Welcome to the Over/Under of Lucha Underground for season 3 episode 14. We caught up on the episodes we’d missed last week, so be sure you’ve read about episode 12 and the best-of-the-season episode 13. Io Shirai > anything else happening.
If you need to catch up on the rest — 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 14, originally aired on December 7, 2016.
Over: Bulls Shit
This week’s episode is built around Dario Cueto’s new BATTLE OF THE BULLS tournament, featuring four four-way one-fall-to-a-finish matches with the winners moving on to a four-way final, and the winner of that facing the Lucha Underground Champion. It’s a lot like what’s going on with the NXT Championship number-one contendership, except taped like a year ago.
Under: You Care About Texano Vs. Cage Still, Right
The first of these tournament matches features Joey Ryan and Dr. Wagner Jr. trying to get their shit in while Lucha Underground season 3 continues its endless love affair with Cage vs. Texano matches. These two have been in a Best-of-5 series for most of the season, and it’s been stuck at 2-1 for weeks because (1) not everybody appears or wrestles on every episode, and (2) the shows have featured roster-wide gimmick matches like Aztec Warfare and now the Battle of the Bulls but still occasionally feed people who are feuding against one another in multi-person matches. So kinda like how Sheamus vs. Cesaro’s Best-of-7 actually featured 9 matches in a row and somehow ended in a tie, this one keeps going and going and going.
The worst part is that Texano keeps using his bull rope in a tournament called “Battle of the Bulls” and Matt Striker decides instead to call it “that sandpaper snake.” TEXANO NOW USING THAT SANDPAPER SNAKE! AND NOW IT’S CAGE’S TURN TO USE THAT SANDPAPER SNAKE! The only way the phrasing could’ve been more Matt Striker is if he’d used it to paraphrase a bible verse about snakes. Lucha should just turn a length of rope into a quinque from Tokyo Ghoul and be done with it.
Anyway, Cage wins and moves on for a chance at a Unique Opportunity, but not the Ool-timate Opportunity, which still has 1-3 matches remaining. Sure, fine.
Over: SUPER Undercover
Officer Reyes’ cover at the Temple is blown, so his half-immortal police chief is sending him back in under a hood as a masked devil guy. Couldn’t she send him in as “Nightclaw?” That guy just kind of catted everywhere and disappeared. Can’t we set up the debut of El Hijo del Mariachi Loco or something?
Over: “Johnny’s Lawyer … He’s A Real Shark”
He’d better be an actual shark. I want a throwaway gag at the end of the season where Johnny’s contract is up and he just walks by a giant salt water tank and tosses it in.
Angelico’s not a great actor, but I like that everyone in the Temple says “Ahn-hellico” except Dario. He says “An-jellico.” When he’s walking alone, cause Angelicos are Angelicos do.
So, aside from setting up the tournament, Dario has three major issues this week:
1. Angelico wants a shot at Johnny Mundo, championship or no championship, for that whole thing where he put dude’s leg in a car door and broke it. Cueto’s like, “Johnny’s literal shark lawyer makes things hard,” and Angelico brings up the very understated pro wrestling talking point of, “I understand that, evil promoter, but you’ve created an unsafe work environment and if this was real life I would have like 30 reasons to sue you.” Cueto’s like, “cool, be in the tournament.”
2. Sexy Star wants another shot at Mundo, too, so Dario makes it a big dramatic thing: Sexy will have to face PJ Black one-on-one tonight, and if she wins, she gets a championship match against Mundo without having to even enter the Battle of the Bulls. And Worldwide Underground won’t be able to get in, because it’ll take place in a steel cage. But if she loses, she’s never getting another title shot again. Sexy’s like, “cool, I’m gonna go do 60,000 crunches.”
3. This whole thing:
Dario wants Matanza to be in the Battle of the Bulls so he can get back the Lucha Underground Championship, and Matanza’s like, “I HAVE A GOD INSIDE OF ME THAT WANTS TO KILL REY MYSTERIO FOR REAL.” Dario tries to explain that Mysterio’s injured (because of Matanza already) and that he’ll give him a match with him when he gets back, but right now, hey, Mysterio’s protege El Dragon Azteca Jr. is in the Battle of the Bulls, so Matanza should probably get a grip and go be in it too. Matanza’s response is to smash Dario’s face against the cage and steal his major key. Whoops!
Over/Under: Back The Mack
The second Battle of the Bulls contest of the night features, as mentioned, El Dragon Azteca Jr. versus Mil Muertes, Marty ‘The Moth’ Martinez and The Mack. There’s a really awkward moment near the end that feels like it should’ve been saved by editing where Azteca hits a 450 splash on Mil and seems to have him down, but decides that’s not gonna be enough. He heads back up top and waits forever to do anything, mostly because (from appearances, at least) Matanza wasn’t hitting his cue. So Azteca’s just perched up there waiting forever until Matty C pops in and attacks him.
Matanza attacks both of them, which at least gives us an excuse to have this match without Mil just Attitude Adjusting all three of them at once and pinning them in a pile. That leaves Marty to try to take an opportunistic pin on Dragon, and Mack stops him. There’s a short back and forth, and Mack hits a stunner on Marty to advance.
So far that means The Mack and Cage have advanced. Which, uh, feels familiar. Are Son of Havoc and somehow Texano gonna end up being the other two? Can we get to the part where Dario opens Pandora’s box or whatever and makes one of them live with a God soul in their guts?
Over: Star Wars
To follow up on the remaining Dario backstage meeting, Sexy Star manages to use Worldwide Underground interference against itself, get Jack Evans kicked in the face by his own daredevil werewolf friend, and pin PJ Black to earn a title shot against Mundo. Opinions on Sexy Star and Sexy Star matches seem to vary, so if you’re into the story and you like what they’re trying to do, you probably liked it. I thought it was okay. If you think she’s an interconnected piece of living garbage like a weird chunk of the Internet does, you probably thought it sucked.
Either way, this gives us a chance to blow off the Sexy/Mundo feud in a steel cage and move on to the winner of that — Mundo, presumably, because cages never stopped anybody from doing anything — facing the winner of Battle of the Bulls.
Now that we’re done with the whole “setting up matches and making wrestling matter” thing, let’s get to the really important part of the episode: THE SNAKE TRIBE. THAT SANDPAPER SNAKE TRIBE!
Over: Hahahaha What
We head to the … uh, reptile kingdom? Somewhere. To find Kobra Moon going FULL SERPENTOR on a giant snake throne, regaling her Queen Beryl-esque evil generals with tales of the tribe. Apparently they used to be hot shit and commanded by three powerful generals, until one general betrayed them and the whole thing fell apart. That general, who used to be a dragon, possibly when he was also a general, is Drago. The other two are these kneeling snake dudes who are SNAKEY AS FUCK YOU GUYS.
Look at them:
Mortis would tell these guys to take it down a notch. The guy on the right is named Vibora — Spanish for “vibrator” … sorry, “viper” — and the one on the left is, apparently, PINDAR. If you saw episode 10, you may remember that this is the Illuminati dong dragon that may or may not have sexed Daga in twain.
I went to my local library and did some deep research — I typed “pindar” into google on my laptop — and found out that yep, Pindar is a lizard. Technically, he’s the lizard KING. The Illuminati lizard king. He represents the “purebred reptilian leader of the Inner Earth.”
Also of note, from a page I really shouldn’t have in my search history, “The leader of the Earths Illuminati is called the “Pindar”. The Pindar is a member of one of the 13 ruling Illuminati families, and is always male. The title, Pindar, is an abbreviated term for “Pinnacle of the Draco”, also known as the ‘Penis of the Dragon.'”
This segment ends with Vinnie Massaro wandering into the room again and farting, which is absolutely not going to distract me from the kinda sorta reveal that Daga is dead because he got fucked to death by an Illuminati dragon.
I thought Kobra Moon served Pindar, but maybe I got it backwards. Who knows. She wants to be queen, and I guess she can’t feel good about that until Drago is also kneeling, so that’s where we’re at. A snake lady is commanding two extremely snakey dudes to capture and domesticate a dragon for not being enough like a snake. LET’S DO IT.
