Welcome to the Over/Under of Lucha Underground for season 3 episode 12, featuring the debut of the homies The Rabbit Tribe. This is last week’s episode, which we missed because we were off on Thanksgiving. Episode 13 will be arriving shortly!
If you need to catch up — if you aren’t caught up, you should need to catch up — you can read about season 1 here, and season 2 here. Season 3 episode recaps can be found here.
Re-post: If you’re still wondering how to watch the show, it airs every Wednesday night on El Rey Network. If you don’t have El Rey on your cable system, you can get it on Sling. If you can’t do that, you can download the episodes on iTunes. They’re selling a “season pass” right now where you can get every new episode right after it airs. If you can’t do that, and you demand viewing information without just being a cheapskate and googling “watch lucha underground online free,” I don’t know what to tell you. Watch the show.
And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 3 episode 12, originally aired on November 23, 2016.
Over: DO IT LIKE A RABBIT
Opening this week’s show is one of the most obvious “Overs” you’ve ever expected me to give this show: former WWE Cruiserweight and 3-time tag champ Paul London in a Siegfried and Roy jumpsuit with a top hat and a bedazzled codpiece leading a trios team of rabbit-themed drug addicts. Think of it as the best possible version of Adam Rose. The guy in the checkered morph suit is Saltador (“jumper”), who I really wish was named Siniestro de la Conejo. The guy who kinda looks like a chicken and has a hoop earring is named Mala Suerte (“bad luck”). They are great.
They get a Trios Championship match in their debut, which is explained away by the mention that Dario Cueto is impressed with London’s reputation, which is at least an excuse. The gist of their characters are that they’re very talented, but they’re also kinda sorta on a ton of drugs, so they don’t take things as seriously as they should and that costs them. Think of them as the Worldwide Underground if they were on peyote instead of just constantly enticed by their own dick musk.
London is great here as Freddie Mercury’s love child with Kizarny, mugging his ass off and posing on the ropes while Saltador saltadors over him. There’s also a great moment where Mala Suerte tosses Aero Star in the air and Aero Star dropkicks Drago for some reason, which the announce team explains is a symptom of Mala Suerte’s as-of-now undisclosed bad luck powers. He can either have really bad luck, or GIVE YOU bad luck, I guess. That’s a very hard thing to portray in a wrestling ring, but it’s ambitious as hell.
The Trios Champs retain when Fenix pins Saltador, continuing Lucha Underground’s inconsistent trend of jobbing guys out in their debut. It works here, though, and the match was lots of fun. I want to see the Rabbit Tribe do pretty much anything. Rabbit Tribe vs. Worldwide Underground for half an hour, please. After the match, Kobra Moon shows up to promise Drago he’ll bow before her soon, and it’s short and vague enough to save me from another week of explaining the history of dragon penises.
Over: Your Weekly “Dario Is The Best” Recap
Dario Cueto gets two backstage segments this week:
1. An extremely awkward interaction with Johnny Mundo about what happened in Aztec Warfare with Angelico, Sexy Star being the Lucha Underground Champion and Mundo’s Gift of the Gods cash-in later tonight. I honestly thought Cueto’s acting was off when the segment started, and then I realized when they go to the end and it was super awkward that it was probably a conscious acting decision. That guy’s good enough to give him the benefit of the doubt on that.
2. Black Lotus confronts Dario and demands Pentagon Dark’s head, so Dario sets up a Pentagon vs. Black Lotus Triad (aka “Bacon Lettuce Tomato”) gauntlet match for episode 13. Win or lose, it doesn’t end until Pentagon Dark has faced all four members of the triad. Wait, is that still a triad? Is Black Lotus not technically part of her own group?
Over: Star Fox
Match of the week goes to Kill Shot and Dante Fox, who absolutely hustle through a junior heavyweight grudge match in the best way possible. They want to kick each other’s ass, but their fighting styles are both super flash, so it quickly goes from “I’m going to punch you” to “I’m going to beat you at your own game.” If you haven’t watched this yet or get a chance to rewatch it, pay close attention to the pace they work at. This is closer to what WWE Cruiserweights should be doing. I might not be asking TJ Perkins to like, DVD a guy on the ring apron, but shrinking the size of guys should at least often increase their speed proportionately.
But yeah, they killed it out here, no pun intended. I’m not sure where they go with the Fox/Kill Shot rivalry from here. You were left for dead by your military buddy, so you came back and joined the wrestling promotion he wrestles in to beat him at a wrestling match, and now you did that, so you’re either square or you have to like, shoot him with a rifle, right?
Under: Mackting
The worst segment of the week is The Mack backstage congratulating Sexy Star on her championship victory. Sexy’s not much of an actor, but she looks like Viola Davis in a mask compared to The Mack. Mack reminded me of one of those extras in Black Dynamite who read the stage directions and can’t stop looking into the camera.
Anyway, Mack is like, “I’m going to help you,” and Sexy refuses the help, claiming she wants to beat Mundo one-on-one, by herself, to prove that her Aztec Warfare victory wasn’t a fluke. And like everybody in the world bugs their eyes out and goes HEY MAYBE YOU SHOULD ACCEPT HELP, YOU’RE WRESTLING IN THE NEVER-DQ TEMPLE AGAINST THE GUY WHO ALWAYS GETS HELP FROM THREE OTHER PEOPLE. But no, go ahead, you’ll be fine.
Over/Under: The Dreaded Luchadora “Incognito”
That sends us into our main event, which ends exactly like you’d think, while also ending in the most convoluted cheating scenario imaginable.
Mundo and Sexy go at it truly one-on-one in a kind of underwhelming way for a while until the fight spills to the outside. Mundo spots a lady in a Sexy Star mask on crutches in the stands and tries to take the crutch away to use it as a weapon. The lady holds on and ends up getting thrown to the floor. The action doesn’t totally stop when this happens, so, you now. Sexy avoids the crutch attack and tries to use it on Mundo herself, but Mundo slides back into the ring and hides behind the referee. Sexy goes to help the fan up and wouldn’t you know it, it’s Taya under the mask, waiting to blast her in the face with brass knuckles while the referee is distracted. GREAT DECISION TO DO THIS BY YOURSELF, SEXY.
From there it’s academic, with Mundo hitting about 8% of The End Of The World, and a spinning forearm to the stomach is enough to put Sexy down and earn Mundo his first Lucha Underground Championship. Honestly Mundo as champion has a lot more possibilities than Sexy as champ and you’ve already got your “history making” moment, so let’s pretend the ends justify the means.
Up Next: Mortal Kombat!
