Lucha Underground 3×33: Havoc Running Wild

Matches

Son of Madness beat Máscarita Sagrada (2:10, brainbuster, OK)

Marty beat Argenis (5:04, double underhook facecrusher, good)

Joey Ryan beat Sexy Star (5:29, kick, ok)

Son of Havoc beat Son of Madness (13:09, shooting star press, good)

Developments

It’s the home stretch to Ultima Lucha and it’s easy to imagine a checklist of tasks to accomplish before those shows start this week. Announce matches for the year end run of shows? Check. Make some progress towards a Gift of the Gods match? Check. Brew up an insta-feud for any of your top people who don’t have an opponent yet? Check there too. Wrap up the feuds which haven’t really connected? Check and check.

This week’s show focused on two of those less spectacular feuds. The Son of Havoc/Son of Madness bit got wrapped up with out any more info on any invisible cults for the being. Madness faced and defeated Máscarita Sagrada to get back the jacket Havoc gave him after they beat Famous B & Dr. Wagner, then Havoc and Madness brawled to set up a Biker’s Brawl main event for an Aztec Medallion. (Paul London rescued/kidnapped Máscarita during this.) That was easily Madness’ best showing on the show, highlighted by his willingness to take some really painful looking falls. Havoc put him down with a bottle shot to the head and finished with a SSP. Havoc got his jacket back, picked up the Medaillion, and Striker was very definite that this feud was over.

The other issue fitting into this category, Son of Havoc and Cortez Castro, moved along at a rapid pace. Cortez attacked Joey Ryan after their match, then stormed into Dario’s office to take care of him next. Dario managed to sucker Cortez into a police themed brawl next week for another Medallion.

Earlier, Striker (in something dubbed in) pushed the idea that Dario is now purposefully stirring things up between Sagrada/Madness/Havoc. Dario setting up Cortez/Ryan seemed more about Cueto escaping a confrontation. Striker still might be onto something, Dario is acting different and even acknowledged it: he told Matanza he was wrong to dissuade him from getting revenge on Rey Mysterio, because Rey had given him a 619 last week. (Dario costing Rey the match first was omitted.) Dario gave Matanza a match versus Rey in two weeks, as the main event of the 100^th episode of this show.

The announcers confirmed Prince Puma versus Johnny Mundo as the main event Ultima Lucha 3 to start the show. One more match was added along the way: after Marty savagely beat and unmasked Argenis, he challenged Fenix to put up his own mask on the line at Ultima Lucha. Melissa didn’t seem to think this was a great idea, but Fenix attacked Marty and agreed to a mask vs hair match.

The other match on the show happened to be a Joey Ryan versus Sexy Star match. This is where Cortez attacked Joey, but Sexy also had a guest: Taya, sarcastically rooting for Sexy Star. Sexy took out Taya, but was distracted into the very rare Joey Ryan win. The commentary, taped over a year ago, of course did not reference any of the events this week. Neither did the social media – I mean, they went out of their way not to reference Sexy Star at all, never promoting her as appearing on the show and avoiding mentioning her in this match. It’ll be worth watching to see if it’s just something until the heat dies down or a permanent change; she’s still got a few more appearances left season.

Rest of The Season announced matches

episode 99: Joey Ryan vs Cortez Castro for an Aztec Medallion
episode 100: Rey Mysterio vs Matanza
episode 101: nothing yet
Ultima Lucha 3 (102-105): Johnny Mundo (c) vs Prince Puma for the Lucha Underground championship, Fenix vs Marty the Moth, mask vs hair, Ivelisse vs Catrina?

Stuff teased to the point where it’s clearly happening but hasn’t been announced yet: Gift of the Gods match (Paul London, Mala Suerte, Saltador, Son of Havoc, either Joey Ryan or Cortez Castro, two more spots), Mil Muertes vs Cage, Taya vs Sexy Star, Killshot vs Dante Fox

Thoughts

Not my favorite show but I didn’t hate it as much as last week.

Joey Ryan seemed to work as well with Sexy Star as anyone on this show; maybe it was editing, maybe I’m just talking myself into it because he’s wrestled women so much, but it seemed to be a better showcase of what Sexy Star can do in a match. Unfortuantely, this was a week where we already saw what Sexy Star could do in one match and I’m not really interested in seeing any more of her. I’m putting an OK here, and could argue for higher, but evaluations of the quality of a match are completely useless at time: either you’re a Sexy Star True Believer who will want to watch this match whatever I saw about it, or you’re in the group of people who aren’t going to want to spend a moment’s time on Sexy Star no matter the quality. People’ve decided as soon as they saw her.

Argenis was in his usual set up role, being the mask técnico who gets bet to set up a match with a much bigger técnico. He got much more offense in this time, which probably is directly related to him being willing to bleed a whole lot to get over this angle. Marty’s opponents are doing a lot of bleeding to set up this feud, and it’s a good stab (sorry) at making him look like more of a threat to Fenix in a feud where no one would expect him to actually win. Blood made an Argenis match more dramatic, so it’d probably do a lot for the apuesta one.

This show was the first one where Son of Madness seemed to be defined as a wrestler at all, and it also appeared to be the last episode for him. They got the most out of the one night deal: he got a finisher over in the opener, and he got back to in the main event to give Havoc some to kick out off. Madness doesn’t have the athletic ability of Havoc (few do) but he was willing to battle and willing to take punishment. They did a good job of making it feel like a brawl, feel different than a normal match, and the camera work was added to that feeling.

It still was missing something and I’m not sure I’d recommend it strongly if it turned up on YouTube. I still didn’t like two clones wrestling. They don’t look the same, but they look close enough to being the same in a frantic fight where it was a little difficult to follow the action some of the time. (Maybe they should’ve made Madness a color swapped version of Havoc? Maybe it wasn’t as much a headache on the HD version?) The announcers also put a lampshade on an problem here: this bikers match is no different than the police match, no different than many matches, expect they happened to park a couple bikes around the end. This was a feud which didn’t connect being put to bed in a generic fashion.