Remember that With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow Brandon on Twitter.
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 second best Netflix wrestling show to feature a kidnapping plot.
And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 4, episode 5, originally aired on July 11, 2018.
Over: Two Unexpected Character Deaths In The Same Episode
Up first this week we have Dario Cueto outing Cortez Castro as undercover police officer Ricky Reyes, because I guess he’s watched the show before. Cueto’s solution: put him in a Sacrifice to the Gods match against The Monster Matanza Cueto, who is now a fully powered-up God in human form thanks to the Gremlins Chinese Mogwai shop owner on Safari version of Dario Cueto breaking a big ass key. It’s complicated. Castro eats it almost immediately and is written out forever, because this season’s probably going to have a lot of that. Really surprised we still haven’t gotten a giant animatronic spider with Sexy Star’s mask in its mouth.
Also dead meat this week is Mascarita Sagrada, who is rewarded for bringing the Rabbit Tribe to the white rabbit by getting his head bashed in with a big stick while the Home Alone soundtrack plays in the background. If you’re wondering, the White Rabbit in question is played by ‘Killer’ Kevin Kross, whom you may know from his years at Global Force and Impact Wrestling. Look at him, he looks like a Marvel Netflix character pretending to be the Three-Eyed Raven:
Two things I love here, though: the Rabbit Tribe being re-contextualized as crazy cult murderers, and Paul London suddenly having the voice of the Mad Hatter from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Even better is Saltador suddenly getting a voice and basically being the March Hare. Rabbit tribe forever, y’all.
Over: Wyld Dallions
The core of the episode is two competitive, well-paced matches for Gift of the Gods medallions. The first is Ivelisse defeating the sleaziest possible version of Joey Ryan, which after this week’s Smackdown felt like a corrective how-to guide on booking intergender wrestling when your female wrestler is tough and your male wrestler’s all about his dick.
It acknowledges Joey’s inherent grossness and leans into it, giving him enough offense to look like a competitive threat because of his size and strength, but limiting him in his ability to keep it together and follow up on holds effectively. So he doesn’t take things as seriously as he should, and Ivelisse beats him clean using her speed, skill, and most importantly, her determined focus. Because Ivelisse’s character is more often than not all about laser focus on how she feels and what she needs to do.
Also telling an interesting story this week is The Mack vs. Killshot vs. Son of Havoc, the current Lucha Underground Trios Champions, competing against each other in a triple threat. Instead of competing for one ancient Aztec medallion, they’re competing for two; the wrestler who takes the fall here is the only one who doesn’t move on.
So of course, the story is that Killshot continues to drift further and further from a “team player” attitude, which … I mean, frankly, the major story we know about Killshot is that he abandoned his friend to die in a POW camp. So doesn’t it make sense that Killshot would get tired of being Trios Champion and turn his back on his friends to go out on his own? DANTE FOX WAS RIGHT.
The key moment in the match is the finish, which sees Killshot double-stomp Havoc to death only for momentum to carry him into a Stone Cold Stunner from yonder Mack. Mack doesn’t know which guy to pin — remembering that the person who gets pinned is the only one who doesn’t receive a medallion and move on to the Gift of the Gods Championship match — and after a moment of consideration, chooses to pin Killshot. It could’ve been that Killshot is the second guy of the three to eat a finisher and therefore the pin’s more guaranteed, but it plays nicely as Mack deciding Havoc deserves an opportunity more than this guy who’s been his friend and partner since season one. Somewhere* Big Ryck is shaking his head.
*the top of Mil Muertes’ throne of skulls
Over: Skeletons In The Closet
Finally we have the main event of The Man They Call A Machine Known As Cage and however many other words they’re gonna add to his name against Mil Muertes and the new, alive version of Catrina, signified by her extremely red dress. Vampiro is like, “she looks ALIVE!” in a Vampiro-level subtle moment.
There are two hooks here: one, that Catrina won’t do Mil Muertes’ “lick of death” anymore because she’s not dead and presumably no longer has those powers, or is simply choosing not to use them; and two, Pentagon Dark has disguised himself as one of The Believers and sneaks up on Cage to attack and eventually eliminate him from the match. You know you’re screwed when a pissed-off ninja skeleton in a mask is able to take off a second, irregular mask and pose a bunch and still get the drop on you.
Cage previously attacked Pentagon and tried to puff up his chest to him about the Lucha Underground Championship, so now here’s Pentagon costing Cage a match and puffing up HIS chest, a chest covered in a Roman Reigns-esque pleather vest that is more excusable as an in-ring accessory because he’s a goddamn lucha libre skeleton wrestler and not a Normal Guy. Cage will face Pentagon, a threat of broken bones has been laid out as per usual, and we’re set for another big championship match.
Really enjoyable show this week, if only for how bonkers it is. Lucha Underground set-up (or filler) episodes live or die based on the absurdity of the plot points they reveal, and this one definitely lived.
