood out as crazy. He hip tosses Pentagon through a table, rips at his mask, stabs him with a fork, eats what appears to be a piece of bacon, and gets Pentagon bleeding. The match needed more blood, so this is obviously a good thing. That's about all Moth got out of this, busting Pentagon open and eventually hitting him while stuck in a trashcan, because the bulk of this was Moth making Pentagon look like (Antonio Cueto voice) A GOD. Moth bumps around for Pentagon and makes Penta come off like the top guy, eats a flipping piledriver off the floor, flies out of the ring through a table, gets a barbed wire board bounced off his head, gets thrown through glass (!), and eats a sick package piledriver through a bunch of chairs. Pentagon was essentially working as Hogan during the last couple LU seasons, all catchphrases and relying on others to violently bump for him, but with enough charisma it is a tecnico formula that clearly works.

TL: Perhaps the most telling thing about LU is that Marty Martinez, who has essentially disappeared from pro wrestling since this finale, is in the main event of a show in the last episode of the series, and is in a match that really has little doubt going into it of who will win. Just an absolutely weird run for him, too, as the whole psychopath gimmick was so hit-and-miss outside the ring, only to see him overperform inside the ring, including with Fenix at Ultima Lucha Tres. But we know it's Penta Dark's night to end it on top, and the only thing to consider going in is if he'll actually go for it or hold off knowing that sweet Tony Khan money is coming. Marty is going for it early on, though, taking wild bumps and hitting an absolute gusher two minutes in, and if you're gonna go out, you might as well go out bleeding all over the place. Penta is bringing it, so I'm happy about that, at least. These two really do just go all out, chair shots, the garbage can shots, and then the bat shots to the garbage can Penta is stuck in, just really violent shit. I mean, Marty does lesser stuff like the table bump to the outside and then goes through the pane of glass full on, takes the Fear Factor through chairs...look, this is absolutely the Triple H at Royal Rumble 2000 performance from Marty, a very good way to go out, and Penta did enough here to make it worth watching. I don't think I liked it as much as Muertes/Mack, but I'm a big fan.

ER: Hilariously, a barely mobile Vampiro brings in his MASTER, who is actually honestly seriously called Hexagon Dark (because why would you follow a master who has one less side?) and Vampiro's master is the tiniest little man! I thought it was Darby Allin, but apparently it is Australian Suicide, who is the same size as AAA era Rey. They couldn't have found anyone with decent size? Bring back Ezekiel Jackson from the grave and put him under a Penta mask? I'm pretty sure the only guy in LU smaller than Hexagon would be Mascarita Sagrada, but I'd have to see them standing side by side to be certain. And then Jake Strong comes out and cashes in Gift of the Gods to be the final champion in LU history!! The whole episode felt designed to give the LU fans nothing but matches they wanted and finishes they wanted to see, and then the entire series ends with the fans bummed out and quiet about Jake Strong.

TL: The Australian Suicide Hexagon Dark master bullshit was hilarious to me, and leading to the obvious Strong cash-in bullshit was even more hilarious. Marty goes out like that knowing he's done, and then you get about as impactful a Strong cash-in as when he won his MITB cash-in. This means that LU absolutely was thinking a Season 5 was going to happen, when everything about the show said otherwise, and the postscripts, with Matanza getting his heart ripped out (?!?), Strong getting the glove, Taya being possessed by a damn doll, I think I would have loved to see Lucha Underground Season 5: Temple of the Gods. AND THE WADE BARRETT REVEAL. GODFREY IN THE LIMO. Why is Lucha Underground deciding to become interesting right when I lose interest? AND LITTLE CUETO IS BACK? Okay, I take back everything I said, bring it back, man.

ER: And we get a long, wistful series of vignettes, segments designed to set up the storylines for a season 5 that was assuredly never going to happen. Black Lotus murders Matanza with the gauntlet, Strong steals the gauntlet from series punching bag and perpetual loser Dragon Azteca Jr. (breaking his ankle just to remind him that he's a loser), Taya is possessed, and Wade Barrett is revealed as a higher power (in 2018 we would have had no clue how true a higher power he was, as taking Mauro Ranallo's voice off of television is a real god tier move). And to really hammer home the cruelty, we get one final glimpse of Dario being resurrected, and as much of a drag parts of this last season was, I would have obviously been back for season 5 and WARRING CUETOS!! But they went out with a very strong last episode, and that will leave a lot of goodwill for a promotion that I watched in its entirety.

TL: This is still pretty obviously the death knell for the promotion given most of the guys on top are with other promotions, namely AEW, but you have to give them credit for at least making it look like they had a plan going forward. Dueling Cuetos, leaning in completely to the Gods motif, I mean, gimme 22 episodes of that, please. Someone is going to want to watch this the entire way through years from now because it'll be readily available on something other than Tubi and be flabbergasted by what happened here: a promotion that got a ton of talent, most of them at exactly the right time, but only went forward with specific guys due to a number of factors that seem so incredibly dubious in retrospect, only to stumble sideways into greatness multiple weeks due to that multitude of talent. LU was odd until the very end, and perhaps the only thing that would be more odd and more fitting is if somehow they got everyone back together for Season 5, even with all odds stacked against them. We'll be ready when it happens.

COMPLETE, SOMEHOW, EPISODE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 18: Spiders and Skeletons

Matanza vs. Taya

ER: I liked how the mixed it up here, at least having Taya be maybe the only person who has not been sacrificed against Matanza this season. Worldwide Underground has been pretty absent from the last many shows, didn't think they'd show back up by the end of the run. Taya doesn't look great against Matanza, they overused the SFX, she threw two love tap kicks to the balls that really should have been made into a bigger deal; Matanza sold them like he didn't realize she had thrown a strike, Vampiro wasn't even sure she had kicked him low, and that's the kind of spot that could have provided actual drama. Has Matanza been kicked in the balls before? Do we know how he'd react? Does he possibly have no genitals? Was there an online graphic novel that explained that Matanza's genitals were burnt in a fire? I mean, so much time has gone by since the introduction of the Matanza character that it could have been the very first thing we learned about him. It's not hard to picture Dario yelling to the temple "Hees genitahls wur sacruficed...toothuh GODZZZ." But the spot is absolutely meaningless and could have been much more. Mundo makes his return and saves Taya from potential sacrifice, and then throws some of the worst grounded elbows mine eyes have seen. The man has murdered several people, you can lay in the elbows a bit.

TL: A match that had part of me thinking, "How are they going to book their way out of this corner by not killing Taya?" And that's how they did it, with her getting 2/3 of the match, kicking Matanza in the aforementioned questionable cajones, and then, somehow, someway, being in the best position to win the match? And then quickly, Matanza remembers, "Oh, right. I'm Matanza." Right in time for Johnny to kick and capoeira slide his way into the mount for those elbows. Look, Morrison has made a career out of making the flashy look good. There hasn't been a single non-flying strike I've seen him throw that makes me think, "Hey, let's have him lightly tap Matanza's mask with the point of his elbow. That'll make everyone look good." Do love the idea that we are going to see Matanza sacrifice them both at some point, sending Johnny back to Titan and Taya, er...elsewhere.

Mil Muertes/Fenix vs. Dragon Azteca Jr./The Mack

ER: This has to be the best LU match of the season. It clocked in just under 10, presented us a couple fresh match-ups, and had a real gem of a Fenix performance throughout. Also, the team of Muertes and Fenix is SO much more interesting than the played out Lucha Bros. team and it's cruel that this is the only time we've seen it. Power Guy/Flyer teams can't get too much more awesome than Muertes/Fenix, and Pentagon is just a lame Muertes who spends time doing stupid hand gestures to fill in the gaps while Muertes just fills space by punching people. Fenix breaks out some of his all time greatest rope work, bouncing from the top to the middle to the top to the middle to his back, working a fantastic sequence with Mack where Mack blocks a frankensteiner by taking out Fenix's legs, only for Fenix to keep blocking his block by hitting that middle rope and springing right back. Fenix also had a couple of killer saves, the best was him leaping into the ring and kicking Azteca right in the back of the head (but I do love him running in with a punt right across Mack's face), and he bases like mad for Azteca. Azteca hits one of his most awesome tornado DDTs, Fenix tossing him up into the air like a drunk uncle tossing a baby before getting wiped out on the way down. Muertes was a real wrecking ball, and he and Mack had a nice short punch exchange in the middle, Mack takes a couple big spills to the floor, and I just adore this speed and power combo of Fenix/Muertes. There were only a couple moments of the match I didn't care for: Mack really wedged his stunner into the match, and it's an unnecessary cheap pop minor league baseball stadium spot that he doesn't need to do, let alone several times in a match; and we got a weird moment that could have been awesome, when Fenix just leveled a ringside camera guy while swinging through the ropes, looked like he just clocked this guy with swinging legs. Camera guy goes down, dramatically rolls through, and springs back to his feet triumphantly. I...don't get it? Is that dude in some kind of angle? Or did they just not edit out a moment where a camera guy took a kick from arguably the most notable kicker in Lucha Underground, and immediately brushed it off. Vampiro handled it as well as possible ("Even our camera guys are bad ass!") but call an audible dude, stay down. For a fed that edits everything, it's really bizarre that this was left in, which makes me think it was left in for a reason....but why?

TL: Mauro gets a lot of righteous criticism, but holy shit, Matt Striker just made a Meek Mill pun for Mil Muertes and that has me on tilt. Azteca and Muertes are a good pairing, I like seeing what they do together, and after the Fenix/Mack pair off, this hits a different level. PWG has had a house tag style for a while that lends itself more to elaborate set pieces and spots that become more non-sensical as the match progresses, and while they do use that as a template for this match, they hit things much more crisp, they sell better, and the high spots are even more impressive. Azteca with an insane lifting tornado DDT, then, his dive gets one upped by Fenix. Then Mack is like, "Hey, 300 lbs. No hands." So the pace for this has picked up, but they aren't doing shit that defies the idea of what wrestling is and spits in its face, essentially. Muertes breaks up a pinfall attempt with a goddamn straight right hand. The best thing this match does is give you just enough of the pairings that are to come at Ultima Lucha, and then in the off-pairings, it's like they take it up another level. Fenix's rope running in this match is at the highest possible difficulty and he hits it all clean. And then we get a decisive finish to boot. I mean, look, that tag match really shouldn't have worked at all due to the layout, but they not only made it work, but they excelled in making the pairings that meant something stand out AND built awesome transitions in the process. I don't know if I liked it to the extent Eric did, but it's hard not to look at this match in the grand scheme of this season and wonder why it took 18 weeks for folks to look like they gave a damn. Then again, these are four of the most consistent guys on the roster and they got time to show out. Excited to see what they do in their singles matches.

Ricky Mundo vs. Famous B

ER: I thought this was a pretty terrific Ricky Mundo squash, and made me more interested in him than anything up to this point. He hits a big headbutt (that the camera foolishly shoots from above) and looked like he was really laying in shots. Famous B got to cut a funny return promo before the match, and bumped like a loon for Mundo. Mundo's match winning neckbreaker could have looked like the indiest shit ever, except B whipped the back of his head right into the mat. I had forgotten about the Mundo doll thing, and I'm not really feeling a Mundo/Taya blowoff, but I liked what they did here.

TL: Ricky gets to wrestle! So does Famous B! This was fine. Famous B knows how to bump like a goddamn crazy person, at least. I'd like to bring up the psychosexual pretenses of Ricky going after Johnny's wife, but then you have Ricky doing the goddamn crossface on Brenda while laying on top of B and it's like the pretense is right there out in the open for everyone. I guess I'm trying to say Ricky wants to both kill Johnny and have sex with him. There. I said it. Now I feel dirty.

Pentagon Dark vs. Reklusa

ER: I must be back on that LU hype train baby, because this was another really good match! This was also one of my favorite matches on the season, coming just 15 minutes after another Match of the Season contender. Two in one episode? Lucha Underground is the greatest! This match gets several things right that have been lacking this season, and they worked a cool match without any extra gimmicks. It helped that I think this was Pentagon's strongest performance of the season, and Reklusa may have been his most interesting opponent. Reklusa dove off the top during his entrance and proceeded to land grounded shots far harder than Johnny Mundo threw at Matanza earlier, and we get cool stuff on the floor like Reklusa going for a cannonball but getting caught and powerbomb tailbone first on the apron, and her selling Pentagon's leg kicks more effectively than anyone else has all year, really looking like she gets the nuance of a kick to the meat of the thigh. Pentagon based like hell here, catching a big rana from the top to the floor, and taking a tope/tornado DDT, both moves that could have easily flopped. He turned up the sadism, dropping Reklusa on the apron with a package piledriver, and Reklusa's bumping was really good throughout, taking some really tough spills and getting up each time. They even used the ball kick - the one I railed against earlier due to how sloppy and half-hearted it was used in the Matanza/Taya match - effectively here, making it look like Reklusa really could beat Pentagon. The match ending package piledriver was insane, genuinely looked like Pentagon's goal was to break the ring with Reklusa's head. This could be the best Lucha Underground match to feature someone who will only be in one Lucha Underground match.

TL: I actually haven't seen much of Chelsea's work, although I know she has a good presence and she's extremely athletic from the clips of hers I've seen. Love the plancha to start! You can also add, "Will recklessly take bumps on her tailbone on the apron" to that list. Dear God that's sick. Even when Pentagon goes on offense and he looks a bit more fired up than usual, Reklusa is selling like a QUEEN for him, glassy eyed, wobbly kneed, and actually making the sound effects seem worthwhile. And then she hits a goddamn rana from the top to the floor and follows up with Candice LeRae's tope con tornado DDT. This has been the Reklusa show and Penta is totally along for the ride, but I'll give him credit that he's at least bringing it more than he has in other matches this season. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that folks are kicking out of package piledrivers on the apron and Canadian Destroyers, but at least there was finality with the Fear Factor to finish. I now want to seek out more Chelsea Green, incredibly impressive stuff. Get her on NXT TV immediately. Dug the post-match angle, too, as Marty looked like he stepped out of a Creed video to absolve Penta of his sins. Absolutely wild how the intergender main events have killed it these last couple weeks. They've been the best part of the season by far to me. Somehow don't think Ricky/Taya will keep that run going.

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 16: Kill Mil

ER: Weekly reminder of just how awful every part of the Antonio Cueto character is.

TL: Oh man. So...you are a show that caters basically exclusively to hardcore fans. You then have MATT STRIKER READ A PREPARED STATEMENT to set up the main even that night? Over a highlight package? I mean...I never thought I'd say this, but Vampiro saying, "You say something? We got things to do!" after that was the best. Thank God for Vampiro. Praise Vampiro.

Jack Evans vs. Matanza

ER: This was pretty silly. I'm not sure what kind of character Evans is working, as he did a bunch of dialed to 10 mic work where he was just yelling annoying sounds and acting like a real goofball. Cool? Then he does a comical Mr. Furley stumbly run up the stairs only to run away from Matanza and get tripped by Antonio Cueto's cane. They're going for Looney Tunes vibes but also very serious Evans-will-leave-The-Temple-in-a-body-bag vibes and it doesn't really work. Evans vs. Matanza is a damn fun pairing, but this isn't that. This is Evans wide eyed running from Matanza, getting tossed a couple times, coming back briefly to hit a fantastic 630...only to see Matanza instantly shrug it off and hit the Tour of the Temple. This could have been a the best possible style clash, instead we had to pretend Jack Evans was suddenly a guy who couldn't wrestle very well.

TL: Jack Evans continues to be awesome on the mic, Antonio Cueto continues to be a terrible caricature in place of an actual good on-screen authority figure. Jack plays up the horror movie vibes better than most by knocking on the door to the entrance ramp only to be out of luck. Jack getting to run around a bit and be evasive only to eventually fall after a valiant effort is at least a good version of this match, but I would have liked a more competitive match between these two because it would have been good to watch. Evans rag dolling for peak Samoa Joe back in the ROH days was fantastic to see; him doing the same for Matanza would have ruled, too. Alas, all this for a cheap pop to hear Antonio warble about human sacrifice. I mean, literally seven months ago on WM weekend, a dude has his throat slit on stage during the absolutely terrible Blackcraft show. If you're gonna kill someone on a wrestling show, at least make it campy as fuck.

XO Lishus/Ivelisse/Joey Ryan vs. Jeremiah Snake/Daga/Kobra Moon

ER: This was rough in just about every way. Sloppy as hell, not a lot of build, just a mess of a match. Xo Lishus was probably the lone highlight; I love the snap he gets on things like armdrags, and really I just love the snap he puts on everything. Ivelisse has one of the more embarrassing hot tags of recent memory and later hits a slow motion cannonball off the apron. Daga even trips on the ropes getting into the ring. Striker calls Jeremiah Snake "this generation's most controversial athlete", which does sound much more intriguing than "some guy that a lot of people wish would just go away because they don't dig his fucking vibe" which is the reality. This was as skippable as it gets.

TL: Killer Kross as the White Rabbit is a good fit for the promotion; hope he calls out Big Dave in a knock off Tower of Doom match by season's end. The match itself was basically a mid-tier trios pairing with folks thinking up "creative" spots only for them to not land clean. XO probably looked the best in the match, Joey's shtick continues to be tired, Crane's descent to complete irrelevance continues. Daga with a weird Toryumon double arm-bar to finish. Kross and London stand idly by for the most part while Bunny gets the offense post-match, and I'm baffled again. This fed, folks.

Nunchuck Match: Aerostar/Drago vs. Jake Strong

ER: I'm a big fan of stupid stips matches, and a 2 on 1 handicap nunchucks match would certainly qualify as stupid, but Strong isn't a good enough stooge to make the nunchucks portion of this match interesting. We get the fun visual of actual nunchuck retrieval at the top of the Temple steps. At one point Aerostar and Drago pose as two children trying to sneak into an R rated movie wearing a very long trenchcoat, beating Jake with nunchucks. But Strong just kind of stands there and takes a dozen nunchuck shots, like he couldn't go anywhere. Every other time he took nunchuck shots he would just awkwardly bend over to take them, just poking his butt out. To put over a nunchuck shot you really need that scaled dog reaction, needs some hopping, some yelping, some fleeing; Ol' Jake Strong just behaved like he was in a very specific BDSM video. There were individual great moments, like Strong's vicious gutwrench powerbomb, or Aerostar's no hands springboard splash, but this didn't work as well as it could have.

TL: NUNCHUKS MATCH. I need Sleazy E out here in an exhibition at least. Jake Strong being treated as a top guy in AEW right now is still absolutely baffling to me (and he hasn't even wrestled a match!!!) but he's been at least a little bit entertaining taking on all the low-tier juniors, which should prepare him well for AEW. It's at least something that uses the gimmick well, even if the gimmick itself is terrible. The crowd chants "This is awesome!" for some reason, possibly the nadir of the chant, or maybe they're in on the joke. But let's point out what these guys did in their seven minutes: They had huge bumps, they laid shit in, and they went out there to maximize an absolutely limiting gimmick. I'm writing this match up as it happens, not after the fact, and this is actually becoming one of the great shitty gimmick matches LU has ever done. The finish was awesome stuff. They also 100% went early on the bone break sound effect. I am going to look back on this fondly as one of the great examples of everything both bad and good about LU: The gimmick is terrible, the entire setup is basically shit. But guys went out there and killed it, did everything they could to maximize what they were given, and somehow, someway, production values made it look not nearly as good as it could have. I can't think of a single 15-minute segment in any LU show that captures all that. Amazing stuff.

Mil Muertes vs. King Cuerno vs. Dragon Azteca Jr. vs. Pentagon Dark

ER: This didn't add up to a ton, made everyone except Pentagon feel super marginalized, which is a repeat trend for PPP. We also got some more Fenix coming out to assault Melissa Santos, which is great because then he will still wrestle the same way and get cheered for his cool spots, so what is actually the point of doing that kind of storyline? It does lead to our no close second greatest part of the match, when Dragon Azteca hits an incredible tope con giro over the ringpost, crashing both of them into the announce table. Awesome, awesome spot. I have to assume the rest of this was mangled by hasty editing, because the only other option was that it was mangled by foolish match layout: Cuerno hit his big tope into Pentagon and Muertes, except Pentagon was back up to the apron as quickly as Cuerno, only for both of them to be hit by a Muertes spear to knock them off the apron. So either Pentagon sold a Cuerno tope - treated like a major move for much of the series - by immediately leaping up to the apron, while Muertes sold it by running to the other side of the Temple to get in the ring for his spear...or the editing was so trash that it just made the wrestlers look like trash. Neither is a good look.

TL: Things I knew were going to happen before this match started: Muertes was gonna rule ass for a few minutes, Penta was definitely going to be on the outside in a 4-way match when you shouldn't have any downtime due to the fact everyone can at least face someone, Cuerno was gonna hit his tope, Dragon was gonna out-effort everyone. AND THEN HE DOES THAT CORNER DIVE. HOLY SHIT. It's weird to think a match like this is so methodically paced, but that's LU for you. Willie Mack coming back to cost Mil the match was a cool twist. And then of course Penta wins. Muertes taking the fall was surprising but I guess if they're pairing folks off, Mack/Muertes in a deathmatch should be fun, at least. Match was 100% a mean multi-man LU match. Like Eric said: Production here was really off again, selling was off all around. Again, I feel like there's just a lot of things that are supposedly creative but done in a way that doesn't play to anyone's strengths. It used to be the hallmark of this show but now it seems like that's all gone by the wayside. Really rough to see at this point. Azteca/Fenix has a chance to be good, Mack/Muertes could be a defining match for two guys I thoroughly enjoyed in this fed, and Penta somehow ending up the last LU champ will be fitting in a way because they really had nobody else to go to, it seems. Maybe they'll still surprise me. Who knows.



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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 10: A Snake Scorned

Saltador vs. Matanza

ER: A good cult leader occasionally needs to sacrifice one of his acolytes to either test their faith or further control them, but you gotta be really careful when you only have a couple followers to start with. You can't sacrifice your entire cult, you need to build up some numbers before you start sacrificing. I liked Saltador all tingly from molly, tickling and caressing Matanza, hitting a nice pop-up dropkick, then getting wasted. It does come off silly that they keep calling these minor beatings "sacrifices" (and really, we've seen tons worse one-sided beatings in this fed), when we've already had two ACTUAL murders happen this season. Taking a powerslam feels a little bit underwhelming when we're comparing it to a beheading.

TL: I think London deciding not to be like Jim Jones or David Koresh and going down with the folks whose minds he’s enslaved is a neato twist on the idea of a cult. Like he got an advanced copy of “Wild Wild Country” and realized the best way to control folks is to just be the outspoken leader and have honest-to-god minions. Kind of self-perpetuates the idea you’re that much more important than the others AND gets the point across that you also can’t fully protect anyone from anything that leads to their imminent demise. We all get sacrificed eventually.

Point is, molly or not, Salty should have known better.

TL: Killshot with a good cocky promo and it might be the most I’ve ever liked him when he wasn’t in a death match. Like actual motivation for him now. Totally throws me off.

Killshot vs. Dragon Azteca Jr.

ER: This had a lot of really dumb dance partner practice run stuff, a couple parts where it genuinely looked like they were just practicing their routine so they could be ready for the semis. For every move that looked cool (Azteca leaping from top rope to apron to give Killshot a rana, Killshot hitting his Fosbury Flop dive to the floor), there was another moment that just looked like poor exhibition; Azteca and Killshot struggling to get a knucklelock that allowed Killshot to get Azteca on his shoulders (what is with so many people having offense now that requires their opponent to be on their shoulders? Is this stupid Kenny Omega influence? I can't think of a more unnatural spot for an opponent to end up than seated on your shoulders, like Killshot took his girlfriend Azteca to Glastonbury), or one awful spot where Killshot took ages to set up an arm submission, Azteca just standing still while Killshot walks around him holding his arm, both men working on material while we watch. Match was as expected: Had some big moves, none of the moves hurt the other enough to keep them from hitting their own moves.

TL: I really don’t get why folks who are athletic need to do these cooperative spots that never look good or fluid or smooth. It’s a really messed up way to look at it from a psychology standpoint: The human mind anticipates the big move and basically ignores everything leading up to it, which is why spots like that still get pops. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense. Only if it looks good at the end. There’s a couple spots here that read like, “Okay, so you can read the dude’s mind and anticipate his moves, but you can’t actually move when he’s doing the move.” It’s just mind numbing. The Killstomp 100% should have gotten a 2 count (maybe not even that) because Killshot didn’t even hit him even barely with it. The DDT to finish wasn’t so flashy that it outranked things like a DVD on the apron. Just really, really weird match layout, and that’s saying something for Lucha Underground.

ER: Aerostar/Drago bit was a fun tiny fantasy moment of undying friendship between a dragon and a spaceman, with the music doing a good job to capture the mood. It's tough to film male friendship, but I liked this. It was short and simple and I think they need more tiny character moments like this. With commonplace murders they've gone beyond over the top, and Striker just treats every single match like it's extremely important, so really nothing feels important at all. But friendship? That's something I can get behind.

TL: On my feed that I watched for this episode, the music bled over into the beginning of Melissa’s ring intro for the trios titles match and I figured it was because the producers loved the beat that much. I really don’t blame them. It was like a hip-hop version of those old silent films where you see folks move their mouths and then a screen card comes on with what they said afterwards. Like if you did an old Laurel and Hardy film but with someone producing the ragtime music on Garageband.

Daga/Jeremiah Snake/Kobra Moon vs. Son of Havoc/Killshot/The Mack

ER: Striker is so weird underselling Vibora's decapitation. Minutes ago he was flipping out for a dance aerobics routine and sounding like he'd never witnessed a tornado DDT before, now he says during a ring entrance "Well you may note Vibora is absent, as we just witnessed his decapitation," so he clearly knows about a murder, doesn't care about it, and is also going to continue talking about Worldwide Underground as good guys. The vibe of this whole season has been pretty fucked. But this match was really fun, and cooperative in a good way as any cooperation lead to an immediate crash. We had a ton of dives (loved Havoc hitting a move and then flying past the ringpost with one, it's typically a good idea to lift something from Santito if you can), Mack hitting a big flip dive, Moon getting tossed into a dive (like that trend, make her into a man-propelled wrecking ball), and we got a few nice showcases of Mack and Jeremiah's stiff work. The match starts with a weak Daga strike combo, so it's alarming when Mack comes in and really pounds him with an elbow. Like, oh, yeah, that's what that's supposed to look like. I like how Snake and Mack interact (I keep accidentally typing "Snack", which feels like a name Meltzer might give Callihan if he continues to chub out, and now I want a Halloween episode where Mack dresses like Callihan and calls himself Jeremiah Snack, box of cookies in hand), like how Snake cuts off Mack's turnbuckle handstand with a stiff kick. This whole thing had a real nice flow, and there's no reason the multiman division shouldn't be the strongest in the fed. The title win felt a little underwhelming, even after a good match, and Killshot berating Havoc after the loss will surely lead to another Killshot feud I don't want to see. But overall, this was a fun one.

TL: HA. I also noticed Striker basically no-selling a decapitation based on all the madness-based murders that have happened this season. Didn’t even go with the Owen Voice or anything. Just another line read. “Lucha Underground: We Got Murders!” He also no-sold Mack’s amazing satin jacket. As someone who weighed 300+ pounds a short while ago, seeing Sami start to be a bit heavy makes me take pause given where he was during the Finlay matches. The dives were fun, Mack was the most fun, the wacky tandem offense with Sami and Kobra was fun. Finish was deflating. Killshot unraveling after being so cocky doesn’t do it for me. We’ve already seen brooding Killshot, don’t need more brooding in my pro wrestling. The postmatch Killstomp was probably the best one ever because he just sprung up and did it. No posturing or bullshit or nothing. But yeah, I don’t need to see a super light-hitting feud between these guys.

ER: We get a match ending brawl between Cage and Pentagon that starts fairly lethargic, but gets good when Pentagon brains a member of Metalachi with his own guitar. Striker actually made me chuckle with "Probably the biggest hit they'll ever have!" We do focus a bit too much on a black priest with a bad pun name (Father Rick O'Shea, har har har) making big gasping faces like he's permanently reacting to some Drag Race shade. And I think this might be the debut of a silly arm cracking sound effect when Pentagon snaps his arm. I'm pessimistic about the match next week, but I'll hope for the best.

TL: Cage out here looking like he’s wearing something out of Shane Douglas’ closet circa 1996, and yeah, it starts off slow but really picks up. Not the best LU brawl, but not the worst. I’m more than over Pentagon at this point, and I don’t think it’ll be a bomb-throwing match, which is what it should be, but I just want it to be a car wreck at this point.

TL: How dare Eric no-sell Mack taking the incredibly tacky witches hat off Cueto’s head, putting it on his own head in response to being put in a “Haunted House Match” with Mil Muertes, and saying “Trick or Treat, mother fade to black”. Virtuoso performance by the LU MVP.

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 9: A Match Made in Heaven

ER: This may be an odd question...but was that actually Melissa playing Mariposa in the opening segment with Cueto? Her voice sounded completely different from how I remember her sounding (not merely the absence of her minor speech impediment, her voice just sounded different), and the mask covers enough that I actually have no idea.

TL: Was that…a competent set up for the main event? Like, did they actually lay out the consequences in a cogent manner for us to understand? Wild, man.

Mala Suerte vs. Matanza

ER: So now we've established bunny hop "boings" and speed bags SFX to our LU SFX canon. This was short but nobody died. Suerte hit a great baseball slide dropkick to start, Matanza hit a nice headbutt to cut off bunny hops and hit the Wrath of the Gods. But again, nobody died, which seems important to point out now.

TL: I literally cannot add anything to what Eric said about this match when those SFX were involved. Peak pro wrestling production, that.

Joey Ryan/Jack Evans vs. XO Lishus/Ivelisse

ER: I really liked this, especially as a showcase for Evans and Lishus. I wasn't excited for Joey opposite another woman, but I liked the turn into Joey being a full blown sex addict, just wanting any kind of touch and contact with any human (at minimum, any human). I think him being into getting slammed into XO Lishus' juicy hot ass and liking it is an important thing to happen. Sex addict is far more interesting than overt pervert. Lishus is a ton of fun, a great take on an exotico. The splits legdrop is good, and I also realized with his outfit, butt stuff, splits...he's basically cosplaying as Naomi. That feels like a level of exotico we haven't had in wrestling, an actual drag routine paying tribute to a fan favorite. The cartwheel slap is great with the character, and there was a hilarious moment with he and Evans, where Lishus ducked a clothesline and landed in a crabwalk, Evans overran him with the miss, ran back, but was chased into the corner with a quick burst of crabwalking from Lishus. Evans played it great, the timing was down, a genuinely funny and unique moment played perfectly. They went way too heavy on SFX for Ivelisse, she had a couple weak shots that came off comical with the loud thigh slap sound, but stuff like armdrags and ranas looked fine and she ate Ryan's offense well. Evans is still finding his place without WU, and I hope he's featured more from here now that he's away from WU. But he and Lishus owned here.

TL: I want to be a part of the conversations Joey has had with other folks to try and figure out how he could evolve his character. As Eric said, the climb from pervert to sex addict seems like the natural next step for him and who better to bring it out of him than Lishus, who has the athleticism that makes it look like he can hang with Jack F’n Evans step for step. Evans’ athleticism never ceases to amaze me; his springboard moves look out of control but also look like they kill folks. Yeah, the Lishus/Evans stuff was terrific, which led to the absolutely disgusting finish with the omoplata that really looked like a chokeout as opposed to all the other loosely applied MMA finishes you’d see in wrestling today. Stoked to see this get a longer feud, too. Ryan and Ivelisse were definitely in this match.

Mariposa vs. Dragon Azteca Jr.

ER: This was so short and really a nothing match. It was presented as an obstacle for Azteca but he didn't have too much trouble with Mariposa. It's a Lucha Underground update on an old early 90s Wrestling Challenge squash match. In one of those matches the enhancement talent would maybe get a dropkick or a couple elbows that get no sold. In a Lucha Underground squash match the enhancement talent still gets to break out a Kudo Driver moments after taking a huge 450 splash. The times they are a changin'.

TL: Love the foul to start the match during the belt presentation, love the kick to the inside of the thigh even more. Also love how in 2018, a 450 splash and a fucking KUDO DRIVER get 2.9s, but crossing the legs on a rolling prawn hold? Can’t get out of that, no siree. But hey, I’ve never wrestled before, so I don’t understand psychology, I guess.

The Reptile Tribe vs. Worldwide Underground

ER: So Striker says that Vibora is "striking in his absence" meaning nobody else knows about Vibora's death, but you'd think his absence would be focused on a lot more if that was the case. Instead they're just immediately cool with lizard Jeremiah Crane being the replacement. Also, could we have maybe done a little better than Jeremiah Snake? Here are a few off the top of my head with similar vocal patterns: Jereboa Crane, Jereviper Crane, Jereconda Crane. They aren't rhymes, but the syntax is the same as his original name and they roll off the tongue similarly. Or, they could have embraced their ridiculous side and further have their cake and eat it too, and he could have been Janaconda Cobrane. Also, I like that even in a rare 4 on 4 match, Ricky Mandel still isn't good enough to make the cut. I want them do have a 10 man tag to see if he has a shot at getting some playing time.

And I really liked this match. It was the right amount of fun and action, and really the fed should run more 8 man tags. I've gotten tired of their go to singles match style, but throw any 8 people from the roster in a ring and they should all have enough material to work a fun 10 minute match. You get less reliance on kickouts and more reliance on saves at that point, and a well timed save is more exciting to me than a big kickout. We get a ton of big dives, some complicated (like Kobra Moon getting launched into everyone by Jeremiah) and a couple impressive Aerostar ones, and a huge cannonball into everyone by Jeremiah. The pacing was kept brisk, and the whole thing was kept light which is a good thing because serious matches typically feature Striker reading a bunch of lousy copy about the Fates of Worlds and the Calamity of Man. The post-match worked for me too, even though the Macho Man stuff was all really obvious, I loved the Pomp and Circumstance playing while Mundo had Taya up on his shoulder. Taya's reaction to the proposal was good and as I've been wondering the past couple weeks this surely throws WU into full babyface, which isn't a bad twist. I somehow didn't notice the relevance of the episode title, which now seems like it should be saved for the inevitable wedding episode of LU, and I also somehow foolishly never considered a wedding episode for LU. We're well over 100 episodes at this point, and if we actually want to pretend that this is an actual TV series and not wrestling, then we're already into syndication and we're overdue for a wedding and a baby. We've already gotten to the point of the show where it's consistently going downhill from its peak, so now we need a couple of classic ratings poppers!

TL: The graphic leading into this match looks like it was made for an ECW TV main event in 1997, which is terrific. Big wet fart for the return of Crane as part of the Reptile Tribe. Don’t care enough to even make fun of the name. Aerostar wearing the bandana over his mask is as goofy looking as Klay Thompson wearing the bandana during his 14 3-pointer game last week, which means I love it. Vibora had been getting better so I’m a bit sad he’s not a part of this, because this seems like the type of match where he’d really stand out.

More wild atomicos match than I would have thought with this set up, as I figured there would be more pairing off than a whole bunch of dives, but they wanted a frenetic pace from the start. PJ Black’s hot tag that began with a bunch of first week training offense after the springboard was amusing. Nothing like armdrags and shoulder blocks to fire things up. The more I hear “Jeremiah Snake” the more I cringe. He also gets a lot of the match here, which is disappointing. Would have loved to see more Moon and Drago, especially considering Aerostar was brought in specifically because of his past with Drago. Instead, Drago gets to watch Aerostar hit his second ridiculous dive of the match and then take the fall. Postmatch was actually cool for the fakeout, Johnny being magnanimous, and the two-bit Savage aping. It was ELIZABETH who did the “Ooooohh yeah” part, man. C’mon. I’m not sure what wedding day shenanigans will occur to hold it up before it actually happens, but I’ve been entertained by WU skits to the point where I’d at least enjoy it. Can’t remember too many happy RobRod movie marriages, but maybe they’ll make an exception here.

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 7: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

ER: I have not noticed the older mom in pigtails as one of the LU fans. Boy were all of those people behind Striker and Vampiro something. A mom and dad with their two large adult sons? Plenty of large sons in the crowd, but you don't always see their small white parents.

TL: Amazing that a doctor was able to repair Famous B’s leg due to a possible compound fracture in 2018, when things like compound fractures apparently lead to amputation. Really happy modern medicine won out in the end. Also, guaranteed that mom has some stories to tell about going to the Forum in ’77 to watch Roddy Piper cause riots in his feud with Chavo Guerrero. Imagining her asking Vampiro if he knows “La Cucaracha” the entire show and smiling. Nothing better than a middle-aged woman wrestling fan.

Sammy Guevara vs. "The Savage" Jake Strong

ER: Gotta say I'm still surprised by the by crowd reactions from Strong. Although now thinking about it I'd like to see a grappling match with he and Cobb. I know they've wrestled before, and I don't expect the grappling match to happen in LU (since it would be extremely dumb to see Matanza working mat exchanges), but I bet it would be good. This started as another Strong showcase, and it was fine, with big throws and his big running splash. But I liked that Guevara got some hope spots, and that huge moonsault off the balcony. I don't think we've gotten a balcony dive yet this season, which has obviously been a staple of previous seasons. The Temple itself has been so much less of a character this season. I don't really have much of a sense of what we're in the middle of, it was nice having an idea of the internal layout of the last Temple. The Guevara moonsault looked nuts, camera picked up the height great, and I liked Guevara's run. Better than I expected.

TL: Strong has looked pretty damn good in his LU run, surprising me a little bit, to be honest. Him manhandling Guevara to start was really fun to watch. Guevara’s big dive was something else, although from the match layout, having his ankle torqued on like that and then doing a 30-foot moonsault doesn’t really add up. Then he’s walking around on offense and doing a springboard right back into the ankle lock and Strong finishes with an unrealistic pop of the ankle sound effect. Good for Guevara getting a chance to shine, though, and yeah, the moonsault is up there with the Angelico roof dive from the end of Season 1.

Vinny Massaro vs. Matanza

ER: It's great that Vinny is still somehow making TV. It feels like they're really dragging out his eventual murder. Who would have had Mascarita Sagrada getting murdered before Vinny? Matanza chokes Vinny's pizza delivery boy and Vinny stands up for him, hits the snoring elbow (which always lands hard, while having the absolutely slowest spin), but Matanza headbutts him on a follow up. Wrath of the Gods is hit on a big heavy guy, you knew what this would be.

TL: Friend of my Twitter Feed and 2018 Jun Akiyama in Mexico Opponent Vinny Mass out here doing more in two minutes than most folks have done with 20 on this show. Got an honest-to-God Snoring Elbow in and this was exactly what it was supposed to be. “It’s pineapple!”

ER: Vinny followed my twitter feed for about an hour last year. I got the notification that he was following me, checked the link to his page, and saw he was no longer following me. He must have seen old reviews of me talking about lazy Ultimo Panda performances.

The Mack/Son of Havoc/Ivelisse vs. King Cuerno/Dezmond X/Dragon Azteca Jr.

ER: In case you haven't forgotten, anything involving Papa Cueto speaking for any length of time is almost automatically the worst thing on any episode. Striker keeps calling Dezmond a rookie for some reason, even though he's been showing up on Impact for a couple years. This was an inoffensive match that ended rather abruptly and never really got into a next gear. Ivelisse looks silly pulling offense on Cuerno, it just doesn't work. Mack gets the bulk of this and looks good, as usual, caps it off with a giant fat guy flip dive. The match was used to set up the following match, and it felt the whole time like it was being used to set up another match.

TL: Is Ivelisse a Muse fan? She must be a Muse fan with that entrance music. Also, Eric, Striker is obviously using the Meltzer Rookie of the Year rules in regard to Desmond. TV’s the only thing that matters, man. I usually look for booking tells with the Cueto nonsense but it’s a bit difficult to see who goes on here and at least there’s intrigue. Mack needs only 45 seconds in the match to outshine everyone else, as per usual. Seriously, strap the damn rocket to his back! Desmond sure looked like a rookie with the most obvious thigh slap in Lucha Underground history, which is covering some ground. AND WE GET A MACK HOT TAG? Yeeeeaaaaaaah, baby! The tornillo was choice. Havoc’s Sasuke Special has this insane velocity to it, too. Truly impressive back-to-back dives. Then Havoc gets caught with the Thrill of the Hunt by Cuerno for the upset. This leads to some awesome Muertes post-match shenanigans. Kinda hard not for me to like this segment when you get to highlight both Mack and Muertes.

ER: Even with Meltzer rules I assume that Pop! is in more houses than El Rey, but as someone who has watched Schitt's Creek through multiple times I imagine I make up an actual percentage of Pop! viewers.

King Cuerno vs. Dragon Azteca Jr. vs. Dezmond X

ER: The Gift of the Gods title means nothing to me at this point, so I don't care about the silly ways that we got to Dragon Azteca Jr: Champion. I can't get too excited when Mil Muertes lost his medallion just because, and Azteca wound up on a winning trios team. Azteca has lost more matches than he has won in LU, constantly feels like a guy who backs into every gain he makes. BUT, I came away from this match very, very impressed with Dezmond X. I've liked him before, but this felt like the best performance of his that I've seen. I really liked an Impact match last year against Ishimori, for context of what I thought of his prior work, but this felt like another level. He owned in this match, throwing impressive snap punches (let's be honest, he won me over when he ran in with a nice punch and shook his fist out, swoon), throws cool body shots, offense looked tightened up, and then he hit a gorgeous flip dive off one of the higher points of the temple (awesome catch by the other two as well). Cuerno feels like a major stock falling guy, no matter how much hyperbolic praise is heaped on him by Striker, but his tope still looks killer as hell. One spot I really hated: Cuerno holding Azteca in an Indian Deathlock, and Dezmond leaps at Cuerno looking for a wheelbarrow roll up. What a stupid piece of dance wrestling. Dezmond had just been kicking and punching people the entire match, but now that Cuerno nicely has his leg tied up and is standing prone in the middle? Sure, that's when you leap at him and look for a roll up so he can catch you in a full nelson. It's a dumb looking show piece that ground a nice pace to a half, for an end result that is almost as exciting as a magician guessing your card on the third try. My eyes are definitely open to Dezmond X after this one, hope he gets a decent "replacement Puma" run here.

TL: Three-way matches in LU have actually delivered more often than not, hilariously. Seems really odd to say that given three-ways are designed to not be aesthetically pleasing. This was what you’d expect from these three, where they get cute with the three-way spots and there are dives galore. Once this got going, this was more of your generic cookie-cutter brand of match, which makes me regret my topic sentence of this paragraph. If this was a Mack-centric three-way instead, there would have been way more enjoyment for me. Still, very happy to eat my words on Desmond, who definitely showed more this week than I expected and had the full repertoire on display like Eric said. Also, amazing to think that on the same show where Guevara hit a damn moonsault off the balcony that Desmond doing the flip dive off the top of the entranceway looked just as good, if not better. Ending was a bit too cute, as I didn’t need the backflip off the top leading into the top rope wheelbarrow drop. My biggest issue with three ways in general: Have to do these spots that look cool but either don’t make sense or actively take away from the match. A mixed bag of a match that had its moments. Really difficult for me to see Dragon as anywhere close to Pentagon given how Pentagon’s been booked, but hey, that’s why I’m writing on here and not in a production room in a Los Angeles studio.

TL: I was trying to figure out which 90’s prestige film-based porn producer’s house in the Valley that Marty and Mariposa were staying at during their non-sensical promo. Jackie Treehorn would have had a much nicer place even as he was just starting his career, although he’d be into the glass tabletops. Maybe Jack Horner? If we saw a pool, I could imagine it being a spot Horner would have been able to hunker down in between shoots on the couch in the living room. Were most porn producers in the 70’s named Jack? You know, don’t look it up. I’m going to assume the answer is unequivocally “Yes.”


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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 5: Sacrificio

TL: Vampiro Fashion Update: Palm Beach, Florida area retiree who spends every afternoon during the week at a Perkin’s knockoff for happy hour.

Cortez Castro vs. Matanza

ER: Castro's identity as a cop is now common knowledge (though it was amusing to see people in the Temple reacting to Cueto's news with shock). It feels like we've known this for several years now, and now we know that a Cueto knows, and really that should have lead to an in-ring murder. The fact that newly re-monstered Matanza did not murder an undercover cop in the Temple feels a bit like, ahem, a cop out.

TL: So, let me get this straight: Papa Cueto knew he was a cop? And had sources? And didn’t tell his son? Cold-blooded. But hey, it leads to Matanza almost over-rotating on a Wrath of the Gods. Pay windah. Don’t get paid by the hour. If you love something, don’t do it for free. (In this case, the thing Matanza loves is murder) These are all sayings that make sense for this match.

Joey Ryan vs. Ivelisse

ER: Glad we can edit in absurd sound effects for Ivelisse's strikes, but we can't edit out a guy trying to start a "Suck his dick" chant. Eva Lease pulls off the Eva Marie look much better than Eva Marie, looks cool on her. I'm over Joey Ryan's shtick, and I'm pretty over intergender matches, and I'm completely over intergender matches with Joey Ryan. So we get plenty of attention on Ryan's lollipop getting placed in his trunks, we get a zoom in on Ivelisse's during an armbar, we get Joey trying to make Ivelisse touch his dick and later we get Ryan trying to force her to lick his lollipop. Derp derp derp. The wrestling within the match was fine, I like Ivelisse's energy and there were a couple fun lucha spots, but the size difference stuff does make it a little silly. Eh, it was fine.

TL: I’m trying to think of a match I don’t look forward to more than a Joey Ryan intergender match in 2018. I know that amongst the wrestlers of today, he’s very much respected because of the business he was able to bring in while working a super safe style, but it’s also a style that gets old very quickly. Plus, penis druids. Penis druids. An actual line said by Matt Striker in this match: “Ivellise reminding me of Antonio Inoki!” If there’s anything to take away in this match, I liked the suddenness of the finish. That’s all I got.

Killshot vs. Son of Havoc vs. The Mack

ER: Tecnico trios champs forced to fight each other in a triple threat in Lucha Underground? This doesn't sound like anything we've seen before! I warmed to this as the match went on, especially once Mack went on a rampage. Mack really should be at world title level, and really should be in NXT, and really would get over on the main brand. It's only a matter of time. He was awesome here, wiggling his belly while doing a top rope headstand, obliterating Havoc with a pounce (great sideways bump from Havoc too), hits a big dive, awesome high kick on Killshot, really just adds a ton of excitement to a match when he's flying around. Killshot as a character and as a wrestler I don't really get, his stuff looks more awkward than cool to me, and the character is just underbaked. Havoc is a really good guy to have in a match like this, so he's probably an undervalued guy in that sense (since LU loves this type of match). Glad Mack got the win.

TL: I like the stipulation of two medallions up for grabs because it actually puts an emphasis on not getting pinned, which makes the match more aggressive as a whole. It also, hilariously, makes the three-way stuff start to make sense: Nobody wants to be the guy on the wrong side of anything. The only time I enjoyed an opening mirror sequence in LU. You can tell Eric and I think much higher of Mack than LU does, it seems. But hey, gotta make sure Callihan keeps getting chances, I guess. As he normally does, Mack is the highlight of the match, but this time, my cynicism with a splash of optimism is not necessary because Mack actually wins???? Really hope he wins the belt and gets another shot. Loved the ending, too. Weird for me to come out of a three-way thinking it wasn’t anything more than eh, but this wasn’t too bad at all.

Mil Muertes vs. Cage

ER: Looking at the current LU roster and there might not be another match I'd want to see more, and it's kind of nuts that these two have only matched up a couple times. We could have a total hoss feud, if this match and their trios last season (with Crane) are any indication. This felt like their take on a 1999 Attitude era match (though I guess this whole fed is their take on 1999 Attitude era stuff, so...), with ref bumps from multiple refs, man hiding in crowd interference, and garbage spots. The real meat of the match was both guys showing off how hard they could hit the other, showing off strength spots, and showing off flying spots. We get a bunch of cool full force shoulderblocks and lariats that get shrugged off, Cage shows off a nice rana and Muertes shows off right back with a cool headscissors. Cage hits a big flip dive, Muertes is great at flying into walls, and the powerlift suplex from the middle rope is always awesome. All the stuff with guys hitting the ref worked for me, because the refs all took an absolute freaking thrashing. Muertes wrecks a guy with a spear, Cage hits his fullspeed 360 lariat right into the neck of another, Rick Knox takes a Muertes' chokeslam in brutal fashion; googling Rick Knox to make sure I had his name correct, I saw that he had surgery due to a broken collarbone suffered during the tapings...and this had to be it right? For his sake I hope he didn't have to endure anything worse than this. Pentagon was hiding in plain sight in the crowd to jump Cage, which would have looked stupid in most other settings but I liked it here. Wouldn't mind seeing this match like half a dozen more times.

TL: Super weird to think this is the first time in LU they’ve faced off one on one, but I also hope this is more like a Muertes match instead of a Cage match. Then two minutes in and I regret saying that. They’re just full throttle from the get-go and nothing slows down. The way they trade stuff totally works, and when they show off the power stuff against each other, it’s really awe inspiring. Cage’s outside in superplex was effortless here. I like the ref stuff, and poor Rick Knox lands HARD on the awesome Muertes chokeslam. I loved the Pentagon crowd reveal, something that truly came off as surprising and cool. Don’t know if we need to be seeing unprotected chairshots in 2018 but Penta can swing it. Cage spikes himself on the finishing flatliner. This was really fun, top flight Cage match, and for me, right there with the Cage/PCO match from Americanrana earlier this year. Penta doing the Ciampa wave was hilarious, and I don’t know how they do it, but I’m with Eric: More Cage/Muertes, please.

ER: I liked the vibe of the Rabbit Tribe video, and apparently Mascarita Sagrada got back this season just to be bludgeoned to death by Paul London and a big wooden club. Castro is the dude that needed an onscreen murder, it's weird to waste that visual on someone like Sagrada. I'm sure there was a chance that "this wasn't real, the Tribe was on a trip," but it still spoils that visual. And I'm not sure how they want people to view London going forward: LSD-soaked goofball who still dies on bumps? or is he a dangerous PCP-charged murderer who police found eating his roomates lungs out of his chest, screaming? I'm going to need to know. I want to know if there's a chance of him getting booked in a No DQ match and just murdering someone. I don't think we've had that happen on a wrestling program (I have not seen some 80s territory stuff, so don't know for sure).

TL: I still don’t know why Sagrada just stood there and let it happen, but the visual of London’s white suit getting blood splattered all over it is classic grindhouse stuff and just makes Paul look even more crazed than normal. This very much could be a Kevin Sullivan-in-Florida situation, but the in-ring violence has been very much your normal wrestling fare so far in LU outside of some deathmatches. I don’t know if we’re gonna have an Invader 3/Manny Fernandez-type incident on this show, but London’s the guy to do it with.


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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 4: Pain, Love and Sacrifice to the Gods

TL: Catrina trades in the dominatrix starter kit for the Jessica Rabbit dress sans sparkles thanks to a reverse Snow White? I mean, considering the magic threshold on this show, a wardrobe change seems like an odd way to show off your newly stolen lifeforce. Also, I’m sorry, but the dude’s LITERALLY NAMED FENIX. As in, HE RISES FROM THE DEAD. How are we not supposed to see him coming back from the dead after this? “Hey, Mark. We’re gonna call you Big Mac not because you’re super strong and your last name is McGwire, but because you’re a big fan of Burger King.” Zigging when they should zag, man.

Also, we get Striker saying Famous B might need a literal leg amputation due to what Jake Strong did to him two weeks ago, which is less believable than anything that happened with Catrina to open the show.

Big Bad Steve vs. Jake Strong

ER: Damn this was shaping up to be my favorite match of the new season, as it had the pacing of a cool big dude stiff fest (really looking forward to see what Google hits we get from "big dude stiff fest"), but then it kind of quickly flipped switch into full Jake Strong showcase squash. Strong and his flesh beard still come off a little mouth breath-y, but with Steve's bumping he came off pretty badass. Steve threw a couple of thee fucking best punches of 2018 in the middle of this, throwing one corker, and than a wrist bending shot right off Strong's forehead, staggering him. Strong had big shots to the gut, hard back elbows, stiff avalanche, wrestling tougher than I expected from his Impact run. After the match Strong hits a nasty powerbomb on the floor, Steve really getting planted. This was cool, really could have been awesome with a bit more time.

TL: Not gonna lie: Kinda want a shirt with the Big Bad Steve logo on it. The fact they actually made a logo for him is awesome considering a lot of folks in WWE can’t even get a damn shirt made. Steve has some great right hands as previously mentioned, as someone named Big Bad Steve should have, but they just look nasty as all hell, even with Strong’s stiff strikes going right back at him. Really shows how even the simplest of offense can make someone look good like that. We lost our boy Pindar due to beheading at the end of last season, so I’m definitely down to see Steve in his place as burly base with good looking offense. Strong squashes are necessity due to what they want him to be this season, but yeah, I wish this had more back and forth to it. Still, a good piece of business, as the kids say.

TL: As good as lucha masks and sweet suits are, lucha masks and cowboy hats are basically right there with them, and Cuerno makes it look good. Cage gets to flex and flex into a Muertes match next week and yeah, I am on board for that.

Daga/Kobra Moon vs. Johnny Mundo/Taya

ER: Really fun match, Mundo and Taya working full on babyface, and Taya looks to be having a blast with it, and it's kind of infectious. She really laid it in too, hitting some spirited back elbows and strikes, kicking Moon in the back of the head and hitting a sick curb stomp that bounced her forehead off the mat. Mundo hit his timing spots nicely, he and Taya actually come off tas the rare cool "shades of gray" characters, that can work either way one week to the next. Moon took a nice beating here, and Daga runs nicely into Mundo kicks. I liked this a lot more than I expected (just like Strong's performance, I must be in a real good mood, leaded instead of unleaded.

TL: I really want to like Daga because he’s got the athleticism and looks like a guy who can hang either as a tecnico or rudo, but he just doesn’t have charisma like you’d think. Taya was the standout here, doing a good lucha sequence with Daga and just bringing the stiffness with her strikes. That curbstomp was NASTY, as was PJ Black’s kick to set it up. Don’t know if I liked it as much as Eric, but it certainly didn’t suck.

ER: We're definitely into Leaded territory here because I dug that Vibora wrecking ball segment after the mixed tag. Vibora hitting goateed lizard cannonballs and big boots was apparently just what I needed.

TL: So Vibora goes off in the offseason and has some honest-to-god improved offense and looks like way better ring presence. Suffice to say, if this Vibora is the one we get this year, count me in.

Mr. Pectacular vs. Matanza

ER: I didn't feel like seeing Mr. Pectacular (although maybe in my good mood I'd like him in a gassed Power Plant trainee kind of way), and Matanza puts in a nice unlocked and unleashed squash. He hits a cool twisting back suplex after throwing Pecs into the corner, and then hits probably his greatest Wrath of the Gods, stopping, pivoting, feet leaving the mat to slam him the other way. A nice comeback for a person who murdered someone by ripping their face off a couple seasons ago.

TL: Pec just makes me miss Tino Sabbatelli (who, coincidentally has a pec injury right now), but he takes a great beating here. The Matanza body control points have been pointed out time and time again by us, but this was it at the top of its game. Everything had extra oomph to it, and sign me up for an unleashed Matanza, which was my favorite part of Season 2. This was a Mil Muertes-level squash here.

Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. King Cuerno

ER: Wasn't expecting the comeback of Chavo, and it's good to see him still. a guy who should get more credit for what he's done. Chavo can still put on a good show, limps out a tweaked knee, hits a heavy crossbody, bumps hard over the top the floor, eats a chairshot, do some nice balance beam fight work around the raised barrier (which Cuerno hits a great high crossbody off of); Chavo is like the better version of David Sierra, and that's a good thing. We do get an unfortunately messy teeter totter spot, with Chavo setting up way close to the ropes, but Cuerno got through the spot well, and hit his bullet dive right after, which was convenient timing. I thought both came off well overall, but Cuerno came off stronger and that's more important.

TL: It’s funny that Eric waxes strong on Chavo to begin this after what I said about Muertes in our last review. Totally agree that he’s underrated in a way, and that he’s done a lot in a career that’s basically a quarter century long. I think I might be higher on Cuerno than other people, as I always liked his offense, and he shows off some personality here, too, playing to the crowd and helping build to the big spots, like the aforementioned bullet tope (preceded by an awesome top rope sunset flip). Guerrero shtick never really gets old, and Chavo knows how to do little things in matches that stick out. Enjoyable stuff and yeah, a good ending to a good top-to-bottom episode. The further we are away from the season premiere, the more this is turning into a show I enjoy watching again.

ER: My favorite episode of the season so far, We got manageable length matches with big dudes doing cool spots, just a really fun quick moving show. Felt exciting and action packed.


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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 2: Darkness and the Monster

ER: When I told Tim I was done reviewing the 2nd episode of the season I believe his exact words were "Good lord you watched the 2nd episode!?" I never knew when to quit.

TL: Good lord, watching the recap of the season premiere just brought back some terrible memories, and then the video package literally finished with the following Matt Striker quote: “Destruction has torn through this virgin domain.” I don’t even want to know where he got the idea for that line, and I now feel more gross for having watched it. Must’ve blocked it out the first time he said it.

Catrina needs to get her lifeforce back, Cuerno doesn’t give a shit, and I just want to know what local Orange County Republican donor so graciously gave the production team access to his hunting lodge for this incredible piece of acting.

The Mack/Killshot/Son of Havoc vs. Big Bad Steve/Sammy Guevara/Jake Strong

ER: I was pretty surprised to see the big reaction for Jack Swagger. Is that a guy that people are excited to see in 2018? I mean we saw hundreds of Swagger matches. Did anybody think there was some untapped potential, something that we didn't see in those matches that can now be tapped, now that he's untethered by The Man? He certainly doesn't do anything here that makes me ache to see more. We've seen enough standing ankle locks, though Sammy Guevara certainly makes his postmatch falling lariat look fantastic. Mack had a lot of great moments here, bumping big to the floor, hitting a great Pounce as Guevara flew backwards off the top, and throwing several nice strikes at Strong while Strong stood there holding an ankle lock like a doof. Steve Pain is a guy who needs to be in this kind of match way more, instead he kind of hangs back and eats a stunner at the end. You know what kind of great base shit Steve can do, let me see Killshot and Havoc work off that more, not trade flips with Guevara.

TL: I can’t get over how Infamous Inc. gets introduced between Famous B’s bad Stokely impression and Brenda’s terrible screeches, but yeah, I was surprised with Strong’s pop, too. Considering what just happened at All In in regards to the “hip” wrestling fan’s views, just no longer being associated with WWE makes you that much better in their eyes, I guess. It’s also interesting to watch Killshot in this environment now considering he’s presented as a big deal both in MLW and EVOLVE, and especially after he ended Season 3, he’s almost just another guy here, and gets outshined by Guevara pretty heavily. Love that Big Bad Steve was here specifically to take the fall, like he was the guy under the Yellow Dog hood or something. Like most matches in LU, lot of guys not used correctly while one guy gets the shine. This was used as a vehicle to get Strong over, but he didn’t do much in a way that makes me want to see more of him.

Drago vs. Dragon Azteca Jr.

ER: This was fine, and was more than I'd enjoyed Drago in awhile. I thought a lot of his kicks looked good, liked his fast roll-up, took a big suplex bump off the bottom buckle, hit a slingblade that actually made it look like a move that would hurt someone (although it's odd he's still doing it in a fed where Pentagon is champ). Now, some of that MAY have been Azteca having no problem being flung onto the back of his head, but it looked good is what I'm getting at. Azteca is a guy who seems to relish getting dropped on his head, and he's often busy in matches, always thinking, always there with a spit take to sell a strike...and it's good, but I wonder if it wouldn't come off better if he were less busy? I think he needs to let things sink in a little, breathe a bit.

TL: Ah yes, the ol’ lucha mirror sequence standoff. Surprised it took this long in the season to get our first one, honestly. After that, I actually liked this more than I thought I would. One thing I hate about those mirror sequences is that they’re always just for show, but then the two big sequences after this were just as quick, but led to one guy getting the advantage instead of something more than an exhibition. I’m a huge fan of rollups off the top as finishers; thought it was awesome when Sin Cara would do it during his Lucha Dragons days. Agree that Azteca is better playing from underneath than 50/50, as his time across from Matanza was his best stuff. Guess the postmatch is to set up Kobra/Taya, which is a shrug emoji for me, but at least we got a good foul from Johnny on Drago.

ER: Catrina had a so-so wig in season 3, so I guess I shouldn't be too shocked by how outright bad Cueto's wig is, but....for all the money they spend on other things, you'd thing they'd have a respectable wig budget. A good wig is expensive, and it feels like something that an executive saw and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. "I'm fine shelling out money for Godfrey, but you expect us to pay HOW much to give this woman bangs?"

TL: I think the Cueto facial hair trips me out more than the Doc Brown wig, and I do love that he has that one weird eye. Wardrobe for this show is just so weird, which I guess is part of the appeal, but yeah, there were definitely some choices made in this vignette.

Pentagon Dark vs. Matanza

ER: This wasn't bad, but we got a comical overuse of the gunshot thigh slap effect on the majority of Pentagon's strikes, which really does a lot of them a disservice. If they were a bit more selective then they would mean more. Matanza really busted ass to make Pentagon look like a big deal. It's weird seeing Matanza work from behind most of the match considering he entered the fed as Zeus, but it was great seeing him fly hard into a bunch of chairs around ringside. I liked the gunshot sound effect when Pentagon chopped the ringpost, and liked the ping of Matanza's mask hitting the ringpost. Matanza's throws all looked predictably good, but Pentagon is so damn uninteresting the way he takes them and then just opts to go back on offense. The end run was good and a believable way to put down a monster, with a series of flipping piledrivers and a package piledriver, but Pentagon just isn't interesting to me at this point. Maybe saying Cero Miedo another dozen times per match will help? Real fine Matanza performance here, propping up a guy who seems a bit too preoccupied with being cool, instead of just being good.

TL: It’s really weird to see Matanza go from this unstoppable monster to just a dude with a weird mask and some great power offense, but I guess you can’t book a guy like that forever. Penta just outworked Kenny F’n Omega at All In, showing up the supposed Workrate King on his own damn produce show in his own house style, and there are WWE rumblings with him, so after a stinker of an Aztec Warfare, I’m stoked that he brought it here against Matanza. A lot of that is because you basically have to if you want to make it look like you took down Matanza in any believable way, but this was still another match that exceeded my expectations, and it was necessary to push Penta as The Guy in the promotion. I do agree this was more about Looking Cool than Beating Matanza, but it’s better than the alternative that we’ve seen from Penta time and time again.

TL: Jeremiah Crane being a horn dog for Catrina is a bit too on the nose for me but he got his ass righteously whooped in the last Grave Consequences match he was a part of so I’m ready for that, at least.


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Lucha Underground Season 3 Episode 40: Ultima Lucha Tres Part 4

ER: FOR THE RECORD, we've had this written up for over a month, but Phil and I have been going content crazy with the NJ/AJ handhelds and the WM weekend shows, so I kept putting off posting this. But I made it to the finish line, bitchez!

TL: A 100% honestly accurate text message conversation that happened before the final taping of Ultima Lucha Tres:

Vampiro: hey, bro

Striker: Sup, Vamp?

Vampiro: was thinking we ball out for the finale ya know?

Striker: I totally agree. Biggest show of the year!

Vampiro: got this sick suit I was planning to wear on the first date with that singer from Slapbak

Striker: Nice!

Vampiro: but she shot me down so I gotta wear it anyways and was thinkin about wearin it for the final ep, brother

Striker: Sounds good!

Vampiro: what sick threads you got?

Striker: I’m going to wear an official Lucha Underground T-Shirt. Have to stay on brand and let people know what show they’re watching!

Vampiro: cool bro you do you

I mean, I’m not even on camera when I do commentary and because I’m out there in front of folks, I feel bad if I’m not wearing at least a shirt with buttons on it. Gonna petition the owners that Eric and I only wear official PPW apparel at shows now that professional broadcaster Matt Striker thinks it’s fine to wear a t-shirt on the biggest show of the year.


Cage Match: Matanza vs. Dragon Azteca Jr.

ER: Azteca never felt like a guy who was supposed to hang with Matanza, and this match bore that out. We get a fun twist with DA getting thrown right through a side of the cage, crashing through it to the floor and technically "escaping" just a few minutes into the match. Naturally Dario says we can't have shenanigans like that, though I liked the false finish. The real finish has the return of Black Lotus, and I'll level with you: I really couldn't explain her role up through season 2, but now that we haven't seen her on TV in what has to be well over a year, my interest level in her storyline is probably not going to go any higher. She hits a big crossbody off the top of the cage, which looks cool, but honestly who in the crowd was flipping out about a Black Lotus return? Leading up to this match DA lost to Dante Fox, Johnny Mundo, Pentagon, and Matanza. The last person he beat was Chavo. I am not sure how he earned this match, and it was worked like he did not earn it.

TL: I knew what the finish was before the match even started. When you have a matchup where Dragon Azteca, Jr. has absolutely NO CHANCE against a guy like Matanza, but you’re hoping that the face gets his win on the big show of the year, you let the guy with overpowering strength throw the dude through the cage to the floor. Matanza looks like a badass, Azteca “wins.” I did like that the build to the false finish came after Matanza threw Dragon Azteca up against the cage a bunch, which really made that throw come off even better than it would on its own, which is still a great spot. After the restart and Azteca ripping off Cueto’s shirt, you get Matanza slamming Azteca around outside before throwing him back him in as Vamp asks a question about anaconda’s feeding habits. Striker was silent for a good five seconds before he started talking again. Why the hell does MATANZA need help winning a damn cage match? Especially when Azteca hadn’t beaten anybody in months? Super weird match. Black Lotus’ return only to find out that Dario Cueto was a liar seems like the biggest waste of time in wrestling history. How did Lotus not watch any episodes of the show and see Cueto lied basically every week? What a revelation.

Jeremiah Crane vs. Cage vs. Mil Muertes

ER: My god the insanity! This match delivered beyond what I was hoping for, turning into an epic big boy X-Division spotfest, that also had tons of blood and crazy weapons usage. This would have been awesome without the weapons, just three big lugs working stiff and crashing into each other, but the weapons were crazy and the spots around them nuts. So you get Crane's great yakuza kicks, you get all three crashing to the floor like big Nitro cruisers (Crane with his great low-pe, Cage with a big flip dive, Muertes diving off the tope), Muertes slams Crane shoulders first on a chokeslam, Cage drops people with his awesome driver combos, all great stuff. Once Crane brings in a heavy trash can then all hell breaks loose. Everybody takes rough can shots, Crane starts gushing blood, Crane gets chokeslammed through a table on the floor, and back in the ring Cage keeps bouncing around like he's 100 lb. less, pulling off a big rana and a perfect Asai moonsault (and Muertes pulls off a flawless spinning headscissors on the floor, so these guys are all just the lightest heavyweights). Things get crazier and grosser when Crane slams a bunch of wooden stakes right into the top of Cage's head. I've never seen anything like that before. It's like two dozen chopsticks were just sticking stright out of Cage's head, with blood starting to leak out down the sides of his head. My god. He even takes a DDT to hammer the stakes DEEPER into his head. What the hell, you guy!? Muertes goes through a sheet of glass and comes up covered in blood, but they decide to go for ultimate crazy and we get Crane getting superplexed off the top THROUGH Muertes and a couple tables. Holy cow. The singles match portion (with Crane eliminated) between Muertes/Crane was a nice cooldown, with two big tiring dudes beating each other up. I dug their strike exchange, love that Muertes snap powerslam, and love Muertes getting the win to return to dominance. He really should be the top monster in the fed, but damn I really love Cage in LU. Awesome battle of the Kongs.

TL: This was wild stuff for sure, but I had to rewind and see when Crane took the shot to start bleeding and…it was off Muerte’s plancha? That’s…an interesting time to blade. I loved how Muertes always looked dominant even when Cage or Crane would find an advantage for a minute. Three big dives to the outside? Muertes takes them both out with his. Crane and Cage set up tables? Muertes chokeslams Crane through the first one. (He also threw out his awesome twisting variation earlier in the match.) Muertes doing the tilt-a-whirl headscissors on the outside was one of the great eye-opening moments that made you remember how ridiculously athletic Mesias is for a guy his size. Oh, and then in a match full of sick bumps, Muertes is totally fine bumping through a damn pane of glass. I love the build with the table spot, too. Cage moonsault? Nah. Crane crazy splash? Nah. Cage superplexes Crane through Muertes on the table on the outside? DEFINITELY. I also find it funny Cage felt he needed to do Weapon X to finish off Crane, but considering how this match has gone, why not be sure? Singles portion was fine and I liked the Crane came back out after he was eliminated to at least try and get some revenge on Muertes, but ain’t nobody bringing him down. AND THEY FINALLY DO THE THING WHERE THE GAUNTLET PUTS OUT THE LIGHTS!!!! And it leads to Cuerno’s return! Love the staredown where Cuerno has stolen the glove and shows it off only for Catrina to hold up her stone like it’s just as good. High comedy. Awesome stuff here. Cage was close to the best I’ve ever seen him.

TL: The Mundo video that Taya made came off as incredibly try-hard to be goofy and cool. The only good part was when they showed Dario in front of his “I’m Kind Of A Big Deal” nameplate.


Career vs. Title: Prince Puma vs. Johnny Mundo

ER: A long, epic, blown out ECW style bullshit-filled stips match, which is what a big Lucha Underground stips match should be, though sadly I enjoyed the bullshit portions a lot more than the one on one pairing, and the bullshit peaked in the middle of the match. I loved the Worldwide Underground coming out to interfere. Jack Evans is a great kind of stooge: impossibly athletic, and able to convey grace and clumsiness. It's awesome to see him interfere with a million spin springboard kick, but also flee and run into a cameraman. Angelico makes his big return and gets revenge, Ricky Mundo triumphantly tries to save everyone and immediately eats a kick, referee Rick Knox hits a sloppy as hell flip dive on them, Taya is dressed in a cut up neon shirt and jean shorts like she just got dressed to leave the set of a bikini carwash movie, and it all leads to an awesome kick out where Puma hits the double knees and a springboard 450. Great near fall. But I thought everything after that part of the match was a bit too flimsy and anticlimactic, with Mundo overshooting some spots, and a big punch exchange that didn't look great. Puma winning was a nice moment, but then we cut away to a close up on Vampiro trying to do a cool satisfied evil look, but it reads like him standing there looking like the dumbest possible version of Krang's android body. And then we end up getting...

TL: The match did the usual indy standoff that I’ve not even remotely enjoyed one bit in LU but when it spilled to the outside, it picked up mightily. The spot where Puma missed a dive from the crowd railing to the apron and then hit a double springboard shooting star plancha to the outside in basically one motion is one of the best feats of athleticism I’ve seen in LU. Puma actually gets a lot more offense here than I thought considering when Mundo is in control, it’s normally compelling stuff. Instead, this gets worked more as a sprint and a bomb-throwing match. Then the bullshit happens. I liked that Puma’s go-to kick to the nuts gets blocked, that’s decent storytelling considering it’s how he got around stuff in the past. It gets crazy after that with Angelico’s return as he helps clear out the rubble and we get Rick Knox getting his tope con barely over the top giro. Then…they go to commercial. Amazing production. So now two of the worst punchers in LU start trading shots and we get a couple near falls back and forth while Striker points out Vampiro’s obvious turn that has been foreshadowed all year. Puma wins with a 630 after kicking out of everything Mundo had. Vampiro grins like he just let one rip and doesn’t care who knows it. He’s as proud of that fart as anything he’s ever done.

Career/Title vs. Career: Prince Puma vs. Pentagon Dark

ER: Dario just can't have Puma winning a title here, so we get his career put on the line again. And this match didn't really work for me, but I've also been "out" on Pentagon for awhile now. We get our ample assortment of their one loud shotgun handclap sound FX on kicks. We got those in the triple threat match, but a lot of those shots looked like they landed heavy. Here you can tell the shots weren't landing as the sound effect SLAPS kept happening, but there's little crowd reaction. The crowd is the true indicator on a big shot landing. We get our flipping piledrivers, and package piledrivers, and I really dislike Vampiro as an onscreen character at this point. That stupid master story has gone on far too long, and it's idiotic to just have him sitting out there like a doof providing bad commentary, but also apparently being super evil and sinister. None of it works. And I don't actually understand the fans' obsession with Pentagon.

TL: I actually thought it was interesting that the arm break spot came early because of the stipulation, but it made the match clunky and even in spots where the arm shouldn’t have been used at all, it got used in ways that made it look hokey as opposed to brave for trying to fight through it. Amazing that even in what’s obviously his coronation, Pentagon looked like he was half-assing it. At the time, it was somewhat obvious Puma was heading off to greener (yellower?) pastures, but I think they did him a disservice by making him go out like this. Booking him to lose like this because you felt Vampiro needed to be a part of a main event storyline again was better than a guy like Puma going out on his sword. Got it. After Vampiro pulls Penta out of the way of the 630, Striker offers a little kid to come over and do commentary instead of Vamp and I wish the kid took him up on the offer. Penta Driver. Fear Factor. New champ. Sure. Fine. Stoked to watch Ricochet in NXT with proper booking behind him. Penta promises to rule over LU with balls and zero fear, and I agree that it takes a lot of balls and zero fear to put on these types of performances when you’re getting such a strong push.

ER: We get a lot of different storylines advanced in the final couple minute montage, like the lizard people actively choosing to be a far worse team by having Daga decapitate Pindar, the best member of the group. I'm glad Cuerno's back. The heavier guys have been my favorite parts of LU and this season could have only been better with him around. Oh and Godfrey shoots Dario. That's pretty big.

TL: Killing off Pindar is inexcusable. I have to imagine they figure out a way for Cueto to come back even from this: The show would be so much worse off without him as an authority figure, which is amazing sentence to say about a professional wrestling television show when WWE has four authority figures they can’t book well at all. Stoked on Cuerno’s return, stoked on more Rey and Matanza, stoked on Fenix and Melissa riding off into the sunset. But man, VAMPIRO has a master now? Get over it. Nobody cares.

TL: We will most likely be back with weekly’s come this summer when Season 4 starts airing. Considering this season was close to not happening, will be interesting to see how it’s done.

ER: Yeah, it's televised wrestling that still has guys I like. I see no reason to stop now. It's content, baby!

COMPLETE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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