Welcome to episode 16 of season two of the Over/Under of Lucha Underground, our gently reworded Best and Worst report about every episode of the best wrestling show on television. If you’d like to read about season one, you can find all of our previous episode reports on our Lucha Underground tag page. For season two, click here.
With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.
Shares, likes, comments and other social media things are appreciated. This show doesn’t have the built-in WWE audience behind it, so it needs your word of mouth. Tell @LuchaElRey that you read and love this column as well.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’re a week behind, but we’re catching up!
And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season two, episode 16.
Over: Lucha Lorenzo Lamas
Every time I see him, I think it’s Zack Ryder.
(More on this at the end.)
Under: Dario Cueto Presents WWE Raw
This week (last week’s) opening match is a triple threat for an Aztec medallion: Undercover Cop Joey Ryan vs. Undercover Cop Cortez Castro vs. Undercover Firefighter In Way Over His Head Mr. Cisco. That’s my new fantasy booking. They think Cisco is just a local gangbanger, but nope, he’s infiltrated the Temple to expose deadly fire code violations. Before he died, Bael was an undercover plastic surgeon. Ironic, right?
I’m bullsh*tting my way through this match write-up because … well, so did Lucha Underground. It’s almost nothing. Joey just hangs out outside the ring for most of it, slides in to hit the patented Surprise Roll-up (with a handful of pants) and wins. The highlight of the match is Joey Ryan storing an ancient piece of tribal gold between his cock and balls if you need further explanation.
There are two silver linings here, if we’re being positive:
1. Joey Ryan’s pretty great, and this gets him into the Gift of the Gods match, which should be something. And,
2. Not every match ever should be a big epic struggle of guys hitting ridiculous, escalating finishers on each other. Sometimes a dude loses because he fell backwards and had a brain fart for three seconds. It happens. It’s not the most entertaining thing in the world, but it does help add some, “welp, a match can end at any time” aspect to the fights.
Worst: Matt Striker
Striker compares a distraction roll-up to a flash knockout in a fight, and it’s like the fifth worst thing he says on the night. I think they actually didn’t have Striker available for this episode and just played a book on tape of him reading A Farewell To Arms.
I think the worst is when he calls the caskets “death boxes,” which is actually a step down from Grave Consequences, where he called them “funerary boxes.” Next year’s casket match they’re getting called DEAD PERSON RECTANGLES. Oh, actually, the worst is when he says that Rey Mysterio tagging in Prince Puma is Rey “passing the torch,” and yells A STAR HAS BEEN CREATED when he wins. Rey Mysterio tagging in Puma was cool and all and a great mentoring moment, but a star has been created? You mean first-ever Lucha Underground champion Prince Puma? The guy who won Aztec Warfare? And main-evented the first Ultima Lucha? He wasn’t a star until the WWE guy touched him?
Over: Speaking Of That
I liked the Trios Championship “rematch” a lot. I put rematch in quotes because Angelico is still missing, and now we get Johnny Mundo as Team Havoc’s third. Not only does it set up some new feuds, it reaffirms some old ones — I see y’all out here destined to do this forever, Mundo and Puma — and lets us get a good look at Lucha’s top B-level babyfaces trying to hang with its A+. That’s a great dynamic. Son of Havoc and Ivelisse being able to throw hands with Rey Mysterio and Prince Puma is a big deal.
Team Havoc loses, of course, because I honestly can’t think of any non-bullsh*t way that Rey Mysterio, Prince Puma and Dragon Azteca should take an L. They should be Trios Champions for the entire run of the show, or until one of them craps out. I’m not gonna look at the Wikipedia pages because I know they’re like a year and a half ahead of me in TV time. The “star making” Puma moment happens, which outside of the commentary is very good, and we go straight into Taya blaming Ivelisse and jumping her from behind.
After last week’s (last last week’s) No Mas match, it’s a very good idea to immediately position your two actual best female wrestlers against one another. Ivelisse and Taya could be hot fire if given the right amount of time and spotlight. And by “right amount of time” I mean “they probably have an inferno match next week.”
Over: LICK THE FACE OF A GOD
Okay, now we get into the main event territory.
The first backstage segment we get setting this up mentions that Catrina’s been waiting almost 200 years for tonight (shout-out to the Haunted Mansion portrait of her from her office!), and we get some details about her plans. As we obviously guessed, her tricking Fenix into killing Mil in Grave Consequences to make him more powerful was part of her plan … she mentions that she made him wander around in the underworld for a few weeks, which I guess makes you stronger? It worked for Kratos.
Anyway, the best part is her new plan: she wants Mil Muertes to defeat the God-possesed Matanza Cueto so she can Lick Of Death his face and steal his power, thereby becoming immortal. But that brings up further questions. Didn’t she just say she was like, 200 years old? And she looks like that? Is she not immortal already? Does she worship the Lord of Light? What’s up?
Over, But Not As Much As The Original: Graver Consequences
As you may recall, Grave Consequences is one of my favorite matches of all time. It was a religious experience for me. It was everything good about the blood and guts and drama and pathos of lucha libre, brought to U.S. TV audiences. I got their blood on me. It was a thing.
When you call a match “graver consequences,” there are certain expectations. I don’t think anything can live up to what that first match did, so I’ll say this: I appreciate that they went for a very different kind of match, didn’t try to emulate Fenix vs. Mil exactly, and played to the natural strengths available when two 300-pound monster guys are willing to throw each other onto and into sh*t until one of them drops.
Graver Consequences was like watching a really good Pokemon battle. On one side, you have Catrina and her Magical Earthquake Rock, empowering Mil when he needs it. On the other, you have Dario Cueto, holding up a key and empowering Matanza with (I guess) the desire to not get locked up in a cage. The tide only really turns when Catrina tries to incapacitate Dario, only to get chair’d from behind by Matanza and thrown in a casket herself. Note: I appreciate the “four casket” stipulation mostly just being there so they could do the visual of Catrina being “buried” and being gone when the casket opens again.
With Catrina taken out, Matanza gets enough of an edge to powerslam Mil into a coffin and kill him for the second time in two seasons. So he’ll come back EVEN MORE POWERFUL, right? Is Catrina in the underworld now, too? Is she going to come back more powerful? Is she gonna be an old hag lady?
I think my very favorite part is the reveal at the end, with one of the pallbearers unmasking as King Cuerno. I sincerely hope next week’s show begins with Cuerno in his home watching TV with a taxidermed Mil Muertes posed in the background.
Over: Anyway, Back To Lucha Lorenzo Lamas
So, the show opens with Zack Ryder and Dario Cueto in a bar, and Cueto finding out the police have opened an investigation on him and his Temple and “may already have” someone on the inside. Cueto doesn’t know who it is, because El Rey Network doesn’t exist in … well, wait, it does. Okay, because Lucha Underground isn’t a TV show in … well, wait, Matt Striker and Vampiro reference it being a TV show all the time and are talking to TV cameras. Cueto doesn’t know because reasons, and because I guess the backstage segments are the one part of LU that don’t exist on the TV version of LU in the LU Universe. Right?
I think I just made my head hurt.
Lucha Lorenzo Lamas makes Dario drink whiskey and shakes him down for money, which he (at the end of the show) takes to a mysterious figure in a limousine. Apparently Dario thinks Matanza is the most powerful force in the world, but he’s wrong … the most powerful force is Lorenzo Lamas’ employer, Mysterious Limo Guy, and we end the show with a very quick glimpse of him. He looks like a cigar smoking gimp (?) or possibly some kind of robot, so I’m gonna call it now: ROBOT BIG RYCK. Ryck found a way to survive without a skull by BECOMING A CYBORG.
Or it’s my original guess, which was the devil. He’s visiting the Temple soon, so let’s hope it’s not just Daivari in a new jacket.
