Lucha Underground – Season Two Episode 3 – 10th February 2016
The Hunt Is On…
Season Two of Lucha Underground has continued the near-relentless pace we enjoyed for much of the first year. Catrina maintains her grip over The Temple but the queue of challengers waiting for Mil Muertes to recover from his broken arm grows longer by the week, her Disciples Of Death just lost a handicap match clean (despite being Trios Champions) and, unbeknownst to her, there are other forces out there (like the whereabouts unknown former Proprietor Dario Cueto and his brother Matanza, or Rey Mysterio and his student Dragon Azteca Jr.) growing stronger too. Tonight she does at least hope to eliminate one threat – in the form of Fenix upon whom she will unleash the fearsome hunter King Cuerno once more. Kobra Moon also makes her Lucha Underground debut this week. Matt Striker and Vampiro will be at ringside in Boyle Heights, CA to see it.
Bengala vs Kobra Moon
The last time we saw Bengala he was unsuccessfully participating in the bout to crown the first ever Gift Of The Gods Champion. He returns for Season Two, but in the six months or so between tapings Ricky Marvin evidently hasn’t been taking the best care of himself. He’s so visibly more sizeable around the midsection that Striker even introduces him by cracking a fat joke. His opponent tonight is the mysterious female debutant known only as Kobra Moon. She called herself venomous, snakelike and deadly in a vignette last week. Under the hood is California-scene independent worker Thunder Rosa, who by this point had also been to Japan for a couple of Stardom tours. She joins Ivelisse, Catrina, Sexy Star, Black Lotus and Melissa Santos as female cast members this year (with a couple more very significant names still to debut too).
Kobra’s entrance attire is completely bizarre, looking like someone mashed up Dalton Castle, Sexy Star and Pimpinela Escarlata and thought ‘that looks good’. Her snake mannerisms are uncomfortably camp and theatrical too. She dodges some swipes of Bengala’s paw, drives him out of the ring then flies at him with a slingshot headscissors to the floor. A few atrociously weak strikes follow next, and she laughably almost gets decapitated with a superkick after her silly-looking mask slips around covering her eyes. Bengala eats knees on a moonsault though – and is instantly snared into Kobra’s dragon sleeper (imaginatively renamed the ‘Snake Sleeper’). The visual of the hefty Bengala dropping to his knees and tapping out to the smaller luchadora is impressive at least. Moon wins at 02:46
Rating - * - I assume Lucha Underground’s producers were so unimpressed with his physical condition that any plans they had for the Bengala character were scrapped. This is his only appearance for Season Two (and I think Ricky Marvin has subsequently dropped the gimmick too). It’s a little harsh to blame him for any of the failures of this match though, as this was a complete squash to debut the new character. I’ve not seen Thunder Rosa to judge her as a worker, but I will say I didn’t particularly like anything about her gimmick. Lucha Underground has some amazing costumes. The Disciples Of Death look scary as sh*t. Mil Muertes is terrifying after being repackaged following Grave Consequences. Aero Star looks cool. Pentagon’s black and white is phenomenal. And we haven’t even got to the marvel of ring-gear design that is Drago. Moon’s, in comparison, looked horrendously low budget. Her mask looked silly (and didn’t fit properly), her weird feather headdress that she used for her entrance was ghastly, and her mannerisms were dumb; everything looked lurid and cheap. Inside the ring she did a couple of things really well, and a couple of things really badly. As ever with LU, the key to success for any athlete is the kind of storylines they get, hence why Ricky Banderas was comical in Wrestling Society X but Mil Muertes is a bad ass delight here. Presumably the writers have some plans for her…
Catrina ‘feels a tingle of excitement’ when Fenix ventures into her office. He wants King Cuerno, then he’s coming for Mil and her!
A MILLENIA AGO – A young Aztec tribal boy talks about a visit from a mysterious spaceman. Yes, Aero Star is not only a spaceman, he’s also a time-traveller. Way to bring him back for the new season! He talks to a villager about the war between the seven Aztec tribes…then vows to head a thousand years into the future to unify them and end the war.
Back in The Temple, Catrina teleports into a King Cuerno workout session. She wants to know why he only took Fenix’s title and didn’t destroy him. Cuerno calls Mil Muertes a ‘wounded animal’ and acts confrontationally…so Catrina reminds him that they are on the same team. She wants him to kill Fenix in a match he’s never lost – Last Luchador Standing…tonight!
Jack Evans vs Drago
The return to The Temple of Drago has been eagerly awaited by the Believers. One of the breakout stars of the first year, he fought back from excommunication from The Temple to the very cusp of main eventing Ultima Lucha…before Hernandez, Mil Muertes and his bloodthirsty (former) boss Dario Cueto took it away from him. This year both Hernandez and Cueto are gone – meaning he potentially is another man with a laser beam focus on Muertes and the LU Championship. To get there he needs wins, starting with a victory over the loud-mouthed, brash but outrageously talented Jack Evans.
There’s a real chance that Drago is too quick even for Evans. He forcibly ejects Jack from the ring, and it’s only a sneak attack from behind that allows the former Generation Next man back inside. PALM STRIKE OF DEATH by Drago sends him spinning through the air! Evans resorts to biting just to get a foothold in the match, which the fans absolutely hate. He follows it with some needlessly flashy kicks then a handspring, backflipping eye rake. He’s so enraged at Drago’s success in this match he actually starts mercilessly pummelling him on the ground, almost to the point of referee stoppage. Drago pitches him out of the ring and climbs for a TOP ROPE SUICIDE DIVE TO THE FLOOR! Great call from Striker who spots that Evans almost dodged that meaning Drago took almost as much damage as he inflicted there. He still recovers quickest to deliver a hanging DDT for 2. FLIP DDT NAILED! Dragon’s Tail…countered to Jack’s bridging backslide with his feet on the ropes. Evans wins at 07:20
Rating - *** - I said during Season One that Evans was catching me completely off guard with how good he had been so far in Lucha Underground. The same holds up here, as this was another terrific little sprint of a match. The direction they went with this was so good. They could’ve been forgiven for just throwing athletic, rapid-fire highspots around just because they can…but I really appreciated the fact that they tried something different. There was very little aerial stuff – instead they set an early premise that Drago is much quicker than Jack, something he isn’t used to and something that annoyed him immensely. So powerless was Evans’ usual routine against the dragon that he eventually resorted to completely ugly axehandle smashes on the ground just to keep Drago at bay, and of course then had to cheat to beat him. This was genuinely very good…
Jack Evans steals Melissa’s microphone and climbs onto the announce table to herald his own victory; calling himself ‘The Dragon Slayer’ on the way out.
Texano is a Mexican bad ass who likes to dress like a cowboy, ride horses and chop wood. Manly stuff. He has bad words for Chavo Guerrero, drinks, fights masked thugs in a bar…and will be returning to Lucha Underground next week.
Catrina beams into Prince Puma’s locker room, cruelly mocking him with the story of how Konnan died in the casket she put him in. She’s making him face Pentagon next week and clearly playing mindgames in the hope that the two threats to Mil Muertes take each other out. I loved everything about this segment (and yes, Puma still didn’t talk).
King Cuerno vs Fenix – Last Luchador Standing Match
Since Catrina put this match together with the expressed mission statement of ending Fenix’s career, obviously she isn’t giving him anything to gain so the Gift Of The Gods Title is not on the line. Cuerno won the first ever Last Luchador Standing Match last year when he defeated Drago. His backhanded deals with Catrina have restored him to prominence within The Temple. Now Cuerno is mission-bound to add the Man Of A Thousand Lives, the ‘Bird Of War’, to his trophy case.
They pick up where they left off during the season opener, throwing strikes at high speed which favours Fenix. He spectacularly takes Cuerno down with a double springboard frankensteiner to draw the first count of the match. He MISSES an attempted tope con hilo though and endures an ugly landing on the floor of The Temple. King quickly capitalises by mashing his skull into the ringpost, the clanging sound of which loudly resonates through the building. Fenix struggles up from that…so Cuerno grabs him again for a ferocious whip into the guardrail. Methodical as ever, Cuerno is sure to take his time to recover, ordering the referee to count a potential victory each and every time he takes the Bird Of War down. Fenix just doesn’t know when to quit however…and rallies with a double springboard missile dropkick. The camera pans to Mil Muertes on his throne, visibly upset (and perhaps even afraid) every time Fenix enjoys success in the match. SPRINGBOARD INSIDE OUT CORKSCREW PLANCHA NAILED! Cuerno gets up…so Fenix wipes him out again with a STEP-UP SPRINGBOARD CORKSCREW PLANCHA! Fenix heads to the top again but takes so long about it that King C is able to recover and kick him to the floor. CORNER TO CORNER ARROW FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL! With Fenix struggling to recover from that the Hunter grabs a ladder – then charges to near-decapitate him when he eventually does beat the 10-count. He props the ladder up on the wall of Catrina’s office and sets his sights on even more violence by pulling a table out from under the ring as well. German suplex blocked by Fenix…and he starts to climb the ladder! Cuerno chases, SO FENIX KICKS HIM OFF THROUGH THE TABLE! Triumphantly counting along from the roof of the office, Fenix is declared the winner when Cuerno is unable to respond at 11:20
Rating - **** - I was a big fan of Cuerno in the first series and didn’t like how they faded him into the background after the conclusion of his all-too-brief feud with Johnny Mundo. His involvement with Catrina has brought him back into the spotlight, and once again he is delivering a terrific rivalry. He and Fenix have a natural chemistry as opponents, since Cuerno is fantastic as the methodical, grounded, well-paced luchador who pulls the structure of a match together around the dazzling antics of a more spectacular opponent. The best part about this was that it felt like a brutal match; solely due to the big moves and risks they were willing to take with their bodies. It took until the final minute for any kind of weapon to be involved, but I never felt for a second like they weren’t trying to beat the hell out of each other. Cuerno in particular was really laying it in!
Fenix stares and gestures in the direction of Mil Muertes’ throne, as the Lucha Underground Champion shuffles in an agitated state.
We end with another huge reveal – that Cortez Castro of The Crew is actually an undercover cop (‘Officer Reyes’). He is meeting with his Captain (‘Captain Vasquez’ – played by career actress Carmen Perez as opposed to a wrestling talent)…who in a brilliant nod to criticism of the first season, states that she ‘doesn’t want to hear about convoluted stories involving Chavo Guerrero or Mexico’. What she is wants the whereabouts of Dario Cueto, but Cortez/Reyes has no clue as to his wherebouts and wanted to bring El Jefe in after the murder of Bael. Captain Vasquez is sending another undercover agent in to supervise. His name; Officer Joey Ryan! (Yes, THAT Joey Ryan)
Tape Rating - *** - Just when you think you’ve come to grips with the Lucha Underground product they pull out an episode like this. You thought Aero Star was just a Spaceman, well you’re wrong, because he’s actually a TIME TRAVELLING SPACEMAN! You thought Cortez Castro was just an undercard gangbanger…well he’s actually an undercover cop tasked with bringing down the absent Dario Cueto (and Joey Ryan is coming back to The Temple with him!). If that wasn’t enough, Catrina is still popping up all over the place making life miserable for all those who oppose Mil Muertes, and for the second time in just three episodes Fenix and King Cuerno delivered a show-stealing riot of a match. Sure Kobra Moon’s debut and Bengala’s physique were rough, but that lasted so little time. Everything else on this episode was really strong stuff.