Welcome to the Over/Under of Lucha Underground for season 3 episode 8, where we talk about the best and worst moments from the best supernatural pro wrestling telenovela 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 8, originally aired on October 26, 2016.
Over: Dissension Leading To Descension
Okay, before we talk about anything from this week’s episode, we need to talk about the Ultimate Opportunity.
As you know if you’ve been following along, They Call Him Cage and They Call Him Texano Even Though He’s From Mexico are locked in a technically pre-Sheamus-and-Cesaro best-of-five series for what Dario Cueto has called the, “ultimate opportunity.” It’s the biggest and best one yet, he swears.
So far, the matches have been underwhelming. Match three is the best of the series so far, with Cage arrogantly and nonchalantly hitting Texano with everything he’s got in the tank but making these lackadaisical covers. Texano stays gutsy and keeps kicking out, and is able to counter a slam into a small package out of nowhere to win the match and keep the series alive at 2-1.
That in itself would be worth an Over, but the major development here is that we (kinda sorta) find out what the Ultimate Opportunity is. Remember Lorenzo Lamas and that cigar-smoking limo devil that threatened Cueto on behalf of the weird lucha libre Wolfram and Hart they (and I guess Cueto) work for? There’s a followup this week in the parking lot where Cueto gets into a limo with a progress report, and we find out that the winner of the Texano vs. Cage series will be the new HOST BODY (!) for a descended God. Wait, what?
Yes folks, Dario Cueto is now in possession of a God’s soul in a box that lights his face like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction whenever he looks into it. DARIO CUETO OWNS A MYSTICAL BOX WITH A FUCKING GOD’S SOUL IN IT, AND HE’S GOING TO PUT IT IN CAGE OR TEXANO AS AN OPPORTUNISTIC AND MANIPULATIVE THANK YOU FOR WINNING THE MOST WRESTLING MATCHES. What what what WHAT WHAT.
What.
WAIT WHAT.
Over: Chavo’s Same Old Bullshit
What.
Okay, sorry. The other major development of this week’s episode, non-in-ring division, is Rey Mysterio Jr. revealing his Chavo Classic-approved plan to Dario Cueto. He wants Chavo in a Loser Leaves Lucha match, because he’s known Chavo forever, keeps getting stabbed in the back, and feels his work in The Temple is too important to spend another minute worrying about Chavito’s “same old bullshit.” So next week, that’s what we’re getting. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. in a Loser Leaves Lucha match. I bet Rey loses that!
As a quick note, it’s great to see how much more comfortable Mysterio is as an actor on this show. He’s never been great on the microphone, but he’s got the right amount of gravitas to pull off a lot of this frankly ridiculous situational dialogue. It’s like he’s finally coming into his own, which is a weird thing to say about a guy who’s been a wrestling legend since 1989. Dude debuted 8 months before Taylor Swift was born.
Over: London Falling
Speaking of descensions, we get 100% confirmation beyond me comparing logos that the White Rabbit vignettes are about the soon-to-debut Paul London and an Aztec rabbit tribe who may or may not travel interdimensionally. I am all-in on Mad Hatter Paul London, the chicken version of Super Calo, the Party City morphsuit guy (aka “Sineistro de a Cuadros”) and any other rabbit or bunny-themed guys showing up. PJ Black is about to achieve his final form!
Over/Under: Moths And Crows
This week’s actual opening match is Marty the Moth Martinez taking on Ivelisse, with Mariposa cheating to help him win via face biting. The moths stand tall until Ivelisse’s alcoholic backstage greaser boyfriend Jeremiah (aka former NXT star Solomon Crowe, aka Sami Callihan) shows up to defend her honor.
He kicks them in the face a few times and tries to Batista Bomb Mariposa — at least I think that’s what it was gonna be, you don’t do big thumbs up into big thumbs downs for anything else — but Marty saves her. That leads to a 2-on-1 beatdown, with a frustrated Ivelisse having to get back into the ring to save him. They run the months off, which leads to Ivie and Jeremiah establishing their relationship for the live crowd, which leads to the worst thing Lucha Underground does, the “no means no” chant. Y’all are better than that, believers.
As they’re leaving, we find out that Dario Cueto has offered Jeremiah a spot in the Temple, which he’s accepted. Ivelisse tells him that’s fine, even though she doesn’t want him around and wants to keep her business and personal lives separate, and says she’ll kick his ass if they get booked against each other. As long as Ivelisse is in control of her own agency, this can all work. J-Crowe says this won’t be like what happened with the “other guy” — Son Of Havoc — to which I kinda wish Ivie had responded, “what, we won’t be multiple-time Trios Champions?”
Over: The Ballad Of Sexy Star, But-
Under: Empty Threats
This week’s A-story is Sexy Star attempting to cash in her Gift of the Gods Championship against The Monster Matanza Cueto on next week’s show. Dario agrees, because those are the rules of the belt, but notes that she’s already scheduled to defend it against Johnny Mundo tonight, so she might not get to cash it in at all.
This is all good, but the part I don’t like is where he says if any of her friends (Drago, Aero Star or Fenix) interfere in the match tonight on her behalf, they’re “banned from The Temple forever.” Normally this would be fine — Dario giving the rudos a chance to cheat and keeping the tecnicos from being able to prevent it, putting Sexy at an extreme disadvantage, because he hates her — except that Drago already GOT “banned from The Temple forever” once.
Remember that? Drago got a championship match against Prince Puma in season 1 where if he lost he’d be banned forever. He lost, and was banned forever. He returned six episodes later. So what, he couldn’t help out his friend here and sit on the bench for five episodes? It’s not like he’s wrestling on every episode anyway. They could’ve at least went with, “if your friends interfere, they’ll be stripped of the Trios Championships.” Maybe set up a little belt-for-belt sacrifice.
That leads to a fun but SUPER overbooked main, with Johnny Mundo and Worldwide Underground just flagrantly knocking out, reawakening and occasionally replacing referees at will so they can cheat. At some point there’s so much cheating you might as well write in a “no disqualification” rule and skip the suspension of disbelief.
As the story goes, Mundo has the help of three guys and a bunch of weapons but can’t keep Sexy Star down. Eventually he decides to go SUPER RUDO and Pillmanize her NECK to put her away, but The Mack — Sexy Star’s one nominal friend who wasn’t expressly banned from ringside — shows up to give people stunners and bail her out. That leads to Sexy bashing Mundo in the face with a chair and getting a great nearfall, and the match sorta resetting itself as a mostly-on-the-level one-on-one affair. That’s a good decision.
Of course, this doesn’t end well for Sexy. With the playing field evidently evened, Mundo tries to get himself disqualified with a chair. He makes it really obvious to make sure the referee takes it away from him, and when that happens, he slips on a pair of brass knuckles and punches Sexy in the mouth, knocking her out. Multiple dumb referees can’t make the right call, and Johnny Mundo becomes the new Gift of the Gods Champion, a week before Sexy Star’s cash-in.
The logical next point in this story is for Sexy Star to win Aztec Warfare and for Johnny to try to cash in Sexy’s own Gift of the Gods Championship against her, right? Keep the main event focused on the Lucha originals, give us our first female champion and immediately transition it to the dickhead WWE heel who’s been trying to be champ for like three seasons.
Or, alternately, the next logical point in the story is them teaming up to fight skeletons. I don’t always know how the minds of the Lucha writers work.
Over: THE VAMPIRE WHO HATES YOU WANTS YOU TO DIE, PUMA, COME ON
The final scene of this episode that has featured (1) a God’s soul in a box, (2) a heavenly rabbit man, (3) an alcoholic drifter fighting a pair of human moths, (4) a title change and (5) A GOD’S SOUL IN A BOX is, as you might’ve guessed, Vampiro continuing to escalate the dark transformation of Prince Puma.
For the past few weeks, Vampiro has been like, “hey Puma, if you want to be strong again, you’ve got to pin Mil Muertes, the hardest guy on the show to pin!” Puma was like, “no thanks,” but whoops, spent those weeks training to and eventually pinning Mil Muertes. Now Vampiro’s approaching him like, “hey Puma, great job pinning Mil Muertes, turns out you actually won’t be strong again unless you LITERALLY KILL HIM.” And Puma’s like, “no thanks!” And you know Puma’s gonna kill the dude, and Vampiro’s gonna be like, “hey Puma, congratulations on killing Mil Muertes like I said, but it turns out you won’t be strong again unless you stuff him and put him in a glass box in your house.”
I really love this story, and I can’t wait to see where it stands by the time Ultima Lucha Tres arrives. Puma’s gonna be dressed like the devil and setting fans on fire, and he’s going to think he’s the nicest guy on the show.
