Previously on Lucha Underground: XO Lishus warmed up backstage with a fully choreographed Flashdance homage, Pentagon Dark retained the Lucha Underground Championship against Cage, and Mil Muertes was removed from the Gift of the Gods match via shifty battle royal.
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And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 4, episode 7, originally aired on July 25, 2018.
Over: The Following Lucha Is Scheduled For One Fall
get it
Up first this week is “The Savage” Jake Strong’s episodes-long quest to legitimately murder everyone who was on his trios team. Big Bad Steve is already toast, Matt Striker hilariously comments on how doctors were “able to save Famous B’s leg” from a broken ankle, and now poor vaguely panda-themed Sammy Guevara has to face Strong one-on-one. Because Lucha, Sammy does a goddamn moonsault off the goddamn balcony of the goddamn New Temple three goddamn minutes into the opening goddamn match of an episode only seven goddamn episodes into the season. If that’s not enough damning of God, it’s somehow not even the most impressive balcony dive on this episode.
But still, in case that doesn’t sound positive enough, I’ll remind you via dense paragraph that Sammy Guevara is one of my very favorites, and that I love seeing him on Lucha Underground in ANY role, especially in the “jump off shit and get put into an amputation drama because of Jack Swagger’s foley-assisted ankle locks.” Strong’s counter into the ankle lock was hilariously lackadaisical, and I’m still over here trying to figure out what makes him a “savage.” This is the show with the hunter who kills and stuffs his enemies, a ghost lady who has her zombie familiar put you in a coffin so she can lick the soul from your body, a pissed-off ninja skeleton who wants to break arms in service of a dark master he eventually becomes, and a sanitation Ninja Turtle who can spirit you away from our plane of existence because he was given the power of a God in childhood and embiggened by a broken prop key.
Sorry, Sam. Maybe they can write him off here and bring him back as a dickhead Prince Puma II like I wanted?
Speaking Of That Sanitation Ninja Turtle Who Can Teleport You Against Your Will
This week’s most controversial moment comes when Antonio Cueto brings Vinnie Massaro to the ring and punishes him with the two most heinous acts imaginable: a pineapple pizza, and his son-God blinking everyone into what I assume is the afterlife from Coco.
Vinnie actually does surprisingly well against Matanza here, only really losing because he’s got bad cardio. He even gets to taunt him, hitting him with a “vaffanculo.” If you spent a long time watching The Sopranos, you probably think it’s “fungool.” It’s the shortened version of “vai a fare in culo”, which either translates to “fuck off” or the more literal “go to do it in the ass” depending on who you’re asking. It should also not be confused with Pentagon Dark, who is a Fun Ghoul.
The saddest thing here is that Matanza also sacrifices the adorable Japanese pizza boy who is definitely not Kikutaro in the process. How you gonna remove Vinnie Massaro and Pizza Boy Kiku in the same segment? That’s seven deaths on the show so far this season, and we’re only seven episodes in. Four sacrifices, Jeremiah Crane and Fenix eating it in a Three-way To The Grave Dawg match, and Mascarita Sagrada getting butchered by crazy LSD-laced Paul London. My only hope is that Vinnie survives somehow, since technically he already kinda-sorta died once when Cage beat him to death with the Gauntlet of the Gods. That Matanza … what a pizza shit.
Over/Under: The Long Way Around
The way the Gift of the Gods storyline has played out this season has been interesting, but it’s also pretty extraneously complicated. The idea is that seven people qualify for medallions, put their medallions in the WMAC Masters belt, and then they all wrestle for it. The winner is the Gift of the Gods Champion, which is more or less Dinero en el Banco. This season, we got all the medallion qualifiers out of the way with the quickness, had everyone put their medallions into the belt, then had a 90-second over-the-top-rope battle royal so the winner of that could pick someone to eliminate from a future now-six-person match. But instead of having that announced match, Cueto divides the teams into three and makes them wrestle a trios match, with the winning team then going into a three-way match, with the winner of that becoming the Gift of the Gods Champion. It’s interesting, like I said, but it’s a lot.
They divide the teams up pretty obviously, too, with Ivelisse teaming up with two guys who already have championships to take on three of the most nuts high-flyers on the show. I wonder which team will have a triple threat match!
The high flyers win, of course, and go into what would’ve been the best match on the show by a mile if they hadn’t done that rope-assisted Sin Cara kick as the transition between every single move. Seriously, there are like eight of them in this one match. That move needs to get got. The highlight is this INSANE and beautiful dive from Desmond X. Matt Striker comments that “some say” the X in Desmond X stands for “X marks the spot,” which doesn’t make any sense for multiple reasons, including X having the word XAVIER written across the ass of his trunks.
Still, this is the kind of shit you tune into Lucha Underground for, and while it was a little wonky at first, it picked up and got suitably crazy. El Dragon Azteca Jr. wins the Gift of the Gods Championship, and while I haven’t specifically been spoiled for the result of his cash-in, there’s no way in Sam’s hell EDAJ (who is my boy) is going to win the Lucha Underground Championship. I won’t be surprised if that thing moves around a bunch before it actually gets traded in. Which of course means they’ll start next week’s episode with the cash-in and give him the belt, because this season is hustling through itself.
Over: Marty Might Be Important Again!
Finally we have the episode’s stinger, which is Marty the Moth Martinez dreaming about stealing Pentagon’s skeleton teeth to make a necklace for Melissa Santos until Mariposa shows up in a very Quentin Tarantino exposition shot to tell him to get his shit together and challenge for the Lucha Underground Championship. Marty and King Cuerno are probably the two best characters from Lucha to never get a real run at the top of the card, so I’m very into Marty getting at least mildly serious and wrecking shop.
So that’s the show. Again, season four has had its ups and downs and has a pretty unusual pace, even for LU, but everything since the opener has felt relatively strong (strong! strong!), so I feel like we’ve got some really exceptionally crazy shit ahead of us. Can’t wait.
