Lucha Underground 1×4 (2014-11-19)

the matches

• Sexy Star b Ivelisse (6:18, casita)
• Fenix b Pentagon Jr. (7:54, Spanish Fly)
• Drago b King Cuervo (4:53, springboard armdrag in Skayde Special cradle)
• Johnny Mundo DQ Big Ryck (4:40, interference from Cisco & Castro)

the developments

Sexy Star is in one piece and wants revenge on Chavo for Demon and Mascarita.

None of the other Pentagons like Pentagon Jr. :(

Dario Cueto put Drago in a match with the debuting evil hunter King Cuerno to test him. He passed!

Konnan warned Prince Puma not to interfere in Mundo’s fight. To the surprise of anyone who’s watched a TV show, Prince Puma actually listened to him and stayed out of it – only Cisco and Castro just assumed Puma was going to interfere and laid him out before he could. Mundo was put thru a table (which broke remarkably clean) to end the show.

thoughts

Still a good show, but the weakest of the four so far. There wasn’t a big wow moment as there had been on the other ones. Fenix/Pentagon was pretty good, but not at the level of the standout matches from the other shows and didn’t really have the time to be one. Everything moved along, nothing was bad, they’ve just set a really high mark with the other shows and it’s going to be tough to do that every week. Probably the most wrestling time on the show so far though.

This was the first show where it felt like a Spanish language show first. Sexy Star and Pentagon Jr. both did (subtitled) speeches in Spanish to start their matches. I wonder if that means Ivelisse (who did hers in English) gets subtitled on Saturday or if they found a way to hide that.

Sexy Star did a lot of wrestling in her match with Ivelisse to showcase her as someone tough enough to fight Chavo. That match felt a little long, but it’s also a small roster and they needed to give Ivelisse her moments too.

Fenix and Pentagon was the expected showcase spot fest. It wasn’t as absolutely insane as last week, it’s tougher to keep that pace with just two guys. They still do a bunch of crazy moves and near falls. Pentagon got promo time before the match, probably to balance out him taking the loss again. The announcers very directly built up Fenix as on an equal level to Prince Puma and one of the stars of promotion. There were some lines clearly inserted after the fact to that specific extent.

(I don’t want to do much announcer talk this week, but Vampiro started to grate a bit with mentions of what he would’ve done in matches. I don’t believe he would’ve hooked the leg, no.)

Hijo del Fantasma worked very different as King Cuerno. He was much slower and even more purposefully heelish than he has in AAA. It didn’t quite click for me – and maybe it wasn’t totally supposed to, since Striker made a point of saying Cuerno’s posing had cost him the match. I’d be concerned, but there were plenty of mentions of better matches for him later on, so I’m not really concerned.

Cuerno got a vignette before he debuted to make him feel like a big deal, and Drago had a moment with Cueto (more to show off Drago’s tongue.) Announcers talked about Pentagon & Fenix having history but didn’t explain it. There’s work to be done with those two.

Big Ryck and Johnny Mundo had a match that felt very choreographed in trying to make it work for both guys (and their different styles) and was probably about as good as they’re going to get from that match.

No Chavo on the show. Maybe he took Konnan’s advice. Konnan and Cueto were less of a presence than other shows. No Muertes either. They’ve got a hard job of juggling characters – Puma won’t have a match for two weeks (and was busy elsewhere this weekend in reality) but they managed to give him a story beat on the show to set up something for next week.

(more gifs after the bump)