Previously on Lucha Underground: Aerostar revealed that he’d seen the end of the season 4 tapings, and we aren’t going to like what happens. Also, new Lucha Underground Champion Marty The Moth broke his sister’s arm, and the White Rabbit fingered Joey Ryan to death.
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And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 4, episode 18, originally aired on October 10, 2018.
Over: Someone Decides To Actually Help The Person About To Be Sacrificed To Aztec Gods
I’ll be honest, I was extremely worried when this week’s episode of Lucha Underground opened with Taya Valkyrie Mundo calling out Antonio Cueto and demanding a Sacrifice to the Gods match with The Monster Matanza for ruining her lime green taco wedding. Wrestling is weird, sorry. Lucha’s been real loosey-goosey with the whole “writing off long-term characters on a whim” thing this season, so I thought this was just going to be Taya getting slammed and sent to the Negative Verse, or wherever all these people have gone.
Instead, surprise! Johnny Mundo ran out and attacked Matanza before he could, you know, sacrifice his wife, and the match gets called off. I love that a SACRIFICE TO THE GODS match can apparently end in a disqualification. “Hey, it’s against the rules to interfere with someone about to kill your wife, RING THE BELL.” Regardless, I’m going to give this an Over for someone finally realizing that maybe they should run out there and stop the televised murder, with a retroactive Under for all those times nobody did. I bet Jack Evans really feels like shit down in Hell, watching the only thing they get on TV down there (edited-for-TV Tarantino marathons) and seeing his supposed friend jogging out to save somebody else. COULD’VE USED YOU A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, BRO.
This sets up a Sacrifice to the Gods match for Ultima Lucha Quatro between John Mundo and Tanzie Cueto, which is one of those matches you can unfortunately infer the finish to if you keep up with wrestling news. I really do hope it turns into a lumberjack match featuring all the people who got sent to the Shadow Realm.
Over: Extremely Low Stakes Drama
Also on the Worldwide … Underground? tip this week, former member Ricky Mundo continues his haunted doll’s quest for revenge (or something) by defeating Famous B, revealing something we already knew but the announcers didn’t — that he was responsible for unleashing Matanza on Mundo and Taya’s wedding (which really could’ve been saved for this reveal instead of giving it away in passing in a backstage vignette) — and “making an example” of The Beautiful Brenda to show what kind of violence he’s able to commit against blondes. The difference of course is that Brenda (the character) is a hooker Famous B convinced to be in an infomercial and follow him around at wrestling shows, and Taya could punch Ricky so hard it spun his head around like Beetlejuice.
With all the time traveling soul-tampering and endless string of in-ring vanishings, it’s kind of nice to see a wrestling story that’s a jobber beating up another jobber and revealing he ruined a Mexican dinner party. Low stakes!
Over: The Lucha Underground Super Team
In an episode that features a person asking for a match that could end with them being sacrificed, a doll-based assault on a non-wrestler, a skeleton trying to kill a spider-lady with a bunch of thumbtacks and a man trying to pour gasoline over his opponent and set them on fire until they die, the worst decision made is still The Mack and El Dragon Azteca Jr. agreeing to a tag team match against Fenix and Mil Muertes.
If you’ve been watching the show since the beginning, Mil and Fenix teaming up instead of pitting their powers against one another is basically the ultimate Lucha Underground team. Even the “can they coexist” thing Striker’s WWE sleeper agent training made sure to mention doesn’t matter anymore, because Fenix’s soul has been tainted by Catrina’s former half-immortal ghost soul or … whatever, so now he’s DARK FENIX.
Plus, Mil is free from external control. But how funny is it that Mil kills off the human side of Catrina, and is now still more or less following her around because her soul’s inside of Fenix? How hilarious would it be if Fenix became Mil’s manager and started licking people and Frenching him to transfer their powers? I’m so into that. I’m even more into it if they can do a love triangle where Mil loves Fenix but Fenix’s dark half is still just in love with Fenix’s light half. And then Jeremiah Snake shows up for some reason.
Over: Fire & Bone
lol
Here’s an interesting study question: between this match with Reklusa and his legendary episode-long match with the Black Lotus Triad, are Pentagon Dark Jr.’s best Lucha Underground matches all against women? He always seems cooler than the matches he’s involved in. The best one outside of that is what, him vs. Vampiro, Cero Miedo? That was more the novelty of watching an old Canadian ghost pope get stabbed with light tubes and set on fire than a “good wrestling match.” Still though.
Pentagon has a match against Reklusa, and I can say with certainty that Chelsea Green is the best female performer they’ve had as an actual Lucha Underground character, remembering that Io Shirai and Kairi ‘Sane’ Hojo really were only there for an episode. She’s great, and she really took it to Pentagon in a match nobody in the goddamn world thought she’d win. When it’s over, Pentagon thinks about breaking her arm, then reconsiders … in favor of grabbing his former Dark Lord’s bag of thumb tacks and attempting to stab her in the forehead a hundred little times via package piledriver. That’s interrupted by the Moth, of course, who beats Penta down with a barbed wire bat and teases setting him on fire before their Cero Miedo match at Quatro.
Notes:
- I love the touch of Marty’s fingers being bloody to sell the barbed wire’s sharpness. That’s an overlooked thing in pro wres barbed wire attacks. If you bang a metal thing on the steps to prove it’s real before you use it, why would you be able to cut your hand on the end of a bat covered in barbed wire without it cutting you? Great attention to detail.
- I was at this taping and this match, and I am SO HAPPY the editing team saved the finish. In real life, neither Marty nor Reklusa could figure out how to open the gas can, so they spent like five minutes attacking it with a hammer trying to poke a hole in it. You’ll notice at the end that it’s just kind of dribbling out of a random hole in the side of the can, which looks totally fine on TV, but was real sad in real life.
- They made a big mistake attacking Pentagon with a barbed wire bat. Don’t they know barbed-wire bat attacks heal him? SEXUALLY?
- Marty vs. Penta’s going to be crazy, but now they’ve got to pay off one or both of them being set on fire. Can we just set Jake Strong on fire instead?
this attempted immolation brought to you by Bagel Bites
