Segunda Caida: Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 12: Til Death Do Us Part

ER: What a great return Joey Wrestling made to my television. Mercury shows up out of nowhere and Ricky Mundo immediately gets shunted down to ring bearer, complete with pie face and fart sound from Mercury. This is probably the hardest I've laughed at anything in LU's history. So this episode is already a major win.

TL: Seeing Eric’s review come over, I thought Joey Wrestling was some new not-cool Joey Ryan nickname, and then I realize it’s JOEY MERCURY, and now I need an MNM reunion. I don’t know if Eric has it in him for yet another Complete and Accurate, but MNM was one of the best tag teams nobody ever talks about and I feel like they would hold up incredibly well in a world where the Revival is considered a top tier tag team. Them vs. the Usos. New Day. The Bar. Damn. Let’s go! Also, anytime you get the Bill & Ted air guitar sound effect, you get a thumbs up from me.

ER: Loved MNM, but any MNM C&A will have to come after my Destruction Crew/Beverly Brothers C&A. That is not a joke.

Jake Strong vs. Drago

ER: This wasn't as good as the rest of the glut of short Strong/Hager matches we've gotten lately, didn't feel as stiff as the best of his MLW ones, and felt slower paced too. There was cool stuff, like a big rotating powerslam from Strong, and him catching Drago off a springboard and carrying him around the ring, working him into position for another powerslam only to eat a big DDT from Drago. The best moment was Drago taking a huge backdrop bump into one of the risers filled, fans vacated from their seats so he took a big crushing bump through the open wooden chairs. But Drago kinda got steamrolled here, and he didn't do himself any favors with his fairly weak looking strikes throughout.

TL: Wait, did Striker just call Drago “The Living Legend?” Seriously? Like, you didn’t want to think about that for a minute? This needed to have more snap to it. There was a kick where Drago didn’t even get enough air to whiff on it before the sound effect came in. I don’t get why Strong didn’t try to just end this quickly, and even Striker points it out. This seems like they were told to fill a certain amount of time and that was the best they could come up with. Okay, seriously, none of Drago’s shots are hitting here, making the sound effects come off as absolutely subpar. I agree about the spots themselves, but there wasn’t a thing between them that made me care. Really odd use six minutes.

Jack Evans vs. XO Lishus

ER: This is a No Mas match, for reasons, and outside of some dumb interference this was really fun, and more showcase for Lishus. We know what Evans brings, and it's good. He hits hard, stooges more athletically than anybody, hit a big crash landing balcony dive, big flying knee off the apron, and really put over Lishus. And Lishus more than held up his end of the spotlight. He bumps big including a couple boss bumps on the floor and into the ringside chairs, and he utilizes his sass and athleticism really well in matches. He flies really well and lands with a thud, has nice offense like his cool cartwheel double knee drop, dig his spin kicks, the whole thing works. The Joey Ryan/Ivelisse run in was pointless and added nothing, but these two were bright enough that it didn't matter.

TL: Now Jack is out here calling himself a legend and I feel like we just need to retire the use of the word at this point. Like how this started with XO going right after Jack, and then Jack gets in control and hits a totally nuts 450 off the apron. XO ends up on Striker’s lap. This is at least entertaining between the big spots, which really shows up after the previous match. Jack hits a nutso flip dive off a ladder, too, just to remind you he’s still capable of leaping off things from great heights even 15 years after that ridiculous dive off the top of the cage in ROH. XO’s LeBell Lock wasn’t that tight, and I laughed at Vampiro saying XO should have fish hooked. The trading of submissions down the stretch were fun, even if there was some sloppiness, as I had to like them going for stuff in an I Quit match. Joey Ryan then comes out to do his Omega/Kota Ibushi spot with Evans (watch the Ibushi/Styles IWGP title match for the reference), which leads to XO getting a submission with a cross-armbreaker. I probably wrote too many words for this match. You’re here for the content anyways.

TL: Awww, I wanted Jack to be in the wedding. At least we got another air guitar!

ER: The Wedding of the Century was fine. There were some funny lines, a couple funny deliveries, and naturally the wedding cake did not get eaten. But there was a lot of bad, with some majorly over-produced (over-mic'd? over-scripted? All of those?) Brenda just delivering bad, screechy material over everything (it's gotta be terrible as a performer to go out there with knowingly bad material), and a nonsensical ending that had Ricky Mundo unchain Matanza, and Matanza destroy everybody in the ring. But that's really silly as we already saw Matanza get beaten fairly easily by a chubby Vampiro mentee this season, so I'm unsure why half a dozen members of the Worldwide Underground (Cheerleader Melissa included) couldn't work him over with ease. But now that Matanza has beaten Cortez Castro and Vinny Massaro I guess he's an unstoppable monster again? Pretty lame.

TL: Love the lime green motif. Cool cake topper. Cheerleader Melissa up in this!!!! Alright, I’m all about it. Johnny not needing written vows because he went to the Titan acting classes is fantastic. I wasn’t expecting much here, but Dario ringing the bell only to deliver tacos instead of Matanza was a nice touch. Brenda was gratingly bad here. The Matanza run in was at least fun, Taya getting color was an interesting twist, but Matanza did seem like a plug and play thing here. This would have been the spot for a debut or something along those lines, but it getting back to Ricky letting Matanza out isn’t gonna lead to anything worthwhile until the two probably face off at Ultima Lucha. Even though I didn’t expect much, I also didn’t get much here, so it’s a wash. Predictable angle ends predictably.