Lucha Underground 3×15: En La Sombra

Matches

Jeremiah Crane beat Killshot, Dante Fox, Mariposa in a battle of the bulls semifinal (10:57, Cranium Contusion double underhook piledriver on Dante Fox, good)
Drago beat Kobra Moon (2:58, DQ for Pinder run-in, ok)
PJ Black beat Angelico, Son of Havoc, Jack Evans. (8:40, small package, good)

Developments

The final four of the Battle of the Bull tournament is set. Cage & the Mack advanced last week. This week, they were joined by unlikely winners Jeremiah Crane and PJ Black. Crane earned his spot in a chaotic match with Killshot, Dante Fox and Mariposa. He defeated Dante Fox after plenty of close calls around. Fox had a rough night all around. Killshot gave him a top rope double stomp after the defeat, making it clear their issues are not done.

There was more on the line in the last semifinal. Johnny Mundo interrupted a Taya documentary interview of Jack & PJ to complain about their losses to Sexy Star, and threaten to kick the pair out if they didn’t advance to night. Jack & PJ worked together some of the match, though tried to steal the win from time to time. PJ finally offered to lay down for Jack, only to cradle him when he did. Angelico & Son of Havoc were respectful towards each other, but did not come across as an old team reuniting, more two good guys passing by each other.

Sexy Star was shown preparing for her match, until she was upset about a spider placed in her locker. There’s something about spiders which specifically bug Sexy Star, and she angrily confronted Mariposa about it. It wasn’t all that successful. Mariposa denied having anything to do with it and Sexy broke a wall with a gloved punch. We did learn that Sexy’s kidnapping listed for six months, but we have no idea who set her off this time. Maybe she should check with Worldwide Underground

The only non tournament match on the show was Drago and Kobra Moon finally meeting in the ring, and not the bathroom. Kobra Moon fought early, but seemed to be no match for Drago. Drago started pausing between following up on moves, which came off as if he wanted Kobra just to give up. Give up on this match and give up on taking him back. Kobra Moon isn’t giving up and eventually showed her hand. The gray lizard introduced last week (Pindar) first attacked Drago for the DQ. Aerostar and Fenix rushed in to help their trios partner. Kobra Moon waved in Vibora, the taller of the two new lizards, and the técnicos had much less success with him. Vibora gave Drago a martinete, and the Lizard Tribe took Drago away.

The only other skit on the show was the show closing bit. Dragon Azteca visited Rey Mysterio in his oddly Eastern influenced dojo. Mysterio is still having trouble getting around, but was concerned when he noticed Azteca was injured. Azteca explained Matanza’s attack last week, but explained it as a positive thing. Dragon Azteca feels like his destiny has been revealed to him, he’s meant to face Matanza. Mysterio said it was a bad idea, Azteca agreed, but decided to go after the monster by himself anyway. Hope Rey gets healthy before his protege gets destroyed again.

Thoughts

This was a better episode than last week, with two fun matches. I was surprised the first match was being hyped so much more than the second match. Angelico, Son of Havoc, Jack Evans and PJ Black are the heralded names on this show you’d expect to have a good match, and they did, and maybe the credit should go for the four less hyped people being as good. The big difference was the second match having the story of Jack & PJ working together (to a point), and them first match was more four people trying to make a name for themselves going all out in classic Lucha Underground style.

Dante & Killshot already make a good combination, plus Crane and Mariposa had really strong performances. This is easily Mariposa’s best non-No-Mas match on the show, finally coming off as the scary and destructive fighter she was billed as in her introduction. The chair stuff didn’t do a lot for me given the tradeoff in abuse (especially the chair superplex spot, a gigantic move for the middle of the match that didn’t mean anything twenty seconds later), but the visual of Mariposa whipping chairs at her opponents and owning the ring made her come off as someone to reckon with. She did well in the vignette with Sexy Star too, coming off as disturbed as her brother. Just getting a shot to show a personality was a bonus. LU is overdoing the sound effects on Crane’s kicks, but the kicks still look great and he’s just generally wrestling like someone with a lot to prove. Ivelisse’s injury stunk not just because it sidelined her, but it also had a side effect of leaving the Moths and Crane without a lot to do. This kind of performance makes up for it, and came off as if they were making sure they didn’t get lost in the mix. I’m not sure the Crane character has caught on yet, not sure if they’ve figured it out by this point, but he did well enough to want to see more of him.

The other fourway had some good moments too. I wish they could’ve done a little bit more on Angelico. Returning in a four way is a tough draw, especially one where the attention is going to be on another story, and he got in a bit, but they needed more (non-roof-dive) moments to remind you why he came off impressively in previous seasons. They’ve got him to set up to face Mundo at some point, but he didn’t get to come off as a top guy here quite yet. Maybe they figured they’d need a longer ramp up, and that’s why he didn’t earn that shot quite yet. Jack is generally great but really good in this role, and that match was filled with lots of fun stuff, I don’t want to knock it.

The middle match didn’t amount to much. It was fine early, but more a set up for the character introductions. The home audience would’ve been totally confused without the vignette last week, but it was still weird for Striker & Vampiro to be relatively blasse about a lizard and a dinosaur walking in. At this point, anything must seem normal from there. Kobra Moon taunting Drago after her troops won was her best character moment of the series, and Vibora looked impressive in his first in-ring moment. (Pindar, not so much. How did Daga get killed by this guy?)

The Sexy Star/spider bit was mostly good simply because it was an obvious teaser to Sexy Star’s next feud, and gives us all hope Sexy Star versus Worldwide Underground will be over next week regardless of the outcome. Hooray. Taya working on her movie was much more fun than Sexy Star’s training that followed it.