Lucha Underground 2×19: Judgement Day

Matches

Son of Havoc vs Daga (6:57, shooting star press, good)

Jack Evans, PJ Black, Johnny Mundo [O] defeated Rey Mysterio, Dragon Azteca, Prince Puma [X] by disqualification (9:31, DQ for foul kick, great)

Matanza beat Cage to retain the Lucha Underground Championship (13:28, Wrath of the Gods, great (though I’m on the fence to higher with this one))
– the Gift of the Gods championship and the 7 medallions are now vacant.

Developments

This was a big in-ring show, with not much time on those who didn’t have matches tonight.

Kobra Moon wasn’t in the match this time, but again tried to help Daga by stopping Havoc from the shooting star press. It didn’t work, and Daga was unaware it was going on, and he ended up losing. Kobra attached herself to Daga after the match, but Daga was very clear he didn’t want anything to do with her.

Rey Mysterio, Prince Puma and Dragon Azteca were not on the same page going into their trios title match. Dragon Azteca wanted to make a run at Matanza, Mysterio wanted to focus on the trios title argument, and Azteca accused Mysterio not being sincere about avenging Dragon Azteca. Puma saw this and tried to get involved, only to rudely get shut down by Rey. Puma wasn’t having that, and did get them redirected to their match, but there was a bit of tension with him and Mysterio. Meanwhile, the rudos looked more unified after one week with the titles, all with matching red bandanas and sunglasses and work well as a team. It was Puma who couldn’t control his emotions in the title match, blatantly fouling Johnny Mundo after the rudos had gotten away with multiple fouls, including one moments prior on Dragon Azteca. Puma lost it post match, angry at the rudos, superkicking Taya (when Mundo ducked out of the way), and having to be talked down by Rey. Neither Rey nor Dragon Azteca seemed happy with Puma as he walked off. That team may be done.

Dragon Azteca didn’t let Rey’s warnings or the loss stop him from confronting Matanza at his cell. Before he could act, he was discovered by Black Lotus, and questioned why she was protecting the man who killed Dragon Azteca Sr. and her parents. Lotus told Azteca he was wrong, her parents were killed by Dragon Azteca Senior. The younger one didn’t believe this, but Black Lotus sure appears to, and put Junior in an armbar as if she was going to feed him to Matanza. She ended up letting go, but Junior might have finally realized they’re not on the same side.

Cage and Matanza threw everything at each other, with both men no-selling German supelxes in a memorable exchange, Cage reversing a Wrath of the Gods setup into a small package, and Matanza surviving the F5. Cage tried more flying moves to counter Matanza’s size, but nothing he could do was enough and Matanza racked up another win. As noted by Matt Striker, this match meant the Gift of the Gods championship was now vacant and the seven Medallions will be handed again.

Thoughts

I don’t have a lot of deep things about the show. It was just really good. The opener was good, the trios title match was better than last week’s match (up to the finish) and the main event completely lived up to it’s potential.

Daga’s now lost every match he’s in where a jewel thief snake lady has not gotten the win. It’s take a while for me to realize here as a Super Fly replacement (not that I think it was something wrong with Super Fly, but someone they could start off fresh.) I with they could do more with him, but it’s going to be fine as long as they just throw him in matches like this.

They did the very subtlest of Rey Mysterio versus Prince Puma in that backstage statement, and more emphasized that Puma’s not going to back down to Mysterio. (Dragon Azteca didn’t either, now that I think about it.) This seemed like possibly the end for the trio, which has been very good and was enjoyable tonight. This match felt like it had more time to develop and more near endings than last week, even if the ultimate finish was unsatisfying.

Main event was all you could want from those two guys, and a match which would’ve worked in any environment. Matanza did have a few character moments (like the flailing punches while Cage was on the mat), but

This was all out, nothing held back, and full of gigantic look moves between two monsters. The only determent is I’m not sure the fans ever totally believed Cage would be the one to finally stop Matanza; Cage hasn’t been big enough of a protagonist (and this where Cage going seven minutes with Chavo Guerrero last week didn’t help him.) Still, I thought this was one of Cage’s best matches of the show, up there with the matches with Prince Puma, and easily Matanza’s best match in this run. Vampiro comes off as really invested in the Matanza match, to the point where I wonder if he’s got a greater hand in putting them together than some of the other ones.

They’ve got seven episodes left, which should be enough time for Dario to start handing out those Medallions and hold another Gift of the Gods match on Ultima Lucha 2. It seems crazy we can already talk about Ultima Lucha 2, but it’s closer than you’d think and I’d suspect they start talking more about it next week.