The Matches
- The Moth defeats Willie Mack (3:24, middle rope curbstomp, good)
- Cage defeats Taya (6:58, weapon X, good)
- Mil Muertes defeats Prince Puma and Pentagon Jr. (11:58, double flatliner, excellent)
The developments
The Lucha Underground championship picture has been pretty crowded, but it seems to be thinning out going into Aztec Warfare. King Cuerno seems to have exited the scene after his ladder match last week. Prince Puma and Mil Muertes’s title hopes flatlined after an incredible main event, with Mil Muertes finishing them both off with the same move at the same time. The finish was dominant, though the rest of the match seemed to go equally between all three luchadors. Of note, Pentagon Jr. once again seemed to have Prince Puma beat with the package piledriver and instead went for the armbreaker. This time, he got speared out of his shoes by Mil. Mil has one more obstacle in his way: Fenix, who declared he was cashing in his Gift of the Gods championship for a title match next week. Fenix had a nice profile video earlier in the show.
That’s one of two title matches announced for next week’s show: a vignette revealed Ivelisse got Catrina to agree to give the ex-champs a rematch for the belts. There’s one slight catch: should Ivelisse, Angelico and Son of Havoc lose, they’re done in Lucha Underground. Angelico & Havoc weren’t really thrilled with the bargain, but have no choice but to win.
This week’s episode resolved a dangling plot point from last year’s Ultima Lucha. We finally met Marty Martinez’s sister: Mariposa, a masked winged creature. (Mariposa means butterfly, but Mariposa looked more of a scary threatening creature than Princesa Sugehit’s outfits.) Mariposa debuted during the Mack versus Marty match, which give Marty a distraction win. Mariposa also seemed to give Sexy Star a panic attack, and the Martinez’s had no problem attacking Sexy after the match as well.
There was one more plot brought back from that season finale montage, in a less expected fashion. Drago confronted (in the bathroom, of course) Jack Evans about his Dragon Slayer comments and challenged him to prove it. To Drago’s surprise – and maybe to Jack’s surprise too – PJ Black jumped into help Jack. A nunchucks fight broke out, with Drago first knocking down both opponents at once before the numbers caught up to him. Aerostar, time traveling with glowing nunchucks, made the surprise save for his old friends. Seems like a tag feud is coming up.
The middle match on the show was announced as being Cage versus Johnny Mundo in a no-DQ match. Instead, it was Taya’s debut, replacing Mundo. Taya explained Johnny didn’t see the point of this match after already beating Cage in their last match, so she was taking it intsead. Taya was far from helpless, but she was far from actually winning this match too. Even Mundo’s expected inteference wasn’t enough, though it probably really didn’t help when Mundo shoved Taya to Cage to safe himself.
The only other plot line of note was another Famous B vignette. In this one, Famous B used a wand (and his powers to make someone Famous) to turn around the life of Brenda. We’ll be seeing her again.
Aztec Warfare is two weeks away.
Thoughts
The main event was superb, and done at a crazy pace. They had a twenty-minute match in a twelve minute segment. There were huge dives, big moves, use of the scenery, and ever other trait of big Lucha Underground matches. There was even some subtle storytelling: Pentagon & Puma worked -ogether when they could (including four straight dives on Muertes), seemingly knowing they couldn’t beat him on their own. They were correct! It was a pretty daring result – maybe the most daring thing on this episode, which is saying something – by pinning the lead face and the hottest star in the company completely clean at the same time. I think it worked, it certainly makes Mil look like a killer. The rest of the match did that too, with him just destroying Puma and Pentagon when they weren’t destroying each other. It seemed like a slightly different take on Muertes before, with the Power of the Stone being played down compared to where it was last season. Catrina was definitely at ringside, but seemed like she had one of her smaller parts of the season.
Next week’s title match with Fenix is huge.
The episode needed that caliber of main event, just to save this episode to be another referendum on intergender wrestling. I thought maybe everyone would be exhausted on this argument, but then I saw the match and – yea, if you dislike the concept, you’re really going to hate that match and maybe this entire show. I didn’t need the match, but it seems unfair not to give them credit for the match they did have – Taya took an incredible beating, still got in just enough offense to look like a credible performer, and Cage came off as strong as he has since his feud with Puma. Taya getting put thru two tables and being up a minute later to do interference spots fine was the biggest problem for me, really – I though the work was OK (if sometimes too obviously edited) and didn’t have a strong emotion any other way.
Other people can provide hotter takes. I can provide some facts. This is the second to last 1v1 man versus woman match of the season, provided I didn’t miss a match, and that last one isn’t for a long way away and under very special circumstances. It’s definitely not the last time men and women fight each other on this show – there’s the trios title match next week, there are going to be multiperson matches with women, they are not siphoning off the women into their own division by any means – but the 1v1 seem to draw the biggest reaction and those pretty much go away.
And – I wonder about that. I don’t know. Could just be circumstance in feuds or types of matches. (This first part of the season has been very heavy on singles matches and that’s going to be balanced out later on.) It also might be the people behind the scenes listening to the criticism and backing off on this point to a small degree. If you’re against intergender wrestling, you’re probably believing LU is going hard against you based on this show. For me, looking ahead, it actually seems like maybe they were listening and maybe this was a breaking point. I also could be totally offbase on that. Those first Season 3 tapings should be interesting to see if they provide any clues.
I got nothing for the people upset about everyone losing in the first match. Sorry!
I liked the opener, probably more than most. Big guys throwing each other around was fun. I could’ve gone for a lot longer time, but it was fine for a TV match. The advantage of Marty being out of the ring for so long is that his period as a complete jobber is a distant memory, and he was good enough to take seriously on this show. Mariposa’s outfit seems totally impractical and over the top, but I bet people thought that about Drago’s gear too and it worked out fine.
The Fenix video was really well done. We got a lot of those type of videos early on last season introducing people, and it’s nice to see them still being used in season 2 – this one and the Cuerno one last week – to spotlight guys. The Famous B commercial was really well done too, although three is about the limit of how many you can do of them before bringing him back into Temple without tiring people of them. (That’s probably why we didn’t see Rey or Dario this week.) The Sexy Star/Mack opening vignette felt not so good – they didn’t even seem to trust Sexy to talk! Maybe her voice retired.
