By John Moore
Lucha Underground Hits
Fenix, Aerostar, and Drago vs. The Worldwide Underground: One constant in Lucha Underground even during dark times is their very fun trios matches. What Lucha Underground does well, and WWE did this when The Shield and the Wyatt Family were in play was come up with different dynamics and different stories every single time. One story here was Jack Evans pouting the entire time (which I think might be him being limited due to a jaw injury). PJ Black and the babyfaces provide the high spots. Drago and Taya provided the ground game. This was very good. The post-match was also very cool too as you had a female being the one having to save the males which is a different twist on the whole hero cliché.
Matanza vs. The Mack: The end of the world must be upon us. I’m giving Matanza matches constant Hits, while also not giving Chavo Guerrero Jr a Miss. This wasn’t the greatest match in the world but “Dario’s Dial of Doom” should have been the way that they introduced Matanza where he’s a prizefighting mule for Dario who Dario just feeds people to (literally and figuratively). Matanza is also getting better in the ring by the week. There is a flaw here though, as even though Matanza makes good opening match fodder, he’s holding the Lucha Underground Title hostage. He’s also not that credible of a champion yet since most of his matches these days consist of him getting beat up for a majority of the match until he can sneak in a solid Wrath of the Gods. I would find a way to get the belt on Puma ASAP, or even Rey Mysterio if they have to. I hope The Watermelon isn’t going to be the next champion.
El Texano Jr. vs. Cage: Son of Havoc, Willie Mack, Cage, and Texano are known to me as the “4-A-Unique Opportunity guys” since they were jumbled together in one match at the end of the season because the Lucha Underground writers seemingly forgot about them. Luckily in season three, it looks like these guys will not be forgotten as they are all given good TV time that isn’t a waste of time. Cage and Texano are two talented and athletic big dudes and they showed some good athletic big dude stuff in this match here. The best of five format works better than a best of seven in this case as it causes the feud to not overstay its welcome. Plus, we’ve already gotten a really good one in LU between Aerostar and Drago which got Aerostar noticed.
Matt Striker and Vampiro: For the longest time, even in the good parts of season two, Striker has been an annoying commentator while Vampiro has been completely useless. What’s interesting is that these two can be the exact opposite of what I just said. The key there is usually in Vampiro shutting down some of the annoying parts of Striker. Vampiro can be as good as Taz at his best where he’s playing a contributing veteran wrestler while also getting caught up in the action. Vampiro showed up this week with comments such as how he was a fan of the Freebirds in AWA while also analyzing moves. Striker also didn’t treat the viewers like children, which is always a plus. If only they’d bring back Ringside with Vampiro.
Overall Show: I hope I can write this more often like I used to in season one. This was a fun show to watch. Another star of the show was the multitude of cinematics. Each cinematic served a purpose and forwarded stories. We got the return of jobber Ricky Mandel! Which means we’re getting more jobber matches right? And they don’t have to sacrifice new wrestlers like Daga. Dragon Azteca Jr is also seeing a reset as they really buried him under Matanza, Rey, and the randomness in season 2.5. He still hasn’t even won anything. But it looks like we’re getting Dragon Azteca on a quest where he gets to be spotlighted in singles situations. Let’s hope he doesn’t go against Black Lotus because as we saw, Lotus isn’t ready to wrestle full-on matches let alone intergender matches.
Lucha Underground Misses
None: I couldn’t even nitpick this show. It wasn’t perfect. The Lucha Underground Championship needs to be taken off of Matanza as soon as possible, but there was nothing that warranted a Miss. This is contrary to last week’s show where that featured one of the saddest and most disgusting matches in recent memory. Again, it was well worked, but the no selling and unnecessary risks like chairshots to the head just made me think of wrestlers who died young and how matches like that shortened lives. I really don’t want to see shows like last week, but I’ll take more shows like the one presented week.
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