Lucha Underground – Season One Episode 36 – 15th July 2015
The Beginning Of The End
Two weeks – that is all that stands between us and the first ever Ultima Lucha. This week we’ll see the big season-ending event take shape further, with Prince Puma and Mil Muertes scheduled to go face-to-face in a promotional segment to hype their Championship main event. Elsewhere Vampiro needs to make a decision about whether to face Pentagon or risk the man with Cero Miedo coming back to burn him alive. Matt Striker will provide commentary from Boyle Heights, CA – with question marks over Vampiro’s health and sanity after being attacked by Pentagon just a week ago.
Dario Cueto proudly shows off the Aztec Medallions to Pentagon, telling him that three will awarded this evening. Penta declines the chance to compete for one. ‘If my master was interested, I would have broken your arm and taken them all’ – Pentagon dropping another bad ass line. Dario wants to meet The Master...and Pentagon walks out by saying that his Master will only reveal himself once he has proven that he is ‘ready’.
Bengala vs Delavar Daivari
As El Jefe revealed, all three of our scheduled matches this evening will have Aztec Medallions at stake, so the winners join Jack Evans, Aero Star and Fenix in possession of one of those coveted prizes. Daivari is looking to rebound after his disappointing loss to Texano two weeks ago, and has not enjoyed a successful time at all in The Temple thus far. His opponent is competing in his first ever singles match, but did look impressive in a trios match against the Disciples Of Death back during his debut. If you missed that review, Bengala is Ricky Marvin under a hood – and despite him piling on a few pounds as he’s aged, he is a solid, reliable hand that is absolutely perfect for this environment.
Daivari is completely unequipped to cope with Bengala’s lucha offence. He flips and twists off the ropes with armdrags, and hits a tope suicida through the turnbuckles when Daivari tries to escape. It’s only the intervention of Delavar’s hired goon Big Ryck that turns the match in the wealthy Persian’s favour. Handspring elbow by Bengala, straight into a DDT for a close nearfall. ELBOW SUICIDA ON RYCK! That was ludicrously sudden and explosive! Sadly the masked man takes far too long celebrating and gives Daivari a chance to hoist him off the ropes with a superplex. Ryck tries to get some payback, but accidentally strikes Daivari – knocking him back into a CHAOS THEORY! Bengala pulls off the upset and earns the medallion at 03:31
Rating - ** - This was probably Daivari’s best LU match, albeit largely because his weaknesses were concealed by Ricky Marvin, who has looked in top form during his two brief outings thus far. As I’ve said, he is perfect for this kind of promotion – as he’s a veteran who has travelled all around the world working all kinds of different styles with all kinds of nationalities of opponent. I get the feeling the LU producers had already sussed that Daivari wasn’t really working as a featured character on their show by this point…
Vampiro leaves commentary and steps into the ring to address Pentagon’s challenge, but doesn’t get too far into his promo before Penta himself joins the fray. It looks like all Pentagon’s threats and verbal barbs have worked, because following some theatrics Vampiro accepts the challenge and lays him out with a chokeslam. Once more, credit to the writing team here. They’ve created a story which has taken Vampiro from being a commentating former wrestler in his late-40’s to getting an absolute ROCKSTAR response from a studio full of people just for announcing he’s going to wrestle again.
Sexy Star pulls on her kneepads backstage, and it’s revealed that she keeps Super Fly’s mask in her bag.
King Cuerno vs Killshot
Cuerno’s team were eliminated from the Trios Title Tournament finals when Killshot surprisingly pinned Texano, so there is definitely some history between these two men. We’ve seen Killshot stalking The Temple in a similar manner to Cuerno too. The winner here receives another Aztec Medallion, giving greater motivation than ever to the feared hunter and the mysterious, unknown Killshot…
There are visible similarities in how these two move around the ring, just adding to the odd dynamic between them. King tries to dominate with powerful strikes, so Killshot takes the opportunity to stretch his legs and demonstrate his speed – by pulling a double back flip off the ropes and kicking him in the head. A diving kick blocks the Arrow From The Depths Of Hell, before Kill flies back into the ring with the Rolling Thunder Cutter for 2. SOMERSAULT HURRICANRANA TO THE FLOOR! Kill tries another dive…only for Cuerno to cut him off with an EMERALD FUSION ON THE APRON! Quite incredibly, that barely keeps Killshot down for more than a few seconds before he comes back and hits a frog crossbody for 2. A pissed off King C drops him on his head again with a reverse rana, then lines him up for the Arrow From The Depths! Fed up with Killshot’s insolence, Cuerno folds him up with a Mexican surfboard converted to a dragon sleeper…and gets a submission win at 06:07
Rating - ** - There was some good action here, and I thought some of the stuff they did around mirroring each other’s body language and modifying their styles to match the pacing of the opponent was very interesting. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough time to explore the chemistry that they had…and abandoned a lot of the cerebral stuff to throw around mindless spots and no-sell everything (even in a Lucha Underground context). Killshot getting murdered on the apron then hopping up only seconds later was entirely ridiculous, and made it hard to take this seriously.
Super Fly vs Sexy Star
Our final Aztec Medallion match of the evening pits two big rivals against each other in one final grudge match to settle their rivalry. Once friends, Dario Cueto forced them to face in a Mask vs Mask Match for his own amusement…and when Sexy Star won she triggered Fly into going to a very dark headspace. Rather than being angry at Pentagon for breaking his arm, he blamed Star and resented that he hadn’t been able to get Pentagon to break her arm in return. He won their rematch, and added insult to injury by going after her mask following its conclusion. Can these two put their feud to bed here?
The Believers are such a great crowd that they every raucously cheer and chant for pretty innocuous luchadors like Super Fly it seems. Anyone in the crowd cheering for him is pretty drastically let down however, because within thirty seconds Sexy scissors him down into a Fujiwara armbar…and HE TAPS! It’s all over in just 00:33!
Rating - N/A - As has become par for the course, I’m completely confused by the booking of Sexy Star. They put her over at the expense of Pentagon’s momentum, then had her look weak against Super Fly in their rematch despite Fly doing nothing of any significance during the entire season…and now they come back and job Super Fly out in thirty seconds having made him look competitive in a main event last week? I want to like Sexy Star, but she has been so unevenly booked all season that I still don’t really know what to make of her.
Marty The Moth interrupts Sexy’s victory celebration to be creepy and sleazy. He points out that the Medallion she has just won depicts a moth and is forged from gold of his ancestors…therefore it’s only right that he gets the chance to fight for it. In any other promotion this would feel like the most ludicrous thing you’ve ever seen.
Sexy Star vs Marty Martinez
Sexy accepts The Moth’s challenge, meaning for the first time ever we will see an Aztec Medallion defended by the incumbent holder of one. Technically Marty has already had his opportunity to fight for a medallion, but Star has staked her reputation on not backing down from any challenge all season long – so after barely breaking sweat against Super Fly doesn’t look like starting now.
Star beats Marty around the ring, landing a number of lucha armdrags from multiple positions. The Moth is considerably bigger than her though – and catches her for an emphatic body slam when she looks for a flying crossbody. He can’t make her tap with a Figure 4 though, and she satellites him into the same Fujiwara armbar that defeated Super Fly. The Moth taps, giving Star another win at 02:20
Rating - * - The one positive I can draw from this strange, elongated Sexy Star segment is that after an entire season of beating people with fluke roll-ups, at least it now looks like they are trying to give her an established finishing move. Given that Marty has been presented as something of a joke character since he arrived, he also has no discernible credibility to lose by being squashed by her in this fashion.
Matt Striker runs through the Ultima Lucha card announced thus far. We have Mundo vs Alberto, Texano vs Blue Demon, the Ivelisse/Angelico/Havoc team defending the Trios Titles against the Disciples Of Death, Drago in a grudge match against Hernandez, Vampiro’s return to the ring against Pentagon…and the championship main event pitting Prince Puma against challenger Mil Muertes.
Dario Cueto enters The Temple, to a thunderous reaction from the Believers. He will personally conduct the in-ring promotional segment featuring Prince Puma and Mil Muertes it seems. He wanted to ban both Catrina and Konnan from ringside…but Catrina marches down the steps anyway. Her appearance triggers a punch-up between champion and challenger, with Muertes quickly joined by the Disciples to put a beatdown on Puma. Konnan tries to rescue his protégé…only for Muertes to snatch his feared cane and KNOCK PUMA OUT WITH IT! Catrina destroys Konnan with Mil’s ‘Stone Of Death’, and Mil makes Puma watch as she and the Disciples close Konnan in a casket! FLATLINER ON PUMA! Muertes poses with the belt as the show ends…
Tape Rating - ** - The quality of the wrestling was limited this week, but as I’ve said before, the strength of this company is that sometimes the story-telling can be every bit as compelling as the in-ring work itself. That was the case this week, as the two significant in-ring segments were well-worth checking out. Vampiro is someone I’ve never liked as a performer, but such is the craft with which his showdown with Pentagon has been written that even I am excited to see their match at Ultima Lucha. The final segment was excellent as well, giving some much-needed heat to the Puma/Muertes Title Match, and has significant historical significance as this genuinely was used to write Konnan out of Lucha Underground.