By John Moore
Lucha Underground Hits
The 12-Man Tag Team Match: This match could have ended either in the miss or hit column, and due to the in ring action it landed on the positive end. Another positive was Johnny Mundo picking up the win cleanly on Prince Puma. There were flaws here though. Most of these multi man Lucha Underground matches are starting to become formula where if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. What made the Trios tournament great was the mixture of different styles. Also, twelve wrestlers in a match are just too much. I don’t even think Teddy Long would have booked a match like this.
Drago and AeroStar vs. Jack Evans and PJ Black: The match had a slow start due to the nunchaku being too high to reach comfortably. Once they finally reached the weapons was when the match got really fun. Jack Evans continues to be an underutilized talent on the Lucha Underground roster and it’s strange that they put his feud with Drago on the shelf for so long. What makes him fun to watch is his overselling. He essentially combines the athletic overselling of Adrian Neville with the personality and heel antics of Steve Corino. Another highlight of this match was AeroStar jumping off the roof. Why? Because it’s a guy jumping off a roof.
Lucha Underground Misses
The LAPD Storyline: This was actually an interesting storyline when it was positioned as possibly an undercard comedy storyline. Right now, it seems to be their dominant storyline, and in that spot it seems more like a bad Lionsgate made for DVD film rather than a Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarintino classic. This storyline has essentially supplanted the Black Lotus and Dragon Azteca storyline from last year and it’s nowhere as intriguing. As much as I disagree with what Jim Cornette thinks about his dislike for this show, it’s a storyline like this where I have to agree with him as this storyline seems more of a writer’s vanity project as opposed to the great world-building storylines of season one like Dragon Azteca story. When I heard the line of the “End of Days”, it made me think of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, or a bad anime fan fiction.
Killshot vs. Marty the Moth: The retcon job of Killshot is not going well. What ultimately makes this odd is how random the whole story is. Maybe what they could have done was what WWE usually does, like what they did with Festus to Luke Gallows where they just “repackage” a wrestler. Marty the Moth is playing his role well, but it’s jarring that they just ended his Mariposa storyline and put him with “military” killshot just because. Where this segment hurt Killshot even more, was I thought the reason they retconned Killshot was to wipe away his reputation of being a loser who does a few cool moves. He didn’t take the pinfall, but he still was made to look like a dunce by getting punked out by Marty slapstick. Like I said in my review, Killshot goes back to being in loserville.
Overall Show: While Will Pruett and I agree that Lucha Underground is in the end of the season lull again, I have to say that this season’s trough is worse than last season’s trough. At least last season when the show spun its wheels we got greatness hidden within it. We got an amazing Puma vs. Morrison ironman match, we got great Pentagon and Vampiro promos, we got cool Drago and Hernandez matches, Alberto Del Rio was used in an effective way, and there was a lot to like about last season’s tail end. This year the key word is “random”. The main event was random, we have random plot twists in the LAPD storyline, Ultima Lucha is randomly thrown out there, Marty the Moth randomly wants to be involved with a military retcon, and Black Lotus is randomly back. I hope this show gets back on track and a good first step would be to try to not put everyone on the show in multi-man showcase matches. I’m starting to feel like I’m watching an entire show about the TNA X Division 2016.
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