Day: November 3, 2016

Matches

Matanza beats Cortez Castro (2:20, Wrath of the Gods, OK)
Son of Havoc beats Dr. Wagner Jr. (5:34, shooting star press, good)
Rey Mysterio defeated Chavo Guerrero in a loser leaves Lucha match (15:22 including the stoppage, springboard splash, good)

Developments

Chavo Guerrero Jr. is gone from Lucha Underground. Rey Mysterio defeated him in this week’s main event, though not without a typical attempt at circumventing the rules from the Guerreros. Chavo Sr. was in attendance for the match, and came to the ring threatening to hit Rey with a chair. He instead hit his son, not to betray him, but to draw a DQ and cost Rey Jr. his career. Dario interrupted, refusing to let his main event end in such a manner, and ordered a restart. Mysterio got the best of both Guerreros, and Chavo was cleanly defeated.

Next week’s show might also be the end of a career. In an in-ring promo, Prince Puma challenged Mil Muertes to a Grave Consequence match next week, vowing to put Mil in a casket as Mil did to Konnan. Catrina wasted no time in accepting, and distracted Puma from a Mil attack. Puma was able to knock Mil out of the ring in a preview for next week.

That show will also include a Famous B/Mascarita Sagrada match, after Dario agreed to the request from Son of Havoc and Sagrada. Dario even upped the ante: the winner of this week’s Havoc/Wagner match would get to name the stipulation. Havoc won, and cleanly, then offered Sagrada the choice himself. Vampiro suggested an All Night Long Iron Man match, but Mascarita Sagrada instead decided to do a Believer’s Backlash. Instead of belts, it’ll be fans bring the weapons for them to use.

That match doesn’t seem like it’ll go well for Famous B. This week’s Dial of Doom didn’t go well for Cortez Castro. The wheel landed on Dario’s Choice and, after teasing picking Mysterio and dismissing it because Rey was already in a match, Dario teased Pentagon Jr. before giving a chance to a man who suffered a broken arm from Pentagon. Cortez has not healed yet and was still in cast. Matanza fixed that by rebreaking Cortez’s arm and the cast. Cortez tried using the cast as a weapon, but still went down without coming close. Dario taunted Cortez while dropping the words “undercover” and “a rat”, making it clear he knew Cortez was police without letting the announcers know. All in all, Cortez ended the episode alive and technically could come back to the Temple, so it could be worse. His cover is totally blown and Dario and Joey Ryan celebrated humiliated Cortez after the match; Dario’s good mood led to the Wagner/Famous B stipulation.

The only vignette was for, of course, the Rabbit Tribe. They’re still coming, and now it’s more definitely a “they” – glimpses of Paul London’s two associates were shown this week. The announcers also suggested an interesting theory for Matanza entering #1 as a good thing: he could beat so people so fast that he would always be waiting for the next guy, and then there’d be no way for everyone to group up on him as if he came in later. (Vampiro did still believe Dario was nuts for putting Matanza number #1)

Thoughts

Show was overall better than last week, though still not one of my favorites. Havoc/Wagner and Mysterio/Chavo were both fine matches, sliding over into Good category for me, but still missing something. Mysterio/Chavo needed the false finish to hit top gear, and Havoc/Wagner really never got to that level.

Havoc/Wagner was still much better than the Ultima Lucha 2 match (referenced this time around), but lacking a dramatic end game that we’ve been trained to expect from big matches. This just wasn’t a big match, and Dr. Wagner losing cleanly in a non-big match is really hard to comprehend to someone used to seeing him in Mexico. Wagner’s the rare LU person who’s probably fine with Lucha Underground not airing in Mexico right now. I’m totally OK with Dr. Wagner being used as a C level player existing to put over other people, but that may just be me being looking for some childish karmic revenge for Wagner stealing attention away from other people in Mexico for years. To someone else not watching as much Wagner, this must just be totally bizarre: Wagner’s essentially taking over Blue Demon Jr.’s role, but is far less protected than Demon. AAA could’ve sent literally anyone else for this role, and it would’ve meant no difference except for the initial reaction of Dr. Wagner showing up (and Brenda’s outfits), and it’s strange they picked a guy who could be a top guy for it.

Wagner’s usage really struck me earlier than his match. In the opening segment (a match only existing to move along the police storyline), Joey Ryan replaced Killshot on the wheel. Matanza’s beat some people, and some people aren’t on the wheel because they got title shots before, and Rey’s very carefully specifically never been on the wheel to this point, which leaves a motley crew of options. Johnny Mundo is still there, but the rest are no one’s choices for top contenders – Joey Ryan, Ivelisse, Dragon Azteca Jr., Mariposa, Chavo Guerrero, Kobra Moon – and Wagner. Wagner was undefeated until tonight, but he’s also been in a goofball feud with a mini. Wagner would normally fit being a top contender, but his importance far from Mundo and closer to (similarly early undefeated) Kobra Moon. LU could’ve brought back Super Fly and accomplished just about the same thing they’ve done with Wagner, so it seems like a waste of Wagner.

(and, again, it’s Dr. Wagner so I’m kinda OK with it even though I shouldn’t. I’ve seen enough TV built around Dr. Wagner to last me.)

That’s too much about Wagner, but I just find it interesting. The main event was technically sound, but I couldn’t really get into it at all. They tried hard to make Chavo worked as a rudo and it just never connected for me. Too many years of him not being a threat makes it hard to suddenly take him as one, and “his only friend, the chair he calls Amigo” stuff felt forced. The stipulation didn’t help – or more, doing this stipulation with Drago as a way to bring him back three weeks later with new gear really is the problem. They picked ignoring that issue rather than explaining why it wouldn’t happen. I guess you can’t just say “this is definitely not going to happen” on a wrestling show, because years of wrestling has also taught us it will actually happen, but it was tough not to think about that as the announcers were selling the finality of this match. That Drago farewell was also much better presented; there was nothing close to Dario and Drago having one final stare off before Drago turned into a ball of flames.

Mild Spoiler: The irony of this is, even though not believing in the stipulation was a major problem for the match, I know Lucha Underground appears to have lived up to it. This is the final Chavo match from this season that will air. It’s technically not his last match – they taped this feud out of order, so the Azteca/Chavo match that already aired was really his last one – but Chavo doesn’t appear before the live crowd again on this season. He didn’t even wrestle in the last week “everyone in the promotion who isn’t booked” battle royals they ran. I assume Chavo’s still working backstage, and he may turn up in a vignette or return in Season 4, but LU had a real thing they were doing on a very unreal show, and just couldn’t make it feel real.

The set up to the first 619 spot didn’t look much real either, and there was some heroic editing attempted to try and save it. The Chavo Sr. chair shot DQ following – which, in the story, Chavo Jr. didn’t seem to know was coming – was a cute bit to get heat and get one real moment where the fans believed things might end the other way. And the interest did pick up from there, with any near feeling like it could now be it. It was the more gripping of the two matches, but also nothing that feels like it’s going to make the top 30 matches of the season. The reversal of the DQ was a little interesting – it fits Dario’s character, but he’s clearly the face for doing it, and that’s not something they do (especially in front of the live crowd) all that often. Dario’s not a complete evil bad guy – his love for violence overpowers everything else, as seen back in his pep speech to Sexy Star – but it was such a face GM bit.

Of all the things hyped for the future, it’s unexpected that Sagrada/Famous B came off the best. They gave that time to be adsorbed. The Grave Consequences is obviously going to be a great match, but the hype wasn’t there for it – maybe we’ve seen Puma get attacked from behind but run people off too many times, maybe the elephant on this one (Mil never seems to win his signature match) is the problem. The third thing, Aztec Warfare is a big thing and should feel like a big thing, but it’s very much in the background with just one week left before the show. I guess that’s all it needed the first time, but they haven’t created the anticipation for the waypoint of the season yet.

I watched this show in HD on VOD; I think it’s the first time I’ve seen the show in full on HD since they were on Unimas. (It worked out nicely this week, since the VOD didn’t have the video issues the El Rey did during the live airing.) The video still looks so much better in HD, but the audio seemed much sharper and clearer too. Maybe too clear: it could very much simply hearing the show a different way, but it sounded like there were more Matt Striker fixed in post production lines than usual. In other things I could be totally over-reading into, the tone of the commentary changed from Matt Striker making references and trying calling every move to Vampiro threatening to break Striker’s table if he made another reference and focusing more on overall themes. The Matanza/Cortez match, for instance, had as much talk about the history of Aztec Warfare and Matazna being in first than the match itself. It wasn’t good or bad, but it was different. It’s also just one show.