Previously on Ultima Lucha Tres: Famous B teamed up with Dr. Wagner Jr. (again) to pin Texano and, for some reason, make him his client. Sure that’ll be a fantastic working relationship. Oh and also Killshot and Dante Fox had the Lucha Underground match of the year (so far) in the Hell of War. Just bonkers.
If you need to catch up on the rest of the episodes — if you aren’t caught up, you’re probably out of luck, because come on, dude — you can read about season 1 here, and season 2 here. Season 3 episode recaps can be found here.
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Are you a Believer? Then make sure you’ve listened to the latest two episodes of our podcast, where we talk to Lucha Underground Champion Johnny Mundo and Temple cult favorite Vinnie Massaro.
Hit those share buttons! Make sure to spread the column around so people can share in our love of all things Lucha, and encourage folks to finally bite the bullet and watch the first two seasons on Netflix. It’s on Netflix. It’s the best Netflix show about a vampire trying to quote the Bible to impress a school teacher!
And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 3, episode 38, Ultima Lucha Tres part two, originally aired on October 4, 2017.
Under: How You Gonna Let Me Down With A Battle Royal?
I think the most disappointed I’ve been all season is that they had a battle royal full of wrestlers I love an hour deep into Ultima Lucha Tres only for it to (1) last under four minutes, total, (2) only exist to set up a thrown-together Trios Championship match that is completely meaningless and features two guys we’ve already seen wrestle at the event, and (3) mostly be centered around the return of Pimpinela Escarlata an the entire world’s inability to see a man kiss another man without vomiting and throwing yourself over the top rope.
I like Pimpi, and I like the exoticos, but they don’t always vibe well with Lucha Underground. I certainly didn’t miss Matt Striker saying “Es-carlta” instead of Escarlata. We get Pimpi kissing multiple disgusted fans, kissing multiple disgusted wrestlers, Paul London being eliminated from a battle royal via attempted blowjob, Mala Suerte somehow being propelled over the top rope by a kiss, Matt Striker joking about how Pimpi and Mascarita Sagrada jumping up and down is “something he watches on the Internet,” and Pimpi eliminating themselves by armdragging off the top rope to the apron with exactly zero (0) grace and just falling to the floor.
When that’s all over, The Mack has won the match. Boop. Dario Cueto’s “unique opportunity” turns out to be a Trios Championship match where he gets to pick the partners, because nobody’s actually feuding with the Trios Champions since Aero Star is dead and Fenix is preoccupied. Cueto picks Killshot and Dante Fox, and it’s a total layup that the thrown-together team is winning the Trios Championship. For no raisin!
Over/Under: Not Afraid Of Death
First of all let me just say that that when I was watching NXT season 3 I would’ve never imagined that seven years later AJ and Kaitlyn would both be retired, Naomi would glow in the dark, and MAXINE of all people would be in a gory brawl on a televised-in-the-US lucha libre event with three years of story build. But hey, here we are.
I’m going half and half on this because it’s, pardon the phrasing, the Best and Worst of Lucha Underground. On the “best” side, it’s a damn event. You took a wrestler who’s been out most of the season and put her in the ring with someone who rarely wrestles, and you managed to get an emotional, cathartic and super bloody throwdown with multiple broken bottle shots, people getting hit in the face with a rock, and the act of literally drinking blood out of your opponent’s mouth. Jesus Christ.
I think Dario Cueto said it best:
Brother finally had too much violence.
On the “bad” side, Ivelisse has been out for most of the season, and while that’s not really her fault, it certainly hurt the build. They set the match up last year, and we haven’t heard anything about it or re-established their beef in what, almost 30 episodes? 30 episodes with a six month break in the middle. 30 weeks plus six months. So they’ve gotta quickly reestablish the Ivelisse/Jeremiah Crane relationship, which has to be the most Cliffs Notes version of it ever, and they give Ivelisse/Catrina this big blowoff that it totally deserves, without the ramping up it also totally deserved.
Also on the bad side, you’ve got Vampiro popping a boner for the Catrina Kiss of Death, and you’ve got the announce team laughing about “wardrobe malfunctions” when Ivelisse for whatever reason rips off most of Catrina’s shirt. I want to get two really horny 40-year old women to record commentary for Magnum T.A. and Tully Blanchard at Starrcade 85 and have them spend the entire time getting soaked about sweat and chest hair. “He’s poking Tully’s eye out with a jagged chair leg, haha, you know what THAT reminds me of!” “The seductive Tully Blanchard!”
The Cliffs Notes stuff is unfortunate, because in lieu of several episodes of character and story development, it’s boiled down to everyone calling Ivelisse a bitch over and over. Catrina calls her a bitch before the match, and Crane calls her a bitch in like the most aggro way possible backstage. And Ivelisse calls herself the “baddest bitch” all the time, so the connotation gets a little blurry. But yeah, at least the response to Crane’s insult is Ivie spin kicking him through a bathroom stall door so hard it knocks him out.
Crane’s response to that is to jump her after the match and try to re-injure her by hitting her in the leg a bunch with a hammer. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but it’s supposed to be I guess, and Crane and Catrina are certainly not the heroes here. I’m assuming this leads to Ivelisse interfering in the triple threat match later in the event, and/or carrying the grief into hypothetical season 4 and literally setting him on fire or whatever.
I think the good outweighed the bad, but I do wish a match like this had been able to get the everything-other-than-a-match matches need to connect forever.
Over: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
This hour of Ultima Lucha was SUPER into dudes dragging screaming women around by their hair. Crane does it to Ivelisse when he’s beating her up, and Marty the Moth literally drags Melissa Santos into the ring over the top rope by her hair and pulls her around threateningly. I’m not fussy about it because (1) as mentioned, Ivelisse throws down with the guys all the time and spun-cucked Crane into the toilet earlier in the show, and (2) Melissa’s thing leads to her emotionally controlling Marty to save Fenix, smacking him in the face and kicking him in the mothballs to set up the finish. And she gets to help pin him!
Normally I’d be bothered by Santos and Mariposa getting involved in the match as well, but for a story like this, I think it works. They’ve been integral to the Marty/Fenix story since the beginning, so having Mariposa show up to help Marty makes sense, and having Melissa try to help Fenix as he’s having his face carved off by scissors is pretty solid. I like that Mariposa got used by Marty again so she told him to go screw (and helped wrangle him so Fenix and Melissa could shave his head at the end), and I especially liked the storytelling touch that after all this time of wanting to see Fenix’s face, Melissa stepped in to prevent it from being completely exposed.
Plus, the match was fantastic. Fenix always delivers in these big match situations, and I don’t think there’s a wrestler on the planet who does bloody pathos as well as him. It’s what made Grave Consequences legendary, and what makes this work. Fenix takes beatings. And when he’s done, good usually triumphs over evil. I think that’s important to remember sometimes on a show that so often dips into supernatural monsters and murder.
Next Week:
- Pentagon Dark presumably breaks both of Son of Havoc’s arms with a ladder
- A Trios Championship match with like 45 minutes of build that should still at least be fun to watch
- Taya vs. Sexy Star in the most retroactively awkward match of 2017
