Lucha Underground Season 2 Episode 21: Six to Survive

1. King Cuerno vs. Ivelisse vs. Taya vs. Pentagon Jr. vs. Fenix vs. Johnny Mundo

ER: I did not actually realize going into this episode that it was a show long match, and a show long match is kind of difficult to write about. I will say that I thought the first 40 minutes of this were really good, although once it got down to Mundo/Fenix/Pentagon that final 20 minutes felt longer than the first 40. The multiman stuff with 6 people was really good, with everybody finding decent ways to stay occupied, and was really shaping up to be another awesome Fenix performance. Fenix looked awesome in the first part of this, not just the stuff he was doing but the way he was taking offense. I don't know how he was even still walking after taking that leaping kick from Cuerno. Ivelisse is someone whose popularity and charisma is far greater than her ability. There were several spots with people (namely Fenix) holding off on hitting her, because you just can't hit a wittle girl, even though she's been the one female in the company since the inception to fight exclusively against men. Not sure why the psychology on her suddenly changed in this match. Taya put in maybe her finest performance yet, as instead of doing move trading with the guys she acted as a real great stooge in addition to setting up Mundo for success. She has great body language and was really good at facially selling tecnico offense, much better than Mundo.

Once this got down to a 3 way my interest started to wane, though I thought the 3 way portion was actually worked better than the eventual singles match portion. Mundo kept his consecutive streak of not ever  connecting with his finisher in tact. I'm worried one of these days he'll actually land on his opponent instead of smashing his hip into the mat. For a guy with the incredible body control he has, you'd think he could hit some things a little more flush. The Pentagon/Fenix portion started off well enough, and the guys were really beating the hell out of each other during the big strike exchange. But before long it devolved into 50/50 big move trading, with Fenix taking a flip piledriver on the floor, yet somehow beating Pentagon back into the ring and things just got more boring from there. Will this big move end it? Nope, but it gave one guy the power to do his own big move back! Oftentimes elimination matches make the mistake of eliminating too many guys in short order, but really this needed to be edited down. Way, way down. The match hit its peak but then still had 20 minutes left to go. We got plenty of cool moments (though Pentagon Jr. hitting an insane top rope dropkick to Mundo's taint probably should have been saved for the end), and the staredown and promo Pentagon cut on Matanza/Cueto was really good, but for me this exposed Pentagon as just another flipper. No more of that arm breaking psycho charisma, now he's just a guy with a few flipping piledriver variations. He seems far weaker going into his second meeting with Matanza. In the first meeting he at least had an aura of mystery, now he's a guy who played BDSM with Vampiro and wrestles the same as several other guys on the roster.


COMPLETE LUCHA UNDERGROUND EPISODE GUIDE