Welcome to the Over/Under of Lucha Underground for season 3 episode 5, featuring our analysis of the best telenovela about a supernatural wrestling promotion ever made. If you 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 5, originally aired on October 5, 2016.
Under: Mariposa, And When The Editing Becomes Obvious
The first time I saw the Mariposa character was just after her debut, at a season 2 taping. She and Marty the Moth had just beaten up Sexy Star or whatever and attempted to hit their combo finish on her, that weird wheelbarrow “spin around in a circle a few times and drop a 100-pound woman on you from like a foot up” thing. Mariposa went for it and messed up the wheelbarrow. She went for it again, and messed it up again. She finally hit it, and even the finished product didn’t look great.
I wasn’t at this taping, but there’s a pretty hilariously jarring edit that starts from Mariposa clearly not getting both of her legs around Marty (pictured) and ends with them in the middle of the spinning around. Mariposa might just be terrible, y’all.
That’s not the only funny editing to open the show. The actual cold open (more or less) is Dario Cueto spinning Dario’s Dial of Doom, and it landing on Prince Puma. That’s GREAT, but the way it’s shot makes it look — or reveals that it is — a reshoot. Dario walks out and does his whole thing talking directly to the camera with no evidence of the crowd around him. We hear their reactions, and at one point we cut to a panning shot of people clapping. But then it’s to the opening credits and some shots of Los Angeles before jumping BACK to the Temple for Striker and Vampiro’s reactions. I like what a pre-taped show can do for the presentation of a show like this, but hoo boy, sometimes noticing it really takes the wind out of your sails.
Over: Dario’s Mic Drop, Though
He doesn’t just drop the microphone, he like, throws it at the camera. Dario Cueto deserves an Emmy nomination, and I’m just gonna keep typing it until it happens.
Over/Under: CROWE, CITY OF ANGELS
So the actual opening match of the show is Ivelisse, the Baddest Bitch In The Building, vs. Mariposa, Bad. Ivelisse gets the victory with a sunset flip powerbomb that ends up mostly just looking like a sunset flip, and Marty jumps her after the match.
Later, we head back to the luchadora locker room (which is getting a lot of play this season) to find Ivelisse being greeted by her current boyfriend “Jeremiah,” aka the debuting Sami Callihan, aka the Artist Formerly Known as Solomon Crowe. If you missed him in NXT, he wrestled in dark matches for like two years before finally debuting as a half-assed hacker Troll doll with the skin, temperament, comedy and face of the Annoying Orange.
He’s objectively not a bad wrestler, though, and him being Ivelisse’s new dirtbag alcoholic boyfriend who doesn’t know any of her co-workers’ names and wants to fight everybody could be great. I will be in love with it if one of two things happen:
1. Jeremiah’s last name is revealed to be “bullfrog,” and we find out that Crowe’s new gimmick is a reverse princess and the frog thing where one of the Budweiser frogs got turned into a man and can’t kiss anybody or he’ll reverse the spell, or
2. CJ Parker shows up for any reason
Maybe we can combine the two, Jeremiah can get injured in an oil spill and Parker can show up to defend the environment on his behalf.
Over: Tell A Mundo
The ongoing passive-aggressive beef between Johnny Mundo and Dario Cueto continues this week, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the show. Mundo is of course pissed that “Mr. Losing Streak” Prince Puma gets a shot at Matanza instead of him, and Cueto’s like, “sorry dude, I decide sh*t based on wheel luck now, deal with it.” Mundo argues that Worldwide Underground pinned Sexy Star in a match last week and how that should earn him a shot at the Gift of the Gods (which would then earn him a shot at the Lucha Underground Championship), and Cueto is like, “that’s a great idea, Jack Evans got the pin in that match so it’ll be Jack Evans vs. Sexy Star.”
+1 to that corny slash great shot of Cueto in the reflection of Mundo’s sunglasses. I hope Cueto’s entire problem with Mundo is that he’s wearing mirrored sunglasses in a dark office during a show taking place at night.
Under: Domestic Cesaro vs. Mexican Sheamus
The announce team puts this over like it could change the history of wrestling. I’m not sure I wanted to watch one Cage vs. Texano match in its entirety, much less five of them. Cage wins with an F-5, and I legitimately have more to say about the reflection in a guy’s sunglasses.
Over/Under: Pumatanza
The main event is a lot of fun and gets REALLY GREAT near the end, built around the idea that motivated vampire-driven Prince Puma Dark is the first person skilled, strong and motivated enough to truly defeat Matanza, and that Mil Muertes shows up to ruin it. Puma’s straight up got Matanza dead-to-rights when Mil shows up and turns him outside out with a spear. Dario Cueto sees this as a life-saving gesture and orders the match to continue under no disqualification rules. It’s great, effective, old school heel/face tecnico/rudo sh*t filtered through the veil of death’s beef with a powered up Cat Man and how it relates to his championship aspirations against the devil’s employee and his God-inhabited monster brother.
My only criticism is that Matanza’s so powerful and unstoppable that he’s not even really feuding with anyone. He had something going with Pentagon Jr., but he won ALL of those fights. Broke the guy’s back, then pinned him again in the blowoff. That turned PJ into Pentagon Dark (aka “PJ Black”), but the feud didn’t really continue. Pentagon’s still mostly just losing to folks and indiscriminately breaking arms. That feud could’ve led directly into a thing with Puma, but Puma’s concentrating on taking out Mil Muertes. So much so that Puma challenging for the championship takes a back seat to Puma vs. Mil.
So, like, does anybody WANT the Lucha Underground Championship? On most episodes Johnny Mundo’s the only dude even bringing it up. The Dial of Doom is awesome, but there isn’t much drama in a pro wrestling Price Is Right game. They should decide Gift of the Gods challengers via games of Cliffhanger.
Over: Don’t Be So Gun Shy
Finally, we get some confirmation on a story we’d hypothesized since Kill Shot’s origin video: Some of his thought-dead military brothers are still alive, and one of them is gonna show up and blame Kill Shot for leaving him for dead. This is delivered via SPOOKY TELEGRAM, as recovered by Joey Ryan. Kill Shot asks Joey where they came from, and he’s like, “what am I, a detective?” I see what you did there.
Bonus points if this just ends up being Marty the Moth cosplaying Robert Downey Jr.’s character from Tropic Thunder.
